Quote Originally Posted by Capitalist Pig View Post
The balance of life? Nothing has ever been in balance on this planet. Species of plant and animal are created and destroyed all the time, the continents rarely have a moment where they sit still, glacial ice thousands of feet high spread out across the hemispheres and reshape the landscape every few hundred thousand years, volcanoes erupt and spew all sorts of debris and toxic gas into the atmosphere, asteroids and meteors come bearing down upon the planet and every some odd millions of years a big one comes along that threatens the complex life, the atmosphere fluctuates with all of these variables and more, the magnetic poles reverse themselves; the planet is constantly in motion, in a state of flux. We just don't see it because of our extremely short lifespans. We can see it in the fossil and geological records, however.

I'm very concerned with the future of our species, but if nature ever decided to get rid of us, there really won't be a whole hell of a lot we can do about it. Maybe we'll have evolutionary descendants who can carry the proverbial torch, but if not then, it was fun while it lasted. I do certainly hope we will survive whatever this planet and space throw at us. I'd like to see us live to become a space-faring race. But I know none of this will happen in my lifetime, so I can't really spend a whole lot of time worrying about it.
I said you didn't care about the balance of life of this planet - I didn't say that the "balance of life" had always been the same. I personally think it's good for humans to try and maintain the balance of life and to not have a detrimental effect - yes, humans may ultimately do something 'bad' while attempting 'good' - but if they do something 'bad' even according to their present understanding, this doesn't seem like a very intuitive approach.