Earth Day is my Birthday

Every year when my solar cycle is complete, I cannot help but think about the precarious position we are in, and by we I mean humanity, with all of our eggs in this one basket, as Frank Herbert often lamented.

Here we are, the lot of us, living together with no place to go. I think this is part of what drives us crazy.

The world is a big place, prudence demands that we be mindful of this. The world can sustain a lot of damage. We can mess it up, but we cannot do it lasting harm. The world itself will survive what our integrated micro-climates, individuated biomes and we ourselves cannot. Nevertheless, the highly specialized and extremely fragile ecosystems we depend on, must be cared for, well managed, kept healthy both for our sake, and for the sake of all future generations of humans who will need a healthy planet to lead healthy lives.  

We are in peril, it has never been more obvious, and it seems clear that the powers that be are intent on riding it out. They don’t want to change a thing, unless it is to make their own back yard more beautiful…for a time.

We are all charged with the care and stewardship of the world, individually and collectively, we are responsible for the choices we make and for how those effect our neighbors, even those neighbors of our who we will never meet.

We are all in this together.

This is a sacred obligation serving as an axiomatic principle of faith for billions of Jews, Christians and Muslims, as well as Buddhists, Taoists and Shinto, Jains, Sikhs and B’hai, Hindu’s, pantheists and animists…it is common sense.

Do not shit where you eat.

The world turns and we turn with it, all-together on the common-wheel, we are indebted to both the past and the future and carry responsibilities for and to each other, from the moment we are born to the day we die.

Care for the world is a categorical imperative: if we do not care for it, the world will shrug us off…or shrug just enough that a calamity will ensue that alters our future history forever, changing our cultures, our languages, even our DNA…all that was once human…gone and gone for good, and perhaps this would be just result, if we prove that we are unable to solve the conundrum before us...then perhaps we do not deserve to live here.

Know this…it has happened before; it will happen again, there are natural disasters pending:

There are super-volcanoes and there is continental drift. There are geological forces at work just below our feet that could easily destroy us all; they are built into the structure of the planet, layered into the thinness of the mantle, which when gliding over the heat emanating from the planet’s core, spells out a recipe for doom…if we allow it.

There are calamities heading our way from outer-space, celestial bodies sailing through the ether, comets and asteroids already on a collision course with Earth; if we are unable to work cooperatively to change their course, these certain-eventualities will collide and destroy us.

These existential threats are baked into the pie…it is only a matter of time before they bubble over and leave us with nothing but the scent of burning sugar.

Be mindful.

Such foreseeable events also represent opportunities for the advancement of science and the unification of human-purpose. Given enough time, it is possible that we could harness the power of the greatest volcanoes, turn their destructive energies to the benefit of humankind, that we could move the near Earth objects which threaten us and capture those cold stones for their mineral wealth.

We need time, but more than that we need a willingness to understand the challenges we face, along with the commitment of our leaders and ourselves that we act on that understanding and rise to rise to meet them.

We face other threats right now, immediate threats like viral pandemics, sociological threats like racism, the rise of autocracies, anti-democratic movements, anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism, anti-science ideologies that are completely of our own making. We face these threats while the powers that be effectively turn any discussion concerning reasonable action on climate into a wedge issue that exacerbates race and class divisions, that play out along the lines of political division that are easily exploited by demagogues and fundamentalists and auto-crats in opposition to democratic norms and constitutional government.

We are changing the climate. The planet is warming. Our oceans are becoming acidic. We are changing their salinity. We are filling our atmosphere with toxins. Glaciers are melting. Sea levels are rising. We are polluting our freshwater lakes, rivers, and streams. We are losing topsoil, our forests and our coral reefs.

This is happening as we watch, we must do more than bear witness to our failing stewardship.

We are divided against each other…by a species of greed that drives a short sighted political mindset, which seeks to and succeeds at turning people against their long-term interests.

It is as if we are governed by the insane.

Politicians and their wealthy patrons silence and undermine our scientists, casting doubt on any field of inquiry which might lead to a curtailment of their industrial enterprise or reduce their short-term profits. They treat the Earth and all of its resources (including human-beings) like a grab-bag of goodies, like children with sticks whacking at a piñata, gleefully harvesting the plunder, consuming it until it sickens them…it is madness.

The powerful treat the rest of humanity as a means to an end, we are not people to them, we are assets, we are expendable; if we are not profit centers then we are losses, we are a collection of digits, of ones and zeroes, we are objects to be weighed and measured in their crooked scales.

It is Earth Day 2024, all our eggs are in one basket; the basket is fragile and there is no other…today is April 22^nd and it is my birthday.