The time I was stuck on the 405 and thought about the future

Los Angeles is a city of extremes. Even after being here for half a year, there are times when I'm still blown away by its duplicity-- the rich hiding away in their mansions, and everyone else below them, struggling to either get there or at least just survive; the striking natural beauty of the mountains and the ocean, brushing up against the cold cement industrialization.

I was stuck in traffic on the 405, on my way to a school in the Valley, when I decided to take a moment and look around out my window. These mountains that look like perfect cardboard cut-outs, stuck to the horizon and looming over the foothills of lush green, all juxtaposed against the immense, sprawling concrete of this place-- they all serve as a constant and beautiful reminder that humans are just a blip on the radar. Someday our structures will all be underwater, or underground. And who knows where we'll be.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine a few days ago about this idea people have of "saving the earth". The truth is-- and I know this sounds odd coming from an environmental activist like myself-- I actually don't think the earth needs saving.

This is what concerns me most about the group I like to call the Leave it Alone Skeptic. They're the ones who almost sound like environmentalists--  They know something's up, they may even admit that humans are causing it. But any action we take as a population is too risky and ultimately pointless because the earth can heal itself.

It seems like we somewhat agree. The primary difference is that I believe that while the earth will continue to adapt, new species will evolve and all the old patterns and species will fade away, and I don't view humans to be above this at all. When I tell students that over the next century we're predicting 20-50% of species to be headed toward extinction, I'm not excluding humans from that statistic. As much as we want to convince ourselves that we are the master manipulators of science, biology and even evolution, the fact remains that we are still animals, dependent on the earth's conditions to remain constant.