You don’t need to be an Albert Einstein. You don’t need to be a Nobel Prize winner in Science. You don’t need to be a physicist, a biologist, a zoologist, or a climatologist to know that something is wrong. Nature, Mother Earth, is convulsing and choking on our waste—industrial waste, chemicals and gases, non-degradable plastics, spent nuclear rods, heat exhaust, CO2, etcetera.
We are presently teetering on a world population of seven (7) billion. That means that in my own lifetime earth’s population increased from around 2.5 billion to a whopping 7 billion. That’s a big increase in fifty odd years. Wouldn’t you agree? A global population of more than 9 billion is expected by 2050.
Exactly how many people can the earth actually sustain? Remember, all 7 to 9 billion people will need and want, fresh clean air, pure clean water, and enough food to satisfy hunger if not our indulgent appetites, not to mention a means to rid themselves of human waste, garbage, and sewage. How much will the Earth take? Growth is not limitless. Earth’s life-sustaining capacity is not endlessly expansive.
Clean water resources are receding. Rich agricultural land is diminishing. The rain forest is shrinking. The Glaciers are melting at a phenomenal rate. Huge sections of precious Coral Reefs are dying. Waterless desert land is expanding. Our air is polluted. Private water wells are drying up and/or are no longer trustworthy sources of clean drinking water. These global trends are simple matter-of-fact realities that no longer need “official declaration,” or “administrative validation,” or “legal proof” or “government confirmation.” It’s 21st century global reality. It’s happening right before our very eyes. And we’re in denial.
Yet we continue to dig, drill, and “frack,” drain, flush, and empty, and otherwise exploit our land in sundry ways, giving little or no thought to the long-term consequences. And we foolishly polarize the argument into artificially “all or nothing” positions: “tree huggers” versus “job creation and sound business investment.” Yet these concerns are more than a mere question of present day economic business needs. It is a question of earth’s life-sustainability.
We’ve treated the earth as if it were a mere commodity, an object for exploitation rather than as an extension of our own life source. Mother Earth is not simply a financial commodity. Earth is a holistic living organism that provides us with the basic necessities of life, and No! I’m not becoming “Animistic” or subscribing to some “New Age Spiritualism.” Nevertheless, we need to handle Earth with much more respect and care than we have in the past and stop using it as if it were nothing more than a thing to buy, use, and dispose of when done.
The modern day business mentality and its approach to the use of earth’s resources has a huge disconnect between earth as a life-providing and life-sustaining organism and earth as an object of exploitation for the material stuff that it’s made of—water, oil, gold, diamonds, coal, natural gas, and so-forth. The effect of this disassociating approach, this disconnect between earth as thing/object/stuff versus earth as an organism/subject/life, is killing it.
It is a mindset problem, a mentality, the way we view reality and our business in this world. The business model mindset—earth is a commodity—buy sell, exploit use and dispose, is not working. It is effectively choking life off this planet. For too long we have acted as if we are earth’s superiors, independent masters in control of earth rather than dependent subjects whose wellbeing is directly connected to earth’s wellbeing. We need a new model, a new earth-friendly model that recognizes our dependency upon earth’s life’s cycles and nature’s balance of things. The business model has been too reckless and negligent, too myopic and short-sighted, too utilitarian and exploitative, and completely blind to earth as a life-giving, life sustaining organism.
This is why, for example, many Americans who are generally good thinking, trusting, and well balanced patriotic U.S. citizens DO worry about the fracking that is going on in the Marcellus Shale. We have our doubts. We are not buying into the “don’t worry, we’ve got everything under control, just trust us” response to our questions about its effect upon our water wells and our rivers and streams, and why we continue to demand for more accountability and ask for better regulation over the oil companies that are doing the fracking.
The earth has its vital signs just as any other living organism. And what earth’s vital signs are telling us is not good. It’s in poor health and it’s not getting any better. To refuse to recognize this is to be in denial.
For example, take the idea of “global warming.” Not to accept Global Warming as a reality is to believe that the whole concept is nothing more than a conspiracy. It’s as if one day, a few choice people woke up with this great idea to scam the world. “I know,” says one culprit, “Let’s tell people that the world is getting a temperature. We’ll call it Global Warming. Meanwhile, we’ll set up businesses all over the world that will claim to fight the effects of this so-called Global Warming. And, since we created the idea in the first place, we will have major economic control over the investments in these companies and so we can kick back and rake in the money when everyone is frightened enough to invest in our little lie that the earth has a temperature.”
So, Global Warming is really a big scam, a hoax, just another scheme to take our money. Is that what they—those who oppose accepting Global Warming as reality—want us to believe? Give me a break. And go hug a tree, it just might make you feel better.
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