Acceptance and Adaptation

Human activities of the last 10,000 years have made irreversible changes to the landscape of the Earth, to the waters, the air, and the biodiversity of life.  This much is not up for debate; marshes have been drained, forests leveled, species driven to extinction, the oceans and air treated as our personal dump, and there will be no going back.  The damage has been done, and with time, more crimes against the larger organism Earth, will be committed.  Perhaps it is in our very nature as a self interested species with no population control mechanism, to expand and consume until we have toxified our environment to the point where it is no longer habitable; much like so many yeast choke on there own alcohol waste and sink to the bottom of a beer vat.

I would like to think we are smart enough to see that coming, but maybe not.  The forces of economic growth and profits drive us ever closer to a bleak future with a shortage of arable land, fickle growing seasons, and erratic weather patterns.  This will not be the world we knew, but it is the world we must deal with.

All is not lost; there is hope yet!  The time for change is now.  Actually, the time for change was many generations ago, but this is where we are, and this is where we must start.  No matter what we do, we can not turn the clock back and undo what is already done.  All we can and must do, is adapt to a new world where the mistakes of the past are better understood and our priorities are aligned towards creating a stable, productive planet.  Humanity spent the last 10,000 years or more geoengineering the planet with only the immediate benefits in mind.  If we could engineer the place into a shithole, devoid of life (which I’m sure we are capable of),  then it is undoubtable that we could create an oasis of a planet where humanity plays a crucial role of caretaker, and protector of the third rock from the sun.

-M.C. Pletcher