You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone

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IT’S BEEN SAID that the first cases of lung cancer detected in humans goes back to our cave-dwelling days. Makes sense, when you think about it. Breathing all that smoke in a room without adequate ventilation can’t be good for you. But who knew back then? The heat felt good on a wintry night.

This is the essence of the human condition. We’re constantly looking for ways to improve or change our surroundings. And then we suffer the unintended consequences.

Sometimes, it reminds of being a teenage boy. We’d try some stupid stunt. If it didn’t kill us, we’d try something else.

It seems as though we can’t help ourselves in this species-wide endeavor. Of course, with over 7 billion people on the planet, this is starting to get to a be a serious pursuit.

Climate change is real. The decimation of species of all kinds is real.

It’s been said that alien civilizations have likely never reached us because they have self-destructed before they became sophisticated enough to venture this far.

I sometimes wonder if we are not only the smartest species on the planet, but the dumbest parasite.

Even lowly organisms that suck blood or other nutrients from their hosts know better than to kill the source of their sustenance.