Me

I am a human being (Homo sapien sapien). Several hundred thousand years ago, my ancestors began cooking their food (Homo erectus), which left them with an abundance of calories. These extra calories went into brain growth. Today, as we humans are the only species who stand descendant of the ones who used fire to prepare food, I am the smartest animal on the planet Earth. My species has done wonderful things with this large and highly capable brain: philosophy, art, religion, culture, arithmetic, agriculture, music, medicine- we've even found a way to leave our planet. But with these great accomplishments we've seemed to relinquish an obvious responsibility: to account for our actions and their effects on secondary parties of Earthly inhabitants. Today, we are polluting our air, melting our ice caps, using deadly chemicals to produce, store, and transport our food, and littering our  refuse on a global scale, threatening thousands of Earth's fragile ecosystems. We have adopted a way of using our large brains to think in a linear fashion, like a race. We are running these races with very heavy shoes.