For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers.
As a race of people we have been given tremendous gifts, and we squandered them. We just squandered them. Our ability to think abstractly should have led us to better places. For decade upon decade, century upon century, we should have done better. Instead, we are ruled by shallow, superstitious, anti-spiritual religious beliefs and the pursuit of goods, profit, territory, and power. That’s what American culture has turned into. We began this country with beautiful ideals and noble purposes.
We were given abundant natural resources, and we have squandered nearly all of it. Prosperity led to greed, possessiveness, and wanting to own things for its own sake. It was and continues to be a tremendous waste of our collective potential as a species.