OK so it's Earth Day tomorrow where we're meant to think about all things, well Earthy I guess. But what is it all about, what does it mean, does it really matter what we do, can we control our planets eco-system?

Here's an interesting point, when people campaign to Save the Planet isn't that being a bit arrogant? Frankly the planet was getting on just fine for billions of years before we came along and life was also being getting along just fine without us too. Shouldn't we really be campaigning to save the Human race?

Let's think about it. Climate change has and will always happen; we know this because we know it is at least in part connected to the irregular orbit of the earth around the sun. Can we influence it? Yes we can. Can we stop it happening? Almost certainly not.

Extinction is also a natural process that has and will always happen. Species come and go and every so often in the past there has been mass extinctions where the eco system has apparently crashed wiping out most of the species on the planet at that time; in variably it seems especially the dominant ones. Can we influence events that might result in another mass extinction? Yes. Can we prevent it from ever happening? Probably not.

Life on Earth will likely be just fine until the sun starts the end of its life cycle or Earth gets hit by something so big it utterly destroys it. Can our actions result in the end of all life on this planet? It's very unlikely. Can our actions result in our extinction? Well quite possibly.

The point is all these campaigns to protect the Earth's eco-system are really aimed at protecting the eco-system in which we are most comfortable. A few degrees temperature change either way and life doesn't cease on this planet but our crops start failing and we start going hungry and dying out. A few percent change in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and life doesn't cease but we start dying out.

It wouldn't take much to destabilize our social system of order to which we have become so accustomed. This would result in the collapse of society and a return to life before electricity, mass farming, mass transport etc. A time where few of us today could survive. Indeed a fairly small change in the eco-system could result in our extinction leaving many other species to carry on the mantle of life on Earth.

Should we bother with Earth Day? Well I'd like to die an old man and I'd like my kids to grow old and die old too; I can only assume they want the same for their kids. I think we need to do as much as we can to understand our eco-system, preserve what we can and learn to adapt to what we can't prevent from changing. One day it will bite us and we owe it to ourselves to be prepared.

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