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Planet Earth is 4,600 million years old. If we condense this inconceivable
time-span into an understandable concept, we can liken Earth to a person of 46 years of age. Nothing is known about the first
7 years of this person's life ... only at the age of 42 did the Earth begin to flower. Dinosaurs and the great reptiles did
not appear until one year ago when the planet was 45. Mammals arrived 8 months ago and in the middle of last week man-like
apes evolved into ape-like men and at the weekend, the last ice age enveloped the Earth.
Modern man has been around for four hours. During the last hour man
took to agriculture. The Industrial Revolution began a minute ago. During those sixty seconds of biological time, Modern Man
has made a rubbish tip of paradise. He has multiplied his numbers to plague proportions, caused the extinction of thousands
of species, ransacked the planet for fuels and now stands like a brutish infant, gloating over his meteoric ascendancy, on
the brink of a war to end all wars and without regard for this oasis of life in the solar system.
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