For the last year and a half, 3-4 mornings before the sun comes up, I have been running the same route leaving from my apartment complex. It’s nearly all neighborhoods, however for a couple short “blocks” are a thick, dense forest between my sidewalk and the apartments.
They recently started clearing the entire thing and it’s certainly a bit heartbreaking. A couple months ago there was a HUGE alligator snapping turtle in the middle of the road, which i’m fairly confident was out there after being displaced by the clearing of this wooded area.
All they are doing is adding onto our existing apartment complex with several more buildings.
The more I learn about our destruction, the harder it becomes to be optimistic about the future. The overpopulation is going to put a huge strain on everything in the next 100 years.
If you haven’t read “Sapiens” I would suggest checking it out. It’s amazing to think that Homo erectus came to be approximately 1.5 million years ago, with our current specifies, Homo sapiens, showing up around 200,000 years ago.
That timeline for existence is unfathomable when looking at our current rate of destruction. Hard to picture 100 years, let alone 1,000..
It may just be another phase in Earth’s cycle. Eventually our actions cause billions die, or all of us die, and our planet likely goes through another similar cycle for the next million years, potentially rebuilding again.