“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity — then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.” –  David Suzuki

There isn’t a lot of time left to save our sphere. That’s a fact.

 

We need people in power who will realize this and act NOW to preserve, protect and defend our planet, because the window of opportunity to do so is closing so fast.  Even if we cold stop everything detrimental right NOW, our planet is still predicted to warm (due to human-caused pollution and land-clearing) by a couple of degrees, and we’ve already seen what is happening at the poles and in many, if not most, of our own backyards. Climate change is here and if this year is any indication, it’s only going to get worse every year until we start turning things around with all deliberate speed.

 

We need the political, corporate and public will/INTENTION to stop the destruction and desecration that is happening across the globe. It’s a tall order, because too many politicians and corporations are sociopathic: they will not stop themselves. They must be made to stop. They must be voted out or boycotted.

 

It’s everyone’s responsibility to do something, daily, to make sure the sociopaths lose their positions of power so benevolent individuals can begin to repair the damage undeterred by the ever-present and very powerful (people in high places) sociopaths among us.

 

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, the human in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.And therein we err and err greatly. For the animal shall not be measured by us. In a world older and more complete than ours they move, finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.   – Henry Beston, The Outermost House

The following is from my book

“LET NO DAY DAWN THAT THE ANIMALS CANNOT SHARE“

originally published in 1980

 

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

 

We are brothers, fallen from the same tree

Thrown upon a reality neither of us likes.

 

Your patch of forest daily shrinks

As our patches of earth grow.

You watch your cousin take what is yours

And somewhere beneath that brow you think you are doomed.

 

We have done it to our own species forever.

Why, then, consider a mere ape?

 

It is the Manifest Destiny theory at its worst:

And it comes from you, from all of nature,

To be what we are. 

It is the Territorial Imperative.

Only we have no boundaries—

No mountain we can’t climb,

No river we can’t cross,

No climate we can’t conquer.

 

But wait! If it is a natural phenomenon, Why did YOU stop when you had enough,

You and the others,

Regardless of how much was left,

While we go on and on and on and on

At the expense of everyone else?

 

For there is no one else to stop us—

We are children raised without responsibility,

Answering only to ourselves.

 

Perhaps that is what will do it.

Perhaps therein lie the seeds

Nature so wisely planted.

And when that day arrives, wise ape, I hope you are still here, you and the others, to take up

Just what you are, just what you were doing

When your naked brother appeared, pretending he could bend this unalterable earth to his will

Thinking it would stay that way, and be okay,

And be his forever.

 

If I were anything but a human being, I might applaud when that day arrives.

 

I’m sure you will.

 

The good news is that sociopaths will survive no longer than the rest of us.  If we allow them to destroy the planet, at least they won’t be here to celebrate their “win” over the rest of us.  I just hope most of the other creatures will.  They don’t deserve what is happening to their one and only lifeboat.

And neither do most of us.

WHAT ARE EACH OF US, INDIVIDUALLY,  GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Here’s your starter kit:

VOTE for ENVIRONMENTALIST REPRESENTATIVES

BOYCOTT COMPANIES THAT TREAT THEIR EMPLOYEES AND THE EARTH AS EXPENDABLE COLLATERAL DAMAGE

REDUCE/REUSE/RECYCLE WHAT YOU BUY AND USE

SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT WHAT (PRECISELY) YOU’RE DOING TO SIDESTEP GLOBAL EXTINCTION

 

There is no Planet B. This is the only lifeboat we have in this solar system.