The social fight to address our climate crisis has a catchy bumper sticker phrase that has long annoyed me for no respectable reason; “there is no planet B”
Words have always carried power and if you can use the right words, in the right situation, with the right audience, you can probably get the world to bow before you within minutes. Often, however, we don’t have the right words or we can’t get into the right situation or the right audience says ‘this elevator is only for senators’ and our voice is silenced. Sometimes people with the right words can’t share them with enough people, and that is an old problem of many human cultures.
Our species has been disrupting the climate for generations with toxic fumes from burning coal for electricity or however spray cans are damaging to the ozone layer. The fact that our young people are skipping high school for protests, when generations before this was done by college-age people, suggests our species has reached a tipping point especially considering the “meanwhile.”
Such as; meanwhile, abortion is steadily becoming illegal around the country, racism is still a problem, religion is becoming a bigger problem, it seems the US government doesn’t know how to respond to drastically increasing unemployment numbers, and apparently Putin has lost his Russian mind. Lots of love and protection spells to Ukraine, I truly wish we could send more.
Our species is at a powerful threshold because of the crisis state we’re in globally; with ocean temperatures rising, ice shelves melting and a huge portion of the human population more concerned with daily survival or law-making. So many of the things we’ve been prioritizing as a species are only distractions that prevent us from addressing real problems.
Many of us have heard at least one person say “the planet will take care of itself” in response to points made about the damage we’ve caused for generations, and are still causing with what often seems like no intent on change. This planet has been around for a very long time and even though some people don’t like to admit it, or won’t accept it [or however that works] it doesn’t belong to us. Life here on Earth can sometimes feel like a proving ground or training court—or, to be brutally honest, whatever you perceive to be ‘the point’ of reality on the physical plane.
The basic value of what so many of us are saying is simple: yes, it's unlikely our species will kill this planet and Earth will take care of herself. She's begun doing that and therefore the more pressing question is, "can we survive Earth recovering from the damage we caused?" Which is probably why 'there is no planet B' rubs me the wrong way, it makes me wonder how many people seriously think humanity will kill this planet that has existed so much longer than we have.
Part 2 of Humanity
