How do you believe humanity has influenced the world, is it a positive influence or a negative influence, and Why? Thousands of cities destroy habitats around the world, however millions of animals are kept safe, and protected in Zoo's, with an artificial habitat similar to their natural one. Roads are often the cause for many animal deaths - but then again, so are other animals. According to current theories, Humanity has caused the icecaps to start melting, and endangered many animals, however, this encourages evolution, and allows new animals to take control, because change is good.
The question is... what is natural? Is anything that is done by humans unnatural by definition, or, since humans are a product of nature, is everything we do natural by extension? The process that led up to the spraypaint on the rock didn't involve anything supernatural... intelligent mining of metals and processing of chemicals. All well within the bounds of nature. More importantly, the human brain, which figured out how to do all this, didn't reach it's powerful capacity through any witchcraft or sorcery... it happened naturally through evolution.
We've influenced nature regardless, I doubt nature intended for us to destroy millions of trees or create war. Also you missed the point of the debate. I believe our influence is as bad as it can get. If we remove humans from the planet, will the planet get better/worse, that is how you know our influence on it.
We do good and we do bad. If we were not on this Earth, and no animals were. The earth would just be a barren place. I am sure the Earth has no conscious or memory. The only things we will hurt is ourself. Hopefully we will do the right thing and things will get better all the time.
One can look at our acceleration of global climate change over the years as something unnatural that we have done. Sure, it was done by natural means, but it brought an unnatural effect. We have changed the course of the Earth's normal period of changes. We can even look at zoos as unnatural. The "endangered" animals are supposed to have been extinct (even though we caused most of these extinctions, that is beside the point). We did not let nature take its course in natural selection. If we are going to keep "rescuing" animals from becoming an extinct species we are further harming our natural environment in pursuit of our amusement and obligaiton of morals. I could also cite our overuse of natural resources, but you get the idea. Sure, we have planted trees, and prevented the flooding/ drought of inhabited areas, and even domesticated a dog or two, but everything we do whether for good or bad intentions is upsetting the status quo of nature. When the status quo of nature is unbalanced, nature tries to rebalance itself in pursuit of its own equilibrium. This may seem like a scare tactic, but I don't mean it in that way.
Since when did nature have a consciousness? The problem with the debate question is another question; what is "good" for the environment, and what is "bad"? Humans are selfish creatures. That's why we're the dominant species. We didn't spread across the continents by giving out food to tigers and wolves to make sure they didn't die. We hunted them to make sure they didn't hunt us. And? As long as the end positive is good for our species, it's good. If it affects us negatively, then it's bad. The idea that the planet would get better or worse without mankind is rather disregardable. We humans judge things from a one-sided perspective; that is, "Will it be good or bad for humans?" Once humans are gone, the universe can pretty much go to hell, and it wouldn't affect us the slightest; therefore, why be perturbed at all by anything that happens to the earth after we are gone? Global health only matters as long as we live here; if we knew that after humans become extinct that a large asteroid would strike earth and cause a mass extinction...so what? Why try to stop, then? But if it were to occur while the species was still thriving, then all of our forces would be concentrated in order to stop that catastrophe. It's certainly not for the benefit of other animals that we would do this. We try to conserve wildlife because as the dominant species, we are dependent on many other types of plants and animals. The hundreds of perceived solutions to the honeybee crisis, for one. Conservation limits placed on fishing and game for another. We don't do it because we like those animals a lot. We do it because honeybees pollinate plants and because we need to make sure that the resource of fish and other game can be used as long as possible for our consumption. The collapse of the biosphere while humans still live in it is not exactly the most favorable conditions for the survival of our species. In the past, the drive toward industrialization hampered the thoughts on the long-term survival of the biosphere (and through that, humans). We are, however, understanding how dependent we are on a healthy ecosystem. The strive towards more 'green' products and services reflects on this. But the reason why we do this is not for the world's sake. It's for ours. And if we weren't here, who gives a rat's ass? Certainly not us.
All species behave selfishly... it's our BRAINS that make us the dominant species. Other than that, I agree completely. I would clarify, though, by explaining that the sum total of all human behaviour has yielded this description, and that it represents a pattern not necessarily in line with any particular consciousness. There are many, many people who consciously think differently of our role, without any particular bearing on our overall behaviour.
True, all species behave selfishly. However, I'd argue that our intelligence has only helped to keep us as the dominant species for such a long time. I did, however, make the mistake (via typing) of saying that our selfishness caused us to be dominant. What I should have said was that if we were an unselfish species, we wouldn't have become dominant. Thank you for the correction. <later>
Humanity is ****ed unless we start changing our ways, at the current rates or resource consumption and global warming and other problems, unless we innovate some new amazing way to fix these problems, we are heading on a crash course towards earth's natural carrying capacity for humanity. Once we hit that carrying capacity, I hypothesize earth is not going to be a very nice place for humans (or possibly animals) to live. Resources will be scarce. There will be fights, maybe wars over various amounts of resources. Civilizations that were allowed to exist before will fall. Natural Selection will begin to effect humans again. What annoys me the most? When people say "Save the Earth!" and bullshit like that. Do you really think they are trying to save the Earth, or are they trying to save humanity? You want selfish, there it is, nobody gives a **** about the earth, we're just trying to save our own asses. Zoos, sure we keep species alive, you know why, we might need them later for their biodiversity and special traits, not because we actually care about them. I'd say the only people who actually want to save the Earth are idealistic kids. On a side note, I can see humanity living if we can rapidly increase our space exploration technology in an attempt to find a suitable atmosphere, in which we could survive until we can find another suitable atmosphere. Humanity is pretty much a virus, and we need to find another host. Edit: I decided to read Nemi's post considering how long mine turned out to be, I would like to say we share a few similar points.