| Odd phrase, "in the grand scheme of things". How statistically significant are each of us "in the grand scheme of things"? Not very. There will be no Hollywood biopic about my life, nor likely yours. If you believe in an eternal afterlife of joy in a heavenly garden, then even a billion years of life on a single planet is statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of things. (Or, like Secretary of the Interior Watt; if you believe the Rapture will come in our lifetime, then why have an environmental management policy at all?) If we are but a colony of some Galactic Confederacy, then again we are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. If the Sun should go nova tomorrow, and destroy all life on Earth, is that really statistically significant in the grand scheme of things? No. Yet despite all of that, I still think I'm significant enough that others - who are all just about as insignificant as I am - should still care about not littering, about keeping poisons out of my water, about keeping disease causing bacteria out of my food, about keeping CFCs from the ozone layer, and keeping the Earth's climate stable and in the current climate regime. But of course, how statistically significant is one more piece of trash in the grand scheme of things? Not very. So why not throw that trash out the window? In other words, I reject your qualifier "grand scheme of things" as meaningless, at least not without further clarification of which grand scheme you mean. Policy decisions must have a more concrete goal, with a more meaningful time span than the heat death of the Universe. |