At Earth Day’s End
The Earth will survive. It’s we who will not.
I, like many of you, have warned and pleaded for years that we are killing our planet. How arrogant of me, of all of us, to think we could pull such a thing off! Oooh, look at us — sooo powerful, so all-knowing and invincible, we humans — WE think WE can kill a planet!
No, my friends. Long before we kill Earth, Earth will kill us.
It’s already underway.
This massive living organism of iron, nickel, magnesium, silicon, nitrogen and oxygen has one purpose — to LIVE — and it has identified its greatest threat, its sworn enemy — us. And in order to survive, with superpowers that we can only dream of having, it has reared its head and begun its extinction of the one species that, if allowed to continue, will turn Earth into one big dead rock — but only on its surface. The 4,000 interior miles below us will keep cranking away with its magnetic field and orbiting powers. Eventually it’ll find a way to create something new to amuse itself and which doesn’t need six inches of topsoil, Teflon and a lithium battery.
But fear not, that’s a long ways off. Nature made sure from the beginning, since we crawled our slimy selves out of the ocean, that our brains would evolve very slowly to ensure we would never get to fully orchestrate the Earth’s end. Nature knew we’d be too stupid to stop our destructive ways, too gluttonous to control our mad desires for MORE, MORE, MORE — our insatiable lust to TAKE what isn’t ours and to CONSUME that which we do not need. So because it made sure we evolved to have the use of only 10% of our brains, we are thus too stupid to see the writing on the wall. We are too dumb to know that an electric car will not be our redemption, that technology and “more stuff” will not save us. We are wired to be ignorant enough to fall for it when corporations say they’ve “gone green” when they have done no such thing. Most of us still can’t figure out that the only green that matters to the rich is the color of the money they have socked away. Our own idiocy has made us fall for the dictums of the Bloombergs and Bransons and Gores (God bless you, Al) and the false prophecies of the self-appointed environmental leaders who, through their collaborations with Wall Street, the Pentagon and Corporate America, have convinced us to buy MORE of their “green” things in order to “save the planet” — which has only sped up our oncoming elimination. We all fell for it, and we all know it’s only gotten worse. Our environmental collapse has been shepherded not just by the fossil fuel and auto companies, Big Agriculture, and our “public” utilities, we’ve also been led to our doom by the perhaps well-meaning, but ultimately suicidal thinking of Democrats, wealthy “environmentalists”, and green funds, green groups and everything else that has slapped a “green” mask over what it is that they are really doing just so they can make more money.
Of course, Mother Nature could have made the rest of us smarter, faster, so that we would recognize the false prophets and the scammers (yes, I too had the bejesus scared out of me when I saw that match struck under the running faucet and the water exploded in fire!) — and if we had the brains to know better we would not participate in bringing about our own demise. But alas the Earth didn’t really trust us. So Nature encased trillions of deadly bacteria in our bodies, gave us white blood cells and an immune system to fight them off — but why not forgo putting the bacteria in us in the first place? Because Nature needed a choke leash on us idiots who could kill her. She needed a poison pill that she could release, should we get out of hand.
We got out of hand.
And so, bit by bit, Mother is slowly giving us the poison drip. It started with polluted air and water. We quickly tried to address that. Then came 421ppm of carbon in our atmosphere. Then the glaciers began melting. Then our weather went insane, never to return to normal. All were warnings we witnessed but chose to ignore and follow the wrong leadership who had the wrong ideas in addressing the deluge.
So Mother Nature upped the ante. And along came the coronavirus. We don’t want to admit it or believe she would do this to us, but let me say out loud what most don’t want to tell you because they don’t think you can handle the truth:
These viruses are here to stay. In some ways they’ve always been with us. But we wouldn't stop savaging the Earth. And so now Earth is going to protect itself and teach us a lesson. Because Nature won’t let us use the other 90% of our brains, she’s shutting us down like the astronaut did in “2001: A Space Odyssey” to the ship’s computer brain known as the Hal 9000. Bit by bit, because we let our arrogance and false sense of superiority run our lives, we were brought to our knees and humbled by the rising oceans and the million Covid dead. Greed ruled. People couldn’t afford a home. And eventually not enough of us were left to fight on Mother Nature’s Side.
The rest, very slowly, sang…
(Note: There is, as always in the movies, a way out. It would require each and every one of us to be brave, get busy, and take no prisoners. The profit motive would have to be severely restricted, all wealth would have to be distributed fairly so that no one suffers, and we would learn to live and be joyful with less. We would finally create a government organized as a true democracy which would own and run our transportation and energy systems and slow down the use of fossil fuels needed for everything from toothbrushes to eyeglasses to the growing of our food. No windmill can build a train. No solar panel can produce a shoe. How do we replace the fossil fuels for the products we use/need in our daily lives? There are smart people who know how to do this! We must love our largest neighbors, the oceans. Current “environmental leaders” need to be thanked, given a Timex watch as they retire, and then get the eff out of the way because things are worse not better thanks to their ineffective ideas and actions and being funded by billionaires. We need a million Gretas to rise up and run things. This can happen. You didn’t think people would ever stop smoking in bars! Change can happen right now if you so will it! WILL IT! DO IT! YOU DON’T NEED AN iPHONE 17!)
Afternoon Mike ……Items were once made to last …..be serviceable and repairable ……food scraps were fed to the swine …..Grandmothers used a shopping cart and canvas bag to purchase grocery’s from street markets vendors …….Trolley cars were built to last ….no rubber tires to be replaced ….non polluting …..electric motors ….no gas or diesel fuel ……Walt Disney showcased the Monorail ….futuristic …..fast …efficient ….takes up little real estate ……Safe……yet 60 years after their introduction …..We only have Walt Disneys two very efficient ….Monorails
Dear Michael, what I know is that the Universe moves on - self-correcting and always on time. So you are right - the Earth, our Mother will survive us. Might we look to the Indigenous peoples' Wisdom who always knew our connection to the Earth - honored it, lived within it. I believe it is their time and destiny.