My Thoughts Editorial - Why Worry?

This editorial does not necessarily reflect the view of any of its advertisers or even author.

It seems to be of concern that the environment of our planet is going down the tube. We seem to blame ourselves for the devastation in the rain forests, depletion of the ozone layer, and warming the earth with the so-called "Green­house Effect." It is my opinion that we blame ourselves for everything in this day and age. It is our fault that our kids are not getting a good education. It is our fault that we al­lowed Hanson and the Spice Girls into the music business. It is our fault that we are losing faith in humankind.

It is also in my opinion that we need to stop blaming ourselves for the environment. Do we as a human race think we are in control of what becomes extinct, what gets obliter­ated, what becomes toxic, and what becomes nice weather? Fact: many Midwestern states experienced a warm winter this year. In fact St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Omaha, Nebraska, did not experience a real snowfall until right before Christmas. This is not usual. Usually there is snow on the ground and kids are having snowball fights, building snow forts, and sledding by mid-November in these regions. We blame ourselves for the "Greenhouse Ef­fect" that allowed this to happen. The supposed "la Nina" was to make this a very harsh winter, but did our "Green­house Effect" pacify her? The weather was very pleasant I might add: 50-degree days in December? Why not?

Fact: the world went through an ice age millions of years back. After the Ice Age, the world got warmer and the ice melted. It is my uneducated belief that the world is still getting warmer with or without the human race.

Fact: the Do Do Bird is extinct. Fact: the dinosaurs are extinct. Contrary to popular belief, the dinosaurs went ex­tinct even before the first human appeared. Thus species have been going extinct since the dawn of creation; it is called nature. The fittest will survive. It seems that we deem it wrong for a species to go extinct at the hands of humans. If, however, a tree species goes extinct because of a tree­ killing bug, there is no problem. The same would be true if a certain animal killed the entire giraffe population. We could, however, kill the animal that was killing the giraffes, but the animal rights people would have a fit.

The animal rights people do not seem to have a fit over a cheetah killing a zebra for food, but if a human would kill a zebra, watch out! If it is wrong to eat meat these days and we are to eat these weird "organic" stuff that modern technol­ogy provides us, what were we supposed to do thousands of years ago? Even hundreds? Were our forefathers sav­ages? What about before they had synthetic fibers and had to make coats and hats from animal skin? Were they sav­ages?

Fact: Nebraska, along with many other states in the United States, was located under water millions of years ago; now it isn't. Fact: the Amazon used to have trees. Now it doesn't.

Couldn't the environment just be changing around us with little or no help from us? Why blame ourselves?

It is also my opinion that society today has become a blameless society. People run around with no responsibility whatsoever for their actions. We have people piercing all different parts of their bodies, places that I won't mention because this is a clean publication, and doing what ever feels right. They change the English language to include: dude, explicative words, and over-use of the world "like." Like is not an article, people! Like is used for affection, de­scription, and metaphors! There may be "el bane'," "el nino," and "el buso," in other languages, but there is not "like take a bath," "like he's a boy," "like take a bus," in the English language.

Words are also taking on new meaning. "He" no longer means "he/she," but "he/she" means "he/she." (He, until recently, could include females.) There is no mankind but humankind. No kid would want to be called a gay (happy) child. (Though society says, "Not that there's anything wrong with that!")

Is the English language, like the environment, making its change? We no longer have the passenger pigeon or the Ice Age on Earth, nor do we have the same English language that they had in AD. 1000 (Any story about a modern kid go­ing back to King Arthur's court in preposterous. Unless the kid knew Latin, French, and English, there would be no chance of verbal communication. Old and Modern English are not really the same language.) Maybe Future English will be a different language than Modern English. Maybe time goes on and things change with or without us.