We have less than a millisecond left.
You see, the planet we call home has existed for roughly 4.55 billion years. But numbers that large mean almost nothing to me, nor to most people, so I choose to break it down. If we lay the age of the Earth out over a calendar year, that would amount to 518,264 years per hour or 144 years per second. So if we have 10 or 11 years until the point of no return, as climate scientists have repeatedly told us, that means we have a millisecond left before midnight in which to change our society completely to avoid turning the Earth into a piping hot fajita.
None of us should be thinking about anything other than climate change. We all kind of know it even if we think we don’t know it. Even people who deny climate change exists probably secretly know it. They’re just confusing what they want to be true with what they subconsciously know to be true. I did the same thing when I was a child and tennis legend Jimmy Connors lost in the semifinals of the 1991 U.S. Open after his monumental run at the ancient age of 39. (For an 11-year-old, 39 sounds pretty close to mummified.) I was certain Jimmy would be playing in the finals. I knew deep within my bones that Jimbo would dazzle us with diving volleys and mid-court passing shots in the championship match because how could the powers that be allow the only character America genuinely cared about to bow out before the finals? In my mind it was akin to killing off Iron Man halfway through the movie “Iron Man.”
Jimmy Connors did not show up to the finals. Climate change is the only thing we should be thinking about.
I don’t just mean there should be a report every couple hours about climate change by our bloviating bullhorns of mainstream news. I don’t mean once a day you should mention to a friend that Al Gore seems vaguely douchey but probably has a point. I mean climate change should be ALL we’re thinking about. It should be a major factor in every conversation, every job, every TV show, every humor column, every tweet, every clever T-shirt slogan and every fortune cookie message. Climate change should be everything.
Plastic action figures for kids should have one arm melted off to symbolize the effects of climate change. Your server at a nice restaurant should sprinkle sand in your soup du jour to remind you of the disappearance of fresh water. Ice cream should be exclusively served melted to symbolize rising temperatures. Hamburgers should cost $200 to compensate for the global emissions of factory farming. And every time you go ice skating someone should punch you in the face and yell, “Enjoy it while it lasts!”
We have less than a millisecond left.
Simply put, humans have no business going about our day-to-day actions as if we aren’t on the event horizon. It’s equivalent to working on your model train set while your kitchen is burning down, your spouse is in the bathroom battling an alligator that took up residence in the bathtub, and your 12-year-old daughter is in the living room having just been offered heroin for the first time. … Right now, humanity is still focused on the model train. …..
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The wilderness can give anyone who cares to experience it, a reason and understanding of why and how to begin questioning what we are, why we are, and where we fit into the real world.If we have never questioned what the real world is, living only in populated and overcrowded cities, how could we possibly understand? We drive to our jobs, spending more than the standard 8 hour work day in the “united” states, add the time getting ourselves ready, driving to and from the place, and then trying to relax enough to fall asleep and rest so that we can do it all over again the next day! When the week-end comes, if we “own” our homes in the american dream suburban hood, we must water the plants, trim the hedges,mow the lawn, and sweep the sidwalks clear of whatever trash we may have left! Take the kids to their soccer game,to the double arched poison center, maybe the latest movie, fight the crowds, hope for a place to park the SUV, and stand in line hoping for the admission ticket to the show. And dont forget to walk the dog, who,unlike so many humans, has long ago realized how much he hates his life in the confines of his lower existance.
Intimacy with the natural world is the only way to fall in love with life! Loving life is the only way that the real world will survive. This is a persective that is known by some ,but so many are blind to the mere idea of seeing through the window,let alone ever walking through the door into another world, the natural world of wilderness.
College degrees , letters of achievment, have always meant a better opportunity to achive a better way of life, so we were taught and told. All too often we accepted that approach as the best way, in fact the only way. What has it brought us? What have we learned?
Long ago,We learned how to mass together in large compounds, cities. We learned to allow others to hunt and forage for us, and then stop hunting and foraging all together, the birth of the agrarian age. We devised ways to mass produce food, meat, fish and poultry. Calling cows , beef, and pigs pork because we found it less offensive than saying, lets eat a pig or devour some cow! We left the chicken and fish alone to be called chicken and fish food because we considered them so much less a sentient ! We don’t even think about most of the foods we eat. Imagine the debutant wanting a ham and mushroom omelet being told by her waiter that todays breakfast special is, “Dead cured pig butt with fungus wrapped with unborn chickens”! Being well eduacated we learned social and cultural refinements and amased wealth enabling us to dine on these foods at the finest restaurants where more food is wasted in one day, than some poor countries see in a year!
We,ve learned how to explore outer space, but we choose to allow our inner space to go unexplored. Choosing instead to allow governments, corporations, religions, entertainment industries, and the news media it uses, tell how how we can best live our lives.
Few will admit that the way we chose to live is the way we have chosen to kill ourselves! Scientists who have studied the way our planet lives, have for a long time stated that we have only a few years before the collapse. Labeled doomsayers and radical mad scientists by some, overexagerating theoryists by others, indisputable facts however continue to prove what they have been saying is becoming a sad reality.* A report out of Austaralia recently predicted that the planet can not last the way things are going and we would see the total collapse by 2050, some ,like scientist Guy McPherson, have said 10 years from now, tops! Is this the end of life on the earth as we know it? The same scientists that have made the predictions have also said that the problem is now irreversable Many factors have contributed to our iminent destruction, but only humans are to blame. What then can we do now? How do we face each day and keep keeping on? We can choose to ignore the predictions and simply live our remaining days doing what we’ve always done, or? OR WHAT?
I suppose we can hug the trees and bury our hands deep into the forest floor begging our earth mother to forgive us. But what child who begs forgiveness is given comfort in a mothers arms while continueing to harm so many and threatening mother all the while? This writer finds the whole secnereo very depressing. Perhaps I can construct more positive themes with sentences that flowering words perfume, masking perhaps the fowl stench of todays world crisis. Very ignorent fools have been elected in governments that choose stupid blindness. Far removed from the masses, far removed from nature, and further removed fom life itself, these rulers have oversen the destruction of life for a long time, and soon now all we know will be gone.
Only the most profound radical approaach to a sustainable way of life might be possible to restrore earths existance. If by some miraculous chance we might be successful , who could live as our early ancestors lived? Hunting and gathering our foods? Taking only what we need? No burning of mined fossil fuels and generating electricity? Lets face a reality that is much too obvious, not many would choose to do this. And with this, the answer may be that a natural occuring episode of global proportion is the only hope we have! The question of what will survive the event must be cosidered as well. What animals will remain,what plants, what life will survive on land and sea?