{"id":697,"date":"2009-04-22T07:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-22T11:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/04\/22\/the-human-footprint\/"},"modified":"2009-04-22T07:33:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-22T11:33:00","slug":"the-human-footprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/04\/22\/the-human-footprint\/","title":{"rendered":"The human footprint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northcountrypublicradio.org\/news\/story\/13403\/crowding-out-the-earth-a-conversation-about-population-and-climate-change\">interviewed a group of researchers at SUNY ESF<\/a> about the perilous impact of population growth on climate change.<\/p>\n<p>The math seems pretty simple:  6.7 billion people eating Big Macs and driving Hummers probably won&#8217;t produce a happy ending.<\/p>\n<p>The same day, I happened to rent a sci-fi thriller on DVD, a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still.<\/p>\n<p>The premise of the film is that humans are a big problem:  &#8220;If the earth dies, you die,&#8221; says the alien Klaatu, played by Keanu Reeves.  &#8220;If you die, the earth survives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Alan Weisman&#8217;s book, &#8220;The World Without Us,&#8221; explores this territory.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldwithoutus.com\/index2.html\">His website<\/a> has a sort of cool graphic that shows how quickly your home would be reabsorbed by nature if you were to disappear&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, there are a growing number of scientists and writers exploring the concept that humans may be a sort of necessary part of the ecological mix:  a way for nature to become self-aware.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, most of the world&#8217;s faiths place humans at the pinnacle of the cosmological pyramid, just below the Creator.<\/p>\n<p>So what do you think?  Are humans the problem on this Earth Day?  The solution?  Are we <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Hn6WZh17BF4\">a virus<\/a> or are we a miracle?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I interviewed a group of researchers at SUNY ESF about the perilous impact of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}