A Few Thoughts .. On the future of the planet

Welcome to 2023. Here in the U.S. of A., it so far looks a lot like 2022. Or 2019, for that matter. We’re still stuck in neutral, suffering a lot of noisy engine revving and exhaust fumes from Congress, and getting absolutely nowhere. We‘re held captive by a minority because the majority doesn’t have the guts to stand up to them.

In other places — Ukraine, for instance — the suffering is more real than ours. While we whine about gas prices — mysteriously falling — Ukrainian kindergarten teachers and their boyfriends are toting rifles, tossing grenades and dying in defense of their country. While many in this country have plenty to eat and resources to pay for gasoline burned ripping around on motorized rec equipment or idling in line at espresso stores, millions of children are hungry in Asia, Africa and Appalachia. Again, a minority is bullying their neighbors — or ignoring them — on selfish grounds while a majority suffers and argues about what to do about it.

We still haven’t figured out or agreed upon how to save the planet from ourselves, but soon — on the scale of geologic time, if not sooner — we will need to turn our attention to saving ourselves from the planet. Earth will only take so much crap before it begins to administer a series of beatings, and it doesn’t care if we survive them or not. The beatings may have already commenced. A small sample: drought in Europe kept ski resorts closed this season, unusually strong storms raged along the Pacific coast this month and wind “events” have been more regularly wreaking havoc on trees and power lines locally.

Worldwide, megafauna and ecosystems we might fantasize about seeing in person one day are assaulted by climate change and human greed. As long as someone thinks it’s fine to shoot a rhino for its horn, kill every predator that isn’t us or reduce a patch of forest to smithereens — and pave it — for a new series of storage units in which to keep the stuff we don’t have room for in our over-stuffed garages, things are only going to get worse. Every time we clear-cut a patch of forest, we get closer to suffocating from lack of oxygen. Boy, are we smart!

We might be the genius species, but we are just as susceptible to human foolishness as are the creatures and plants we are hounding to extinction and we are no more valuable to the planet.

That’s all kind of glum, isn’t it? Yep. Glum, but true.

Dang. Paying attention to all this might interfere with binge-watching soap opera dramas on NetFlix or keeping up with that incredibly important fantasy whatever team. Prioritization doesn’t seem to be one of our culture’s main strengths.

I’m being kind of a judgmental jerk myself this fine January morning, sitting in my electrically-heated home office tapping away on my Apple keyboard attached to my MacBook Air with the 23-inch LED monitor glowing in front of me while I list out the most obvious problems we face. There are many more, but I don’t have room to outline them all, or the knowledge necessary to write intelligently about them. I’ve always been a generalist, and I can only speak to what I see on the larger surface of our planetary culture. It’s the same culture that allows me to do what I’m doing, allows me blessings I am grateful for and blessings that I do my best — and sometimes fail — to use wisely, which may be all any of us can do.

It could be as simple as that. Maybe if we just start turning off the lights and turning down the heat when we leave home, things will begin to get better. Maybe if we actually get out of the car and walk into the coffee shop; maybe if all who can afford it would donate a bit each month to feed the poor in their own neighborhood, and a little bit more to some group that works to make the planet safer for all humans; maybe if we spend a little less time watching drivel on television and spend it instead helping a kid learn something important; maybe if we quit throwing away tons of food every day; maybe if we start electing people who give a damn about something more than promoting their own self-aggrandizing agendas while selling it as patriotism; maybe if we start paying attention to little things we can each do to help save ourselves from an angry Earth, maybe we can actually do so.

In a culture as rich as ours, maybe we have the resources to save ourselves if we each regularly do a bit for someone else, something else, some cause other than our own “wants.” Maybe.

Time will tell, but it won’t wait. The future is now.

Sandy Compton evidently has a soft heart. His books — most of which have happy endings — are available at select bookstores, at bluecreekpress.com and on Amazon.