IMHO

I think I look into the new century with more hope and optimism than I have ever had before. I can look at where we have been and what we have lost over time be sad for its going. But What a world is coming.

I'd compare the human race to toddler who is going through the living room and laying waste to the landscape. Three steps forward and two steps back all the way but making slow progress. Broken lamps, cookie jars, torn photos, some rare and irreplaceable, some not. Some completely destroyed and some damaged but reparable. But in the path of this carnage is adavncement and growth. Lessons are learned on the backs of things lost and this has been the toll paid by humanity since the beginning of our time on the earth.

In the span of modern history we have lost wildlife because of human interference with the way of natural life. We shot down great flocks of Pssenger Pigeons for the adornment clothing. But in a few years since that time we discovered our stupidity with DDT and have generally saved The Perigrine Falcon and Bald eagle from distinction. Three steps forward and two steps back.

On a boring afternoon near the turn of the last century the army of Napoleon used the Great Spinx at Giza for target practice and shot its nose away. Little kids playing at vandals because it was just an old stone beast from antiquity. In this century the combined efforts of the Soviets, Egyptians, and the French worked together to save the Aswan Relics and move them to higher ground so as not to be flooded into only a memory.

Three steps forward and two steps back.

I am willing to bet we will lose countless irreplaceble pieces of our world as we move ahead. I hate to say it but thats the cost of keeping us on this planet. I can't imagine a world with out Monarch Butterflys or Dandelions or Adirondaks or Ayers Rock or Red Dear or White Rhinos, or Elephants or..... fill in the blank. But the cost of getting us as a people to this point where we are willing to fight to keep from losing these great natural amazements was all that we have lost in the millenia that have passed. There is no gain in sitting back and wringing our hands over that which has been lost. We know what we have lost. We as a people are at a point where we can stop the losses. We need to take this knowledge and use it to teach ourselves and to help others in the world family. The shame would be knowing the price we have paid for the admission into the next century and then not going to the show.

Don