"I agree it’s a great country. And why shouldn’t Marty be allowed to build his dream, even if it wipes out several ecosystems?"
What's an ecosystem? It's the basic unit of nature.
Wikipedia says [repetitively?]:
An ecosystem consists of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving, physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water, and sunlight.[1] It is all the organisms in a given area, along with the nonliving (abiotic) factors with which they interact; a biological community and its physical environment.[1] The entire array of organisms inhabiting a particular ecosystem is called a community.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem
We need better education, so people like Marty can recognize the main (headline level) findings of science.
They could thereby:
(a) be able to understand simple statements about the weather such as probabilities of rain.
(b) Recognize that light is related to electricity and other forms of radiation.
(c) understand the development of species in a basic way [that it has to do with evolution through competition].
"c" is the most important of the three. and apparently the most difficult.
Going outside wouldn't hurt either. Some attribute the obesity epidemic to the fact that kids don't play outside[!]. Richard Louv, in his 2008 book, Last Child in the Woods, calls it "Nature deficit disorder," and blames it for everything from rising rates of allergies to diabetes and heart disease.
The noti9n of ecosystem services is another thing every grownup should grasp. Healthy ecosystems give us food like fish and grains plus entertainment or recreation.
Degraded ones give us less.
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