Addicts

I believe that our species is comprised of all types of addicts. We can start off with the most obvious, those whom are the drug, alcohol, food, prescription, and substance dependent persons of the world ( a heavy concentration, maybe the heaviest, residing in the US). Beyond this we hit pay dirt as a more prevalent but lesser known addiction is finally being seen; the rape of the natural world. This addiction, like any other, is not only destructive to the living body of the addict (humans), but also in the object of the obsession (natural world). Like a crack addict who depletes his livelihood, monetary income, and health, he destroys his world by his tightening focus on his prize. We too are running low on our abundance of natural resources through an obsessive motion that has brought us at the point where they are becoming or have already become extinguishable. "By the end of this century if we do not abate forces to a large degree we might lose 1/2 of the plants and animals on the planet", according to Edward O. Wilson. Even without direct human forces, our aid in climate change alone would reduce 1/4 of that number in only half the time.
So, we find another evil that we reward through our point and merit system of money. A scary proposition indeed, but we already see the truth of these statements. The once booming market of fishing is currently experiencing an over harvesting of species which has adversely affected their populations making some such as fish no longer commercially viable. I get at this point that it is a part of who we've been, but there is nothing to say that we have to continue to be this drainer and soul sucker of the world. Our OCD as a society and world can be channeled into more productive means. We need to let nature be nature and not interfere. Our extraction from it and domination upon it should be as unnoticeable as possible. We can not expect to keep scratching one spot over and over and over and over again and not to cause a deep wound like the one from which we are currently hemorrhaging. I am unaware of what the plans to heal these areas shall be, or if there are any, but what ever the case the scars from our attacks will be seen. So this mass that mends changes from what it once was to what it now is. Leaving the fabric of our world with a weakening of the whole through a hole.