W.J. Astore
The other day, I was watching a typical truck commercial on TV. It showed trucks literally tearing up the backroads, along with ATVs spinning and jumping and chewing up the countryside, all synonymous with “adventure” and “freedom.”
I remember those old Coors commercials featuring Mark Harmon. They were set in Colorado (I think) and featured him quietly extolling the virtues of barley and clean water. Now most Coors commercials are about self-indulgent partying (but please drink responsibly).
My point? We need a change in mindset — one that values nature and its preservation. We’re doomed if we keep selling the idea “you can have it all,” so go party and tear up nature — who cares as long as you’re having fun?
We act as if we have many planet earths, but we have only one. And we’re slowly and surely making our planet less habitable for humans.
Our planet is already having its revenge. As Tom Engelhardt wrote about in a recent article about “Emperor Weather,”
Of course, his [Emperor Weather’s] air power — his bombers, jets, and drones — would be superstorms; his invading armies would be mega-droughts and mega-floods; and his navy, with the total or partial melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, would be the rising seas of the planet, which would rob humanity of its coastlines and many of its great cities. His forces would occupy not just one or two countries in the Greater Middle East or elsewhere, but the entire planet, lock, stock, and barrel.
Emperor Weather’s imperial realms would be global on an awe-inspiring scale and the assaults of his forces would fragment the present planet in ways that could make much of it, in human terms, look like Syria. Moreover, given how long it takes greenhouse gases to leave the atmosphere, his global rule would be guaranteed to last an inhumanly long period of time unchallenged.
Heat (think burning Australia today, only far worse) would be the coin of the realm. While humanity will undoubtedly survive in some fashion, whether human civilization as we now know it can similarly survive on a planet that is no longer the welcoming home that it has been these last thousands of years we have no way of knowing.”
Wars will doubtless follow in the wake of disruptions by Emperor Weather, which will only make matters worse for humanity. Think of all those weapons that run on fossil fuels — ships, planes, and tanks. All those weapons that pollute the earth while consuming valuable resources that could be used for alternative energies (solar panels, for example).
It’s time to beat our weapons into wind turbine blades, and to make war no more, either on ourselves or on nature.
Bracing Views 
Follow my blog. Latest post on Earth and distances between the sun etc. I love this post.
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I will attempt a very few “pithy” comments: 1.) Not only is GM’s The Hummer a revolting device re: the environment, it was a revolting appeal to jingoism, being modeled on the military vehicles deployed in Gulf War One. So naturally it sold ridiculously well, given its steep price tag!; 2.) who says a “civilization” epitomized by the preceding phenomenon DESERVES to survive???; 3.) the time to beat weapons into wind turbine blades was 60 years ago, when scientists first started to realize the future impact of the greenhouse effect. But of course, Science doesn’t rule the human world, energy corporations do. If you own shoreline real estate, folks, for god’s sake find a sucker to whom to sell it soon!!!
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I agree with you, WJA. But.
Based on forthcoming climate change outcomes from present CO2 and MH4 atmospheric levels, and their impact on future release of currently sequestered MH4 (estimated at anywhere from 17 to as great as ~ 75 times the atmospheric heat trapping capacity as carbon molecules), my thinking is massive civilizational disruption due to climate change, within decades not centuries, is already a done deal.
The 0.001% will maybe make it through and beyond experiencing only major discomfort at worst, but the rest of us are on the cusp of an existential elimination event which can only be surpassed by nuclear war or collision with a large scale stellar object.
The latter is not a foreseeable near term threat. The former, of course, is perpetually imminent. And the likelihood of its occurrence will be significantly increased by looming natural resource instability well in excess of the current rate.
Life on this planet is about to begin to ever-increasingly suck (for almost everyone now and for centuries) to an extent impossible to accurately imagine.
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R. Buckminster Fuller wrote in “Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth” (a disappointing book for me, overall): “Whenever someone proposes a truly radical solution to our problems a chorus of voices will arise to shout ‘But it costs too much!'” [That was a rough paraphrase, from memory.] And with this miserable excuse, our “leaders” have brought us to the brink of losing what was truly priceless: an environment conducive to living healthily, a virtual Paradise (if you overlook little matters like communicable diseases) compared to the other planets in the local system. What more terrible price to pay for hubris of a species is imaginable?
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‘But it costs too much!” But we’ll spend enormous sums each year on new jet fighters, nuclear submarines, and other exotic weaponry.
Show me your budget — and I’ll tell you what you value.
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Reblogged this on The Secular Jurist.
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There are people seriously preparing to colonize Mars, but it’s not gonna happen.
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Okay, P.J., you’ve forced me to raise this subject (which I almost mentioned in my earlier comments) and risk being seen as a Conspiracy Theorist: Remember the “BioDome Experiment”? This was an attempt to set up a “closed mini-ecosphere” in the desert somewhere (New Mexico?), growing green plants to generate oxygen (and food, of course), recycling human waste to recover potable water, etc. The project came under severe criticism from some scientists, who felt confident the physical facility wasn’t genuinely “closed.” But I raise this because, as I understood the situation at the time, the principal sponsors of the effort were the billionaire Bass brothers. So, do some elements within “the .001%” think they can escape the environmental crisis rapidly snowballing by relocating to Mars (or some other exo-planet)? I think it’s entirely plausible that this idea is gestating in their minds. Of course, the plan is to leave the rest of us wretched creatures behind. Far behind. Actually, this subject was addressed in an interesting 1950s sci-fi movie, “When Worlds Collide.” An approaching rogue planet was the catalyst in the plot to inspire the desire to vacate our home world. But the characters struggle with the ethical issues of who will get to ride the new Noah’s Ark to (hoped-for) survival. I recommend checking this one out.
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We need to launch Bruce Dern with a “Silent Running” ark into space.
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Reblogged this on Bracing Views and commented:
News out of Trump-land today is that the president is signing an executive order to rollback environmental protections passed by President Obama. All the Republicans can seemingly agree on is to attack Obama’s actions; as a friend said to me, “They’re a bunch of spiteful mofos.”
We only have one Planet Earth, and we seem determined to ruin it, once again in the name of profit and jobs and “growth.” On a planet with shrinking resources, why is “growth” such a wonderful thing?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-executive-order-will-dismantle-obama-environmental-regulations/
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