Hey, I never said screw the environment OR treat it like crap. Go back to my last set of posts, I clearly stated that I was pro environmentalism. I shall thank you to pay closer attention. And my hippy comment was no less rude that the comment she made to me before, so I consider myself MORE than in the right on that one.
And yes, we are metabolically closer to herbivore than carnivore, but we are structurally closer to carnivores. That happens because we set ourselves up to be such efficient killers that we didn't need the herbivorous physical traits, but we never lost the usefulness of consuming plants. But, in our hunter-gatherer pasts, a diet purely of plantlife would kill us as surely as a diet of meat alone.
We didn't become predators to hunt, we became predators because it's the best way to fend off other predators. We're not great hunters, but we are the best killers this world has ever known. Does anyone need me to prove THAT statement?
And, Aeris, please don't mock my religious beliefs. I worship a Goddess, I worship the world and the life she gave rise to. But it states pretty clearly that we, humans, are the greatest of her works- built with the flesh of an animal, so as to understand the creatures we were granted dominion over. With minds capable of learning and choice, not to mention the knowlege that we exist. And spirits that were granted the power to create beauty. We, of all life on this world, are the ONLY ones with those gifts.
And that, my dear, makes us the superior beings. We have the power, and the privilege, of shaping the world to our whims. It comes with the clear responsibility not to ruin creation in the process- something that, admittedly, our species seems to be having trouble grasping. If we can find a way to provide all the things that allow us to continue our reign and our comfort in that station, without harming any living being- I'd be the FIRST to back it. But we can't do that, and despite the cost to individual animals that we exploit, the benefits to the species (ours AND theirs) far outweigh the harm we cause.
