There is something truly remarkable about the world around us, the beauty and greatness that holds every link of life in its balance. Still I often wonder why I care so much, in the end does it really matter? If we all die then who will care that everything was destroyed. These questions lurked in my mind, as I lay on a rock overlooking a mountain valley of Colorado. The view was breath taking and overlooked the landscape of the classic west. For 70 hours I wondered this landscape without food and only a little water. I was able to watch the sun rise and on the horizon and set behind the mountains. There was no concept of time and no hint of humans influences, the world around me was wild. For the 60 hours that I lived alone with myself and nature I began truly understand how powerful it is. I was not the only important living being on those rocky cliffs, in fact nothing would have change if I had died out there, but the elk, lizards, mountain lions and plants all had a purpose. They all were an important part of the world, living in the mountains just trying to live. I sent the whole time I was in the wilderness awake, unable to sleep, and all I could think about was, how could it not matter that the world was being destroyed, it is not fair for us as people who How is it fair to destroy the landscape for our own good?

Looking more like Mordor than planet earth - Canadian tar sands mines larger than Greater Manchester dominate the landscape next to the Athabasca River, with no proven way to reclaim the boreal forest.
© Rezac / WWF-UK

I was laying for three days at the front line of today’s political debate, oil. The Colorado Rocky Mountains holds in its rocks over 2 Trillion barrels of oil, the largest untapped oil supply in the world. Many want to destroy the landscape so that we can fuel our self’s for another decade. The scraping of shale and mining of tar is high destructive. The mining of tar in Canada is beginning to be considered the most destructive project currently going on in the world. The resources needed to continue this mining will cause a great deal of stress on the environment as well as on factors of climate change. Oil will run out and either we can destroy the planet in the process or we can find new ways to care for our planet.

It sickened me to think of the destruction that people were ready to inflicted on the environment.