why+is+nature+one+of+the+biggest+sources+of+destruction
Answers
Destruction is an entirely human notion, the way people look at the limited durability of the built world, applying the same perspective to the natural world.
We could use faux philosophy to say that with every destruction there is construction, but in so doing, still be trapped in our own teleological perspective.
In nature, things change. Something that lasted a long while succumbs on some time scale to forces that a structure or arrangement cannot withstand, and in the process something else is formed on some time scale. Usually there are various countervailing or complementary changes in play.
The built world resists this interplay of forces from molecular to planetary range, “fixing” a problem caused by variability in nature and thus creating an alternate problem we didn’t see coming because we weren’t looking far ahead. A river course is straightened by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Consequently, the channelized river flows faster and causes bigger floods downstream of the “reclaimed” area. Wetlands and fisheries are lost. The river unconstrained carries silt from its watershed to the delta instead of settling out the silt in its flood plain. The build up of the delta results in greater coastal flooding. The straightened channels have a design lifecycle of less than a century, replacing a system of adaptations that developed over millennia. Every once in awhile a flood exceeding design specifications rages over the levees and is blamed on nature, when the natural system of river flood plains would have sopped up the flood as a replenishment of groundwater.
Nature is “one of the biggest sources of destruction” because we picked this fight and we suffer from it. Short term gain for a few is the Modus Operandi of modern culture, while long term consequences to the many aren’t acknowledged until decades have transpired. In taking an adversarial stance against the physical and biological world we are beating ourselves up.