We Aren't Like the Stromatolites, or Are We?

The Earth as a whole is unthinking and just does what it does. If a lion killed a human who was evil people might say "he got what he deserved", but still the lion is just as much a part of the whole Earth as the volcano, and we don't blame the lion any more than the volcano. It is just doing what lions do.

Billions of years ago there was another organism that caused a world wide environmental catastrophe. It was the stromatolites. Before their appearance free oxygen in the atmosphere was almost nonexistent. Then along came the stromatolites releasing billions of tons of oxygen into the atmosphere and water, which was a deadly gas to most other organisms at the time. They too were just doing what they do and not giving any thought to it. 

Now humans have been burning and burning for 200,000 years. We humans were just doing what we do to try to stay alive. We never gave it any thought until recently.We humans didn't know any better. Because of that ignorance, I'm not going to blame our ancestors one little bit. I will blame the people who now do know better, but because of greed keep on doing it. We aren't like the stromatolites. We have a brain and intellect. We humans damn well better start using it too or we are going to be the victims of our own folly. 

We won't need volcano, earthquakes or lions to kill us. We'll do it ourselves because we aren't smart enough to keep from it. Just like the bacteria in a petri dish doomed to drown in their own waste. So what's it going to be?