Hallowe'en, a celebration of the dead, was over a month ago. Christmas is coming, a celebration of the aspirational best of what it means to be alive.
Sandwiched between those special days, yesterday, November 30, was Lost Species Day. Why didn't I know that? I also didn't know that the third Friday in May is Endangered Species Day.
It seems like people, dead or alive, are more important than bugs and birds, whales and walrus, or forests and fungi. Yes, our human-centrism is natural. We don't survive without caring for ourselves. But there are no humans without the more-than-human world to which we belong. Maybe we shouldn't mess it up.
My previous note has been opened 23 times so far. I suspect my friends were curious, noticed that I was obsessing about ecological disaster as usual, and moved on because disaster is depressing and you had more interesting things to do.
We have a choice. We can do the more challenging things: confront the trouble we are in, as unpleasant as that may be, and join an emerging culture of active hope by living with respect and restraint in a beautiful, broken world. We are more than merely human. We belong to the Earth.
In case you missed it, in my opinion, the following essay is worth the effort:
Homo Sapiens: Inherently Unsustainable: William E Rees, Nov 24, 2025
Scary!Yet most humans continue to think that we are invincible and will triumph in the end and come out victorious!When will we wake up and have the will to change? Dorothy
ReplyDeleteThe change is already underway and accelerating. Such changes may take generations. For example, my first computer was 1985, 40 years ago, about two generations. The BlackBerry cell phone was introduced in 2002. In 20 years, texting has replaced letter writing. We can expect the energy transition to take 20 to 40 years. But there is a problem. While we are transitioning, CO2 emission continues and things won't get better. Expect maybe 20 to 40 years of things getting worse. Meanwhile, we risk triggering tipping points and it all collapses. We should pick up the pace of a green transition.
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