How stupid are we? North
America was covered in gigantic roaming herds of buffalo eating
grass and fertilizing the plains. In the winter, they grew more
fur and used their snouts to dig for the frozen hay. It was
a perfect system. All the people had to do was take the meat when
they got hungry. They didn’t have to do anything to
maintain the abundance because the buffalo and grass had
co-evolved and were in a perfect balance. Now we’ve
replaced the buffalo with cattle from other continents that get
sick all the time and have to be fed antibiotics, which we end up
eating second hand. We keep the cattle fenced in, preventing them
from wandering to where the grass is growing and forcing them to
tromp over and excrete on the same ground until it turns to
smelly mud and dust that can’t support life. We grow grass
separately and put fences around it to prevent animals from
eating it. We have to plow the soil every year to keep it loose
enough for the grass to grow in, since the hooves that used to do
that are locked out. Then we spend time and energy harvesting the
grass and transporting it to the cattle where we've trapped
them. Then we spend more time and energy collecting the
fertilizer and carting it back to the fenced-in grass. How stupid
are we?