ThirstyFish

What is the greatest danger to our children? Those born or unborn? Is it national security? Is it poverty? Disease? Or, some ideology we disagree with? None of the above. It's us, ourselves. Our ignorance of what we are doing to our environment. Our unconditional belief in what we call civilization. We are exploiting, poisoning, and altering the ecosystem that our very existence is dependent upon; Our land, our water, and our air...

Author Derrick Jensen makes this exact point in one of his lectures/books: "The only measure by which any generation will be judged by those who come after will be the health of the land-base that they pass on. Everything else builds from there. The people who come after aren't going to give a shit as to whether we voted Democrat, Republican, Green, anarchist, or none of the above. They're not going to give a shit about whether we were pacifists or not pacifists. They're not going to give a shit about whether we signed or didn't sign online petitions. They're not going to give a shit about how hard we tried. It's no good to live in a groovy eco-socialist utopia with free love if the planet is toxified. Those who come after are going to only care about whether they can breathe the air, whether they can drink the water, whether the land can support them. Everything else comes from that ... there is going to be people sitting along the banks of the Columbia, saying, 'I'm starving to death because you didn't remove the dams that were killing salmon. God damn you!'"