ming practices. An estimated 108,000 acres a day and 39 million acres a year of rainforest are lost to slash and burn techniques (8). These infertile areas only produce for a few years until they are worthless. Sadly, rainforest ecosystems do not exhibit resilient capabilities and there is little chance they will ever recover. Obviously, the resilience and recovery of Prince William Sound cannot be used as example of the abilities of the entire planet. In his book, Limbaugh continues, "the earth is a remarkable creation and is capable of great rejuvenation. We can't destroy it. It can fix itself." This is a highly dangerous and outrageous conclusion to come to being he only cited the example of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It may be true that humans do not have the power to destroy the planet, yet we do have the ability to end our own existence on it. It seems as if Limbaugh believes the earth was created for the benefit of mankind. However, in actuality the planet existed for millions of years before humans set foot upon it. We need the earth to survive; yet the earth does not need us. Humans have right to use the earth's resources to their advantage because this is what every other organism on the planet seeks to do. The interesting thing about mankind is that we have the ability to limit our use to aid in survival in the future. Other species consume their available resources until their population is controlled by depletion of these resources. It seems as if this would be Limbaugh's approach to the use of resources. On the contrary, I believe we should use our knowledge of population dynamics to limit our use of resources before a reduction of resources results in our decline. If not, the same "natural processes" that aided in the recovery of Prince William Sound will play a large part in the widespread demise of our own species. ...
