APOCALYPSE YESTERDAY
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Why won’t we do anything about the climate crisis?
We are looking at the end of all our dreams, destinies, and aspirations. All our art, architecture, statues, paintings, writings, musics. The end of our families, our grandchildren, our friends, and neighbors.
How many years will it take for humans to be erased after a climate disaster wipes us out?
Geologists would say 1 million years. Maybe a little longer. But even 10 million years is a snap of the fingers in geological time.
10 million years should see all remnants of human occupation turned to dust, crushed far below the surface of the planet.
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
We live with this every day of course, a vulnerable planet hurtling unprotected through the universe at 22,000 mph. But it’s what we are doing to ourselves that is most disturbing.
Our wilingness to gamble with our water, our air. It’s almost like we’re begging for our world to be a Mad Max movie. It can drive you crazy when you look around and realize that to a large number of humans, that looks like fun.
No taxes!
No work!
Just boys in the woods killing things. Of course, no woods either.
Think about it. How many zombie stories have we told? Is it possible a savage zombie-like world where survival of the fittest is a daily challenge is in fact a human aspiration? Why wouldn’t it be? We certainly box-office-boffo everything from Walking Dead to Armageddon.
A nice, tidy civilization is boring. It’s also the exception. Most of what you’d expect in our daily discourse has only been in play since the 18th century. None of it is business as usual as far as human behavior is concerned.
Take the current state of play in American politics. MAGA is the human norm, not the liberal ideals of rule of law. Most of human history has been tribal and bloody. We yearn for those good old days of plague and plunder. Looking at our stories it’s pretty clear.
There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t. —…
