Another Earth Day has come and gone, and while some of us may have celebrated by participating in a recylcing drive, a carbon emission boycott, or a polar bear rescue excursion, the vast majority of us just sent a few virtual plants on facebook and called it good.
Here's a reflection for the day:
When you hug a tree,
it never hugs you back,
but when you kick a tree,
you're left with the bruise.
I for one am a great appreciator of the Earth in the way that I appreciate my family: it's the only one I've got. That doesn't mean (either one) isn't amazing, but it's not really the quality of the entity that earns it my respect/love/patience. Rather, it is (structurally), that encapsulating conceptual and physical space that literally circumscribes everything I know. I'll admit the comparison drops out eventually; some families are easier to escape than others, but with the continued development of space travel perhaps someday we can all be bratty teenagers and leave Earth in a huff too.
Until then, we're stuck with it, so we'd best make the most of our situation. To what degree the Earth needs our 'protection' I remain quite sceptical. Let me be clear: I don't generally question the 'science' of global warming - I do believe that in the past 250 years the exploitation of (non-renewable) fossil fuels has elevated mankind as a whole to a new level of existence known as geologic force, and correspondingly I allow that we now live in the anthroposcene era.
BUT, I also recogize that the mass exploitation of those carbon resources is not just a, but perhaps, the defining characteristic of our modern lives. I'm not even talking about modern comforts, the discoveries of plastics, techno-electric societies... go back further. If England hadn't been a small island (lacking the primary resource of food/fuel competition - land), and if that island hadn't happend to be sitting on top of a giant pile of accessible simple carbon (coal), then the 'industrial revolution' as we conceive of it may never have happened. Ever. Not 50 years later, not 100 years later. Progress would have happened, but it wouldn't have brought us to where we are today. Period.
So ok, fossil fuels - specifically the ability to extract radically more energy at a dramatically lower rate of land consumption - are the only reason we've become masters of our own fate. They may also lead us into self-extinction. You win some, you lose some.
But even now, big geologic force that we are, the Earth doesn't really need us to 'protect it' as if from some outside threat, but simply to stop killing it; or at least decrease the rate at which we are changing it. We can't 'kill' the Earth - it isn't 'alive.' It is a complicated system of many parts - geologic, meteorologic, hydrologic as well as the biologies of flora, fauna and pisces we more often discuss - most of which will change dramatically after the human species becomes extinct, but which would require even more dramatic changes than we can affect to bring about their annihilation. We can't kill this planet, we can only kill the ants muddling about on the surface.
Still, when a scientist says, with mixed wonder and fear, that the changes we're imparting on a global level have consequences beyond his/her ability to predict even within the current generation's lifetime (not to mention the several centuries/millenia in which we hope life continues on Earth), that should scare at least a small amount of food waste out of you rectum.
I'm no champion of doom and gloom, but let's look at this from a perspective about 100 times deeper than buying a canvas bag just in case you ever remember to use it again (btw - canvas requires cotton, which in the current agribusiness is no eco-friend).
Industrial revolution required an enormous amount of coal to get started, in fact most recent estimates suggest the huge pile of carbon energy that England started with, and depleted in just 100 years, is almost exactly the same as the most trusted estimates of Saudi oil reserves. It's not renewable. It will all get used up.
Since the (first) British cultural invasion of steam power and industry, the world has started moving much faster. More people industrialize, more carbon is needed, and more gasses flood the ozone layer. But how can one country, whose 'modernity' was only possible by grotesquely 'unenvironmental' methods criticize the use of those same methods by others? Especially when those others lack of 'modernity' is cited as the primary reason for their political and social subjugation to the 'modern' world? It's not a lollipop. We can't lick it first and thereby deny the prize to everyone else who has a fair chance to grab it.
Luckily, when weighty issues such as these set upon my shoulders, I'm reminded of just how small we humans are, and how fragile our toys can leave us. Asteroids, Earth quaks, Twisters, Tsunamis. There are a lot of phenonmenon, rare and common, incidental and catastrophic, that 'ole Mother Earth can pull out from time to time. These aren't punishments - there is no correlation to what we've done and what we reap - it's just irrational consequences. There may be a cycle of weather activity we call El Nino, but the complexity of factors involved in determining how many people it will kill with mudslides will likely remain beyond our grasp for eons.
Then there are the more down-to-Earth examples. The harrowing tale of countless heroes following the noble example of a canadian goose patriotically tacking down a US Airways flight, or a pod of whales flexing their Atlantic might against a Volvo-sponsored sailboat armada.
Do we still want to save the whales once they've realized that it's us or them?
It's hard to conceive of a world in which not only the international economic system, but even the chemisty and geology are entirely fluid concepts, but it's even harder to deny the reality - if you're willing to think about a topic rather than be told about it. So stop reading this, and do some reflection of your own. We know that our use of fossil fuels changes the world at a fundamental level. We know of nothing in human ability that can reverse these changes, and more to the point, we seem incapable of even slowing down the rate at which we employ the tactis that we know are making these changes increase, much less begin reducing the amount of change we impart.
Earth is not a static ecosphere, and as great as it is to 'think green' and 'do our part,' considering the ramifications of even the generally acknowledged 'facts' means confronting the serious likelihood of our self-extinction. While this was a harsh potential we had to face during the Cold War, then it at least relied on human agency - someone had to be willing to push the button. Was there anyone that crazy? Yes, there was. Good job humanity, we survived that one. What about this? What about when all x Billion people are contributing to global annihilation? No matter how many cans you recycle, bikes you ride, or dollars you give to charity, we are all contributing, and we will all be culpable. On the plus side, there won't be anyone left to sue us.
So happy Earth day.
That's sort of where I'm going with this.
Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot
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