Everybody’s moving to the city. And for good reason. Life in the city is way better than grinding it out in a small town or on a farm. Or in the woods. Think about it. You can go to the movies, get groceries, get stuck in traffic. Whatever! The tradeoff is that living in cities gives us cancer. We accepted the risk. But now we’ve learned that city animals are also getting screwed over.
Light, chemical and noise pollution, food high in sugars, and viruses have all been found to increase the chances of humans getting cancer.
Now researchers suggest the same factors could be raising the risk of cancers in wild animals living in cities such as birds, squirrels, rats, mice and hedgehogs.
This is bad, obviously. It would be nice if we thought about something other than ourselves, for once in our lives. Maybe this news will cause us to rethink some of the dumb things we do. Like pollute, make noise, eat sugar, use chemicals, and spread viruses.
Or we might decide to deny it!
But what we should also worry about is what happens when the animals get hold of this study. Like many wild species we’ve studied, they will be coming for us! And most of us will die.
We should also ask ourselves to what extent we too are animals. Because what this would imply for the state of our health and wellness would be bad.
Some people think it’s ok if the animals kill us all.
Some people think it’s ok if the animals kill us all. They aren’t right, but they think it anyway. They call it environmentalism. It’s very short sighted. The important thing to remember, in spite of all these people with illogical beliefs, is that we can’t give up. We don’t have that many years before the Earth gets swallowed up by the exploding sun. That will be the end of life as we know it, and not only for us. For all life forms.
We have to find a way to get off. For everyone’s sake. No matter how ugly it gets in the meantime, we must press on with our #1 mission.
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