by I_Like_Plants » Tue 28 Jun 2005, 03:44:23
I have seen, in my relatively short lifetime, one bay get silted up, polluted, and most parts of it turned into grey, industrial, ugly water with cement barriers on gravel beaches around most of it. Where it was green and thriving before. It's probably the single saddest thing I've seen in my life.
I've also seen another bay, in fact the next one over, which was declared a wildlife (wildfish?) refuge, go from a fished-out, clean but rather barren area to one that's full of fish, and probably even has some resemblence to how it was before humans got there, except that all the human swimmers tend to discourage the growth of seaweeds and coral and things like limpets, so it's not perfect but it shows that wildlife can come back if humans decide to lay off 'em.
I hate to say this but I see the first scenario as an example of what we could see, as oil goes down, the sheer numbers of people start using up the trees, the grass, the very weeds (a good number of which are edible) in their efforts to live. I know that in the Korean War, Koreans have told me, all the trees were used for heat etc and there were no trees. The trees there now have been replanted since that time - I even got to plant a few. I also know from a guy from Taiwan, that there are basically no birds in Taiwan since people at them all. I think this guy was amazed to see all those nice fat pigeons and sparrows fearlessly going around without a chance of some starving human eating them, in the US. I also know a Cambodian/Vietnamese saying, from their wars, that "A person can eat everything with four legs but the table, everything that flies but the airplane".