It's becoming increasingly apparent that we as humans are on a whole different level than the rest of the natural world when it comes to progress.

Consider something like DNA, which for 3.7 billion years has been made of the same building blocks in every organism on the planet. Or consider sharks, which like most of today's species, have been around for at least 100 million years. She may work a little slowly, but Mother Nature knows a good thing when she sees it.

Now consider the modern human being, which evolved a relatively short 200,000 years ago. Most people would be surprised to know just how recently we developed many of the things we take for granted. We didn't invent agriculture until 12,000 years ago, writing sometime in the last 6,000 years and electricity less than 200 years ago. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old; human beings and all their achievements should mean absolutely nothing on a geologic time scale.

At the same time, as the first species on earth with the ability to reason and make inferences about our world, our gains in knowledge and understanding are accelerating as well. We've walked around on the moon, decoded the human genome and invented the Internet, all within the past 50 years. How often does anyone stop and marvel at how incredible all this is?

Unfortunately, with breakneck progress comes the potential for trouble too. Consider climate change, which, in the span of 50 years has gone from a fringe concern to one of the biggest threats facing the planet. The average person barely had time to digest the issue before scientists were predicting the Artic would be free of ice by 2050.

Or consider a loss of biodiversity; scientists said this week that it will take a miracle for tigers to survive in India. Another recent report says the number of mountain gorillas is the lowest it's ever been. In short, species are going extinct at unprecedented levels.

We as humans are currently modifying our environment so fast we can't be sure of what the results will be.

In "A Brief History of Nearly Everything," biologist Stephan Jay Gould is quoted as saying, "One of the hardest ideas for humans to accept is that we are not the culmination of anything. There is nothing inevitable about us being here, it is part of our vanity as humans that we tend to think of evolution as a process that in effect was programmed to produce us."

I'd extend this to say that there's nothing inevitable about our continued existence either. Sure, there are a lot of unknowns regarding our interaction with the environment. For instance, we could very easily be dealing with a false alarm in regard to climate change. But, keeping in mind who we are and where we have come from, how much are we willing to risk to conduct business as usual?

It's helpful to keep all this in mind when discussing these issues. It keeps things in perspective when someone like President Bush gets up and says — as he did this week –that the United States is committed to solving global climate change, but in doing so we shouldn't do anything to hurt our economy. Isn't it possible we might be mixing up our priorities here? Put me down in favor of strong economic growth, but we should be sure the benefits outweigh the true costs of our actions on the environment and our planet.

Now, more than any time in history, we as a species have the intelligence and the ability to take a long hard look at what we've come from and where we may go.

Admittedly, there is uncertainty about climate change. With conditions on Earth changing so rapidly in such a short amount of time, how could there not be?

The days when we were able to plead ignorance on these issues are over. Only by keeping in mind how far we've come will we ever figure out the best way to move forward.

Nathan Braun ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics