OPEN SPACE

Join me on a walk to the edge of my neighborhood, where the open space is being sold out.

Crisis Response

A recent response I received to my post Civilization Crisis follows: 

Cheers to dire predictions! In the next 100 years, at least 10-billion people here on Earth will die (most of natural causes). Only 10,000 years ago, there was a sheet of ice 5,000 feet thick in St. Paul (yes, global warming has been around that long). From time to time, asteroids periodically strike the Earth. Some of these impacts dramatically change the dominant species and the course of life on Earth. Relative to the most dramatic changes over the last 100 million years, I suspect that our current problems are relatively small (except maybe for those who chose to ride out a hurricane in a house they built on sand dunes on the seashores of New York/New Jersey). Have a good weekend. I’m pretty sure we’ll be around to do our jobs next week.

And my response to the response:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.  It sounds like you are much more of an optimist than I am when it comes to the events playing out on the planet.  Although I agree with most of what you said, the one thing I take issue with is regarding your suspicion that “Relative to the most dramatic changes over the last 100 million years, I suspect that our current problems are relatively small (except maybe for those who chose to ride out a hurricane in a house they built on sand dunes on the seashores of New York/New Jersey).”

It’s easy to ignore the wake up calls when they are happening on other folk’s front doors, but it might be time for us to realize we all share the same planet and none of us live in isolation.  We also need accept the reality that we live on a finite planet, and that our outdated unscientific economic system (which operates on foolish assumption that the planet provides unlimited resources and a bottomless sink to dump the wastes that result from our productions) has some serious consequences (in the short term relative scale) on the life’s of the humans, animals, and plants we currently share the planet with.  

So I suppose one option is to shrug it all off as another example of “nature happens”, and “I feel fine” so let’s not worry about this latest symptom of our foolish lifestyle.  But for me I am at point in my life where I don’t feel too good about myself when I take that attitude and I am getting tired of sitting back and watching the foolishness play out.  So I am starting to ask myself (and others), is this the best we can do?  I think we can do better, and I think it is time for us to start taking responsibility for our actions.  And that is why I take hurricanes, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events that are happening today as a good sign that it is time for us to wake up and find a better way to treat the planet, our fellow human beings, and the rest of the life that suffers because of our way of life.      

So yes, we and our jobs probably will be around next week, and my plan is to keep thinking about how can we do them better, instead of just mindlessly doing them.  Thanks again for sharing your thoughts; it is good to know that someone is reading my ramblings, even if they don’t agree with them.  It also gives me a reason to refine my ramblings on a relative basis.  

Civilization Crisis

Came across a relevant film that does a great job summarizing the state of our planet and how we got into the mess we are in. As we wrap up a year dominated by floods, droughts, and hurricanes, it might be time for us to start paying attention to the messages contained in films like THE CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION, which can be viewed via the link here.

According to the website the 77 minute film “is a remix documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.” Until we admit the problem, we won’t find a solution, and instead will keep focusing on the symptoms and repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

If you get a chance to watch it, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.