Ben Wiehl - The Practice of the Wild #2

"The immediate time frame of human experience is the climates and ecologies of the Holocene --the 'present moment,' the ten or eleven thousand years since the last ice age"

I agree completely with Snyder in this regard. It is human nature to live in the here and now, rather then worry about the future or the past. Unfortunately, we must take the past into the account in order to make sure that we do not repeat any of the mistakes that we may have made in past times. In this regard, it is imperative that we make full use of scientific measures in order to determine how best we can go about regulating the climate and ecologies of the world. We do not want to disturb our natural system so much that it is altered completely, as the effects of that could be very grave. If, for instance, a good portion of the land-based ice was to melt due to the global temperature raising by an average of a mere few degrees, much of the coastal lands where there are large populations would be underwater. Displacement of millions of people would be an event that we would have no solution for. Thinking about the kind of things that went on in New Orleans when that portion of the population experienced displacement and applying that to a much larger number worries me greatly. Also in this regard, it is extremely important that we take into account what we wish to have for ourselves in the future. In order to prevent catastrophe, we must begin to pay more attention to global attributes and focus less on our individual lives.