How Do We Live On a Dying Planet?
Yes, I’m aware that I’m going to die. We all will, if only when the sun eventually expands to embrace this dead rock billions of years from now. So let me rephrase…..
How do we continue to live on a dying planet? Or if not how, why?
Soon, or at least within the lifetime of nearly everyone reading this, we’ll almost certainly be measuring the cumulative number of deaths on Earth from climate change, directly or indirectly, in the countless millions. While people freezing to death in the tropics or being eating by sharks during yachting jaunts in the arctic are apparently the only outcomes so obvious as to persuade the most ignorant (or obtuse) to the reality of “global warming”, those dying from resulting conflicts and wars, issues of migration and hate-fueled mob violence, homelessness and abject poverty due to rising sea level, weather disasters, deforestation and their resulting mudslides and insect and wildlife collapses, increasing infant mortality, drought, starvation, wildfires, economic collapse, flooding (including compromised dams and super-dams, levees and riverbanks), disease, compromised nuclear plant meltdowns, shortened life expectancy, crop failure and lack of basic medical care will become as much everyday occurrences as Trump’s lies are now. Is survival alone reason enough to continue living amidst such hopelessness and suffering?
Today perhaps we can still attempt to laugh at the thought of the fabulously wealthy Walmart “kids”, spending the remainder of eternity in an underground bunker in Arkansas, forever testing the bounds of paranoia and trust in questioning who is actually in control in their photosynthesis-free world of echoing metal walls. But what’s the thrill of being the last human if you can only shout your domination to dark, empty tunnels? Examined more carefully, if survival alone becomes our only reason for another day, how different will our own scenarios really be from their dream of success, as underground generator fuel supplies run low and memories of sunshine fade?
How do we accept (and we soon must try) that so much we take for granted will end? How to accept the fact that even after our own deaths are memories at best, much (or eventually, all) that man has accomplished will all too soon follow us into meaninglessness? That humanity’s art, literature, music, science and technology, even if it exists won’t have the same meaning in a world of daily struggle, surrounded by death and suffering. Shall we simply forget that man once had imagination and genius and the resources to express them? Or we had time to devote to thinking and sharing “great thoughts”? Or that we have endeavored to understand our and our planet’s evolution, growth and changes through studying our past (and to significant success?) Might even that loss of wisdom and insight contain less pain than the visible destruction of museum after museum and countless libraries as cities fall to the ravages of floods, fires, looting and theoretical Cat 7 storms, and as great architecture is razed for firewood and building materials for temporary shelters (as perhaps most shelters will be soon), and as books and documents are relegated to toilet paper.
Yes, of course man knew what was happening. Even the most ignorant among us can understand that humanity has accelerated the natural process of breaking down fossil fuels by a factor of perhaps millions, accelerating a process that would require perhaps hundreds of millions of years in nature into just over a single century. And perhaps that explains why the recent UN announcements explaining the true severity of the issue that should have been the most significant, most terrifying news in the history of humanity….caused not a blip on Wall Street. (Fed candidate Stephen Moore claims to believe “capitalism is more important than democracy”, and financial markets apparently agree, seemingly going so far as to presume that capitalism is more important that humanity itself.) Yes, it’s pretty clear that those whose greed is most responsible for the end of humanity will still be grabbing for cash on Earth’s last day. But that’s their job, as humanity’s second most worshiped gods. (Should that level of insanely illogical greed be any surprise? The Koch Brothers have paid for hundreds of position papers to dishonestly debunk the solvency of social security, presumably to be given justification to stop paying the portion of the employee payroll tax contribution they have responsibility for as employers. If their earnings of $15,000,000/day, each are simply not adequate, why should the end of all human life interfere with their little game?)
But is there evidence of greater concern on Main Street? After all, following the UN announcements there was almost no reaction on any level from humanity at large, despite just been told by experts that their world was facing almost certain destruction, and soon. Countless people either do not know or do not care that their world is has already begun its next, and last recordable (by man, that is) extinction level event. (Of course, for billions those UN announcements don’t describe anything new, except perhaps in magnitude. And as far as more locally, even among those with the ultimate in information access, if preparation is even taking place, it’s minimal. The gentleman responsible for the local public “Recycle” Center says at least 90% of the rural southern residents simply continue to discard all trash together. Though gun ownership soared while Obama was president, the likely end of structured society barely generates a notice, as several gun companies are now facing bankruptcy in some form. Bizarrely, Americans are seemingly more afraid of a black president offering affordable health care than they are the brutal end of humanity. Apparently, the motto of the far right is now, “Choose your fantasies carefully.”)
How will the rest of us face such certain uncertainty? For every one of us who ups the fight, recycling as holy quest or preaching the gospel of carbon footprints to anyone remaining stationary long enough, there will be those who just can’t continue the heartbreak of fighting a lost battle and would rather just endure what little may be left to them, unhindered by effort or conscience. I admit my immediate reaction has been to sit on the couch, my growing new found and largely experimental apathy manifesting around me, a bottle in hand and another in the other. But that does less than I expected to adequately block the anger, and that’s likely the biggest issue for many of us. Anger hurts, despite the orgasmic joy it seems to provide for the haters and racists that care so little for humanity, apparently even for themselves and their kin. But for me, anger keeps me from sleep, keeps me from joy, makes my head and body hurt, and damages what little family connection I still have. Anger at the greed, anger at the laziness, anger at the social media that has become the opiate of the modern masses, anger at Trump and Bolsonaro and Putin and others, with their unending illusory strategies of destruction as growth, and I’m especially angry at the level of ignorance that seems to be the new golden calf, yet wisely envelopes and conceals anything that might otherwise draw attention to how foolish and destructive it truly and obviously is.
In closing, as a thought exercise to explain just how quickly our so-called norms can be driven from their comfortable places in our minds and hearts, I’d like to remind any readers that there were once two specific questions fairly commonly asked, but no longer, and certainly never again:
“Does it really matter who is president? Surely no one person matters, do they?”
“Could someone like Hitler possibly take power in a democracy like America?”
I’d like to add a third:
“Of course there’s a price to be paid for technology, But aren’t the advantages far greater than any possible cost?”
Thank you, and good luck to one and all.
