The GAIAn Future

With all my being, I believe and I assert that the Earth (this “third rock from the Sun”), that organic life, that complex mammals, that sentient / intelligent creatures, and that the human species, that all these have a long and glorious future ahead of them. I believe and assert that the human species and its children will explore and populate the planets and the satellites in our own Solar System, and that they will explore and populate hundreds and thousands of planets and satellites in our Milky Way galaxy. And I believe, in order for this open-ended future to be realizable, that we will prove victorious in this our most serious battle, the battle for the future of Life on Earth, that we are up to the Environmental crisis, that we are going to turn away from our downward slope to inevitable extinction before it is too late. I do not believe these things because I am optimistic for the future, or because I believe that the future will take care of itself, or that we are already doing what is needed. No, I believe these things because I must, because despair or numbness of mind and heart is the only other possible belief, and because, as in all things, it takes only a few dedicated men to change the flow of history, and somebody and his friends will before long take a look at our suicidal course and declare ENOUGH! and will confront the careless and fatal actions of our species and by force of his will put an end to them. Not perhaps one man, but fewer than a dozen will save the planet from its otherwise inevitable fate.

There are people today who do not see the danger. Either they are pre-literate, pre-occupied with their own harsh realities of life, or they are in denial. Some people’s denial is venal (how else explain the motives of any Senior Executive at a cigarette manufacturing company; he profits from the sales of instruments of slow-death; how else explain the motives of a scientist in the employ of Exxon, his family will live a better life (for a time) while he emphasizes the facts that prove we are not killing ourselves by pumping fossil-fuel exhaust into the atmosphere), others’ denial is impotent (how else explain the motives of loggers, if they can’t cut down this tree today, their very job is threatened, and they have not been trained to imagine another way to pay their way in life). Rest assured, those who imagine the planet is not in serious trouble are part of the problem.

I have come to believe that it is unlikely that the human species will save itself. This USA, the strongest and most democratically governed country on Earth, is certainly not showing the will to make the necessary choices; nor is it even publicly talking about the issue as if there was an issue.

created on 05/11/2000