If the danger of runaway pollution is as real as many of us believe, we must be as honest as possible with ourselves that we are in a fight to save the human species, not mother nature. Environmentalists need to stop saying things that simply aren’t true. The planet is not sick. Mother nature is not in any danger.

Our coal plants release massive amounts carbon into the air, our artificial pharmaceutical drugs are dumped into rivers, and our nuclear plants have leaked radiation into the ocean. Actions like these have killed many species and will continue to do so on a global scale.

But things go extinct. 99% of all species that ever existed are extinct. When big change happens on this planet, some species always die out, but others thrive. Some bacteria for example, will do pretty well in most any disaster situation including even nuclear war.

The point of all this is that we need to be clear that the threat from the disasters we are causing is not to mother nature but to humans. Life on our planet survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Humanity would not. The distinction has important ramifications for how we make arguments for pollution control and in turn for setting priorities in our environmental policy. Climate change is the most important threat to the survival of our species, not life on the planet.