The last month or so has shown us far too much about human nature. We have seen countless examples of people putting power or profit first, often with disasterous consiquences.
In fact, thinking back, I can only come up with a scarse few articles that don't relate to this theme.
Like the research that found that "shapeshifting" coral attols are keeping ahead of sea level rises (which unfortunately seems (to me at least) to be destined to become more fodder for the 'scientists got one little thing wrong therefore the whole thing's a sham' bragade).
Of course, I have to mention the oil spill. New documents have emerged to show that BP know about problems with their rig as far back as June last year. It also became clear that the agency that was supposed to be regulating the industry also know about the faults but allowed BP to opperate anyway.
And then there's Sarah Palin. According to her the Gulf oil spill is all the fault of environmentalists and there would have been no environmental disaster if we were drilling in wildlife reserves instead. Nice logic.... I wish I could make her watch Joe Berlinger's Crude so she can see the potential for environmental damage from 'safe' onshore drilling.
And then there's the stories about humans who think it's cool to keep an endangered animal as a pet, even though they can't look after them properly and they should really be in a breeding programme somewhere. Last week eight endangered monkeys were stolen from a zoo in Sydney. Seven have since been recovered but there are fears that the last (baby) monkey will die without his family.
And let's not forget the four underweight tigers rescued from a tattoo parlour (of all places) in the US. Exotic pets are unfortunately still far too common.
Of course, it's not just exotic animals that get treated badly for money - there was a reasonably local (for me) story about a car that was pulled over by the cops and found to contain four humans and fourteen sheep. That's a lot of sheep for a car......
And then there's the cows. I'm not even going to link that one, the video in the article is too disturbing, but I will say that these cows were beaten with various objects, kicked in the face when they were too injured to stand up, and some even had their tails twisted until the bones snapped. Human nature at its darkest.
And because that's possibly too sickening a note to leave you on, I'll end with the onion's article about eco-friendly cigarettes: stopping global warming at the source.
