Today another birthplace of civilization, Greece, one to which we white westerners are particularly attached, is in flames. Turkey is burning, along with many places all over the southern Mediterranean. In Northern Europe it is raining, the floods are near-Bibical. China, India, the great North American West - all predicted, all predictable. The heat and the water cycle intensify, by universal standards our window of survival conditions is very small. We are very vulnerable, we damp little monkeys with fire in our brains. So, for that matter, is the infinitely more complex web of life of which we are such a deadly part.
So, at this point in August 2021, is all this reversible? Of course, we don't know, and my guess is that some of the world I was born into in the middle of the last century is gone forever, but the big stuff, the apocalyptic scenario, may at this point be turned back. We may have no idea about the future health of world fungus, but we can do the math about CO2 and the water and the temperature fluctuations and the fires. I'm as much a limited grazer of scientific data as the next person, and my conclusions are not be taken too literally, but my guess is that we have about a decade to prevent the absolute worst happening. which means starting with draconian measures this year, not some comfortable distance after the Glasgow conference.
This leads me to the point of this piece of commentary. Many people including friends of mine think that the only salvation for us is to be converted into profoundly symbiotic nature-lovers, Buddhists possessed of inner peace, a new breed of humanity capable of long-term benign planning, including significant self-denial and self-sacrifice in the short run. I disappoint them, because I don't think that the majority of us are that kind of being, and we are not going to become it in the time available. Next year in Jerusalem, perhaps, but not tomorrow. I derive what hope I have from what we are capable of when shit-scared, when we brave death to save loved ones, when we find the strength to carry on when we are totally exhausted, when we do the right thing knowing we personally are not going to benefit, when we uphold a law we don't believe is right, when we are prepared to give a significant amount of our wealth to save others, when we are capable of acting against everything we believe is in our own interest. Loving more of humanity than the kin and tribe groups is highly desirable, but not essential, though I think that we live in a time when we have to be able to see where our ultimate self-interest lies. Loving the natural world may come later, but knowing that it is completely vital support for our human enterprise has to come now as it is dying. That is probably all we'll have as we face our dangers with inadequate institutions, boundless powers of invention but severely limited will to change. I 'm trying to challenge myself with this, and invite you too. I don't yet know what I should be doing next week.
