Blog 5: Better Environment, Worse Economy?

            Last Tuesday, I went to a lecture that was held at the Lied Center. Marlo Lewis Jr. and Gilbert Metcalf were arguing with the popular question: better environment? Worse economy. Dr. Metcalt thought economy ruin the environment of Earth and he gave the pictures of Beijing- the Chinese capital city which was surrounding by a lot of haze. He wanted to show to us that only promoting economy will cause a lot of serious situations so that humans cannot have a good environment to live, humans must stop some harmful activities of developing economy and save Earth. Dr. Lewis did not agree with Dr. Metcalt’s idea and he showed some evidences too. He showed to us the research reports about the process of the environment changing of Earth. There were many so many same and even worse situations before, but Earth never been destroyed by these disasters. This evidence could show to us that it is not necessary for humans to concern how bad the environment becomes when we are developing economy or technology.

            In my opinion, I supported Dr.Lewis’ idea because his evidences caused me agree with him. Humans’ activities have not too many influences for Earth. Time and nature are very powerful to change everything including humans’ activities. We are only a small kind of species in the world. Human beings is just a little part of Earth. Earth is also a small part of Solar System. There are more than trillions of same and bigger systems in the Galaxy. And for this universe, galaxy is also insignificant. Actually we need to control some things to make sure the environment become well, but we do not need to worry about saving Earth. Earth does not need our saves. For protecting environment, it is just because we want to have a better environment to save ourselves. My opinion is that we can make the environment better unless our economy and technology have been good enough to support us to live. There are not really conflicts between environment and economy, they are symbiosis. Better environment makes economy developing faster, better economy and technology can offer better ways to solve environment issues and make the environment become better easily.