It's occurred to me that humans pretty much suck. Our commendable quest to understand the natural world has brought great advancement to mankind, but also enormous vanity - too many of us live under the presumption that we've mastered Planet Earth. Sure there's the odd tsunami or Katrina to remind us of our utter helplessness, but let's face it, from the Bible on out, we like to think that we have dominion over Mother Nature.
Our greatest monuments are a testament to this - towering skyscapers that defy gravity, dams that hold back the floodwaters, palaces carved out of impregnable rock, walls built up impossible mountain slopes - but they're absolutely dwarfed by the epic beauty and scale that exist in places too few humans ever get to see.
Well, the BBC has done its part to change all that with their Planet Earth series, four years in the making, the self-described "most ambitious documentary ever undertaken." It takes its viewers to places unseen by most or even all of humanity, using the latest in time-lapse and satellite photograph to capture the planet as never before. It's literally breathtaking. And goosebump making. Enough to make anyone with a passing interest in nature want to throw themselves into a career geared towards preserving the magnificience of such a masterpiece.
A 25-foot Great White Shark launches out of the depths to ensnare an entire seal in its gaping jaws.
BASE jumpers free-fall into a 400m deep cave.
A sandstorm the size of England tears across the Sahara.
What I could find on You Tube doesn't do it any justice, but you get the idea. It puts us in our place; a short-lived civilization that has more power than ever to alter and comprehend the physical world, but one that ultimately won't matter all that much in its entire history. Sounds funny, but the series has actually made me less worried about carbon emissions, habitat destruction, deforestation, etc. Nature's going to beat us in the end anyway, profoundly as we may change it along the way. It's just a matter of how long we can avoid the tipping point.
Keep not giving a fuck about global warming - how does another ice age sound? Maybe a seven-metre rise in sea levels as a result of melted ice caps? That's the 50% of humanity that lives in coastal areas screwed. Start buying that inland property now, it'll be the new coast!
Keep slashing and burning the rainforest? Well, besides contributing to the aforementioned malaise, we have no idea what diseases lurk in the jungle that we're yet to discover and contract. Where do you think AIDS, Ebola, West Nile and SARS came from? Seriously, don't fuck with jungles.
Combine those with the threats of massive tectonic plates shifts (earthquakes and tsunamis), interstellar missiles (meteors, asteroids; anything Bruce Willis can destroy) and we're already balanced precariously close to the edge of some Malthusian holocaust. No wonder people hope the Second Coming is just around the corner. Watching this documentary and changing your lifestyle in subtle yet important ways might be a better start.
5 comments:
Great post.
Wonder if Malthus would approve of China's high death penalty rate?
Or Bush's war, which acts as a kind of population check on poor people - Iraqi women and children, American farmboys, those from urban areas looking for a way out.
- SC
Holy shit. That's some sweet stuff. I want to go base jumping right now. That'd honestly make my life, though I highly doubt I'd have the gusto to go through it.
So, are you watching this documentary (do you get the BBC?) or buying it or what? 'Cause however you're doing it, I'd like to steal it when you're done. The end.
The first 5 (of 11) episodes were shown on CBC over the past month, and they haven't said when they're showing the rest. The last six episodes are being shown over in Britain in October, and the CBC has yet to answer my pestering emails asking if they're going to pick up the rest anytime soon.
I'm going to pre-order the whole 5-disc DVD package though, which is being released on Nov. 27.
"Nature's gonna beat us in the end anyway"
Well, unless you join it, a la NATIVE style! RESPECT!
Good post cumbag, I actually have BBC on like 7 of my 61 channels (in every language conceivable) and have caught a few good episodes already. One of the better BBC things I've seen lately was their series called the New Al-Qaeda. It was a damn good look at the changing face of terrorism.
As for waterfront property, I'm just glad were in landlocked Ontario. At least Canada would lose all those leeching have-not provinces. I wish it would flood Alberta first.
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