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Questioning Mother Nature Can Have Serious, Lasting Consequences
Mother Nature's delicate balance, which has endured millions of years of testing, keeps the environment in balance, but our intervention can be risky.
An act of foolish teenage angst resulted in the chainsaw destruction of a 300-year-old revered tree that had charmed generations. But this is only one example of how we intentionally or naively cause dramatic and destructive change in our environment. The tree may regrow but never return to its original, recognizable form in a well-known area, the Sycamore Gap. These environmental changes will work their way into our lives in ways too numerous to imagine now. The future holds the key, but we are not Cassandras and fail to be up to the job.
Over millennia, Mother Nature has perfected her skills to create an environment in harmony, until human intervention entered the scene to disrupt the music of nature. Maintaining a superior or cavalier attitude to changes in the natural order comes with the potential for effects on human health. “Human well-being depends strongly on the interacting web of living species, so much so that we take this for granted.” Where are we seeing interventions that may have already had an effect? One instance that is troubling is taking place right now in Europe.
