Sooner Or Later It'll Collapse

"But all too many people--most people, I'm afraid--tend to think, 'Well, so what? Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. Since we're separate, it doesn't matter how many species we destroy--and since we're superior to them anyway, we're actually improving the world by eliminating them!'

"We're like people living in the penthouse of a tall brick building. Every day we need 200 bricks to maintain our walls, so we go downstairs, knock 200 bricks out of the walls below and bring them back upstairs for our own use. Every day. . . . Every day we go downstairs and knock 200 bricks out of the walls that are holding up the building we live in. Seventy thousand bricks a year, year after year after year.

"I hope it's evident that this is not a sustainable way to maintain a brick building. One day, sooner or later, it's going to collapse, and the penthouse is going to come down along with all the rest."-- Daniel Quinn out of The New Renaissance