The earth’s climate has never, ever been steady state consistent. It is ever changing. We are coming out of a long period of relative regularity to the current human experience. But this condition was never destined to last.
Climate change is inevitable. Humans have always played an environmental role through Industrialization, deforestation and farming. Humans have always destroyed the “natural” habitat wherever they form large societies.
It is a fact that the northern lands of Africa were once lush green jungle. Now desert sands. The USA “dust bowl” era was a warning about climate and land management. The humans in North Africa migrated to the Nile where a major river and flooding silt deposits held off the encroaching desert sands for thousands of years.
Not saying the Sahara was man made, but a sure indication that world climate is not steady state.
Cities and the existence of huge human populations have been discovered in remote jungles throughout the world. That’s clear evidence of nature reclaiming what mankind had once destroyed. Only when man is removed, does nature reclaim what was lost. When it can.
It it doesn’t turn to desert, earth will grow back the jungle.
Unless humans live with nature and stop changing it for our own needs with huge resource consumption, we ARE the agents of climate change. We are releasing billions of years of energy storage into our present environment with fossil fuels. Burning wood to make lime plaster in the Yucatan had the same effect on climate change. Perhaps not with CO2 release but due to deforestation.
Huge collection of solar energy from where it is gathered in daylight for use when and where the sun never shines (at night) is going to have some kind of a human created effect. It’s the butterfly flapping its wings effect. Move or destroy the butterfly and something changes.
Humans can never turn back the effects of our existence. We will always “use up” resources we can take, consume, or change for our own desires. We always have and always will. Our brain is our best and worst asset. It permits some of us to believe we have total control of everything and anything is possible. From real Aliens (smarter than us) to a single monster in a lake in Scotland.
I don’t believe we are destined to survive for eternity and populate (destroy/improve) other worlds any more than the dinosaurs. Our time of existence will pass. The earth will change. Humans will devolve to a survival existence or totally disappear.
Frankly, in my minute period of existence, I don’t give a thought to the future. I don’t have to display altruistic concern for future generations, They will adjust on their own.
But I do believe a harmony of existence with the natural world is comforting to the human psyche of a perfect world.
The irony is that we are an active element of nature and not an outside observer. Whatever we do is absolutely “natural” in the overall nature of the world. However our human spirit has given most of us a sense of awareness about what’s right and wrong.
Some humans can feel guilt, when what we do or have control over, is not equal or the best for all interests. Human history proves this is not the case for all members of our species. Human nature is no more a constant than inevitable climate change.