The On-Off Switch

 I wrote a while back about someone throwing on the Climate Change Switch. It seemed as though we no longer got “normal” weather events. Instead, if it turned “warm”, the temperatures hit 95-100 instead of 80 – 85. If it “rained” the heavens opened up and we would get torrential downpours.  And now, we were so fortunate, with Ian barely passing us by, but leaving our area still pretty ok. But think Florida.

And yet, I observe still no concerted plan of action to combat Global Climate Change. It’s as though we know the Nazi’s are coming to invade us by boat, but we’re sitting around drinking our morning coffee, saying, “Oh they won’t be here for quite a long while. We have plenty of time. Have another cup of java.”

Are we really so captured by the fossil fuel rich owners that we have lost all sight of tomorrow? I understood, when the threat was 50-75 years away, that we would put off any immediate plans. But now, we seem not to understand that, not only are we destroying the futures of our grandchildren, but we may actually be destroying our own futures.

I am really old—87 and counting. I have already outlived all of my close relatives—grands, parents, siblings, aunts and uncles. Yeah, yeah, I’m that old. And each day, I look forward to all the little things that our lives offer us.  We sit by our pond with a nice, homemade cappuccino, and we toss some food out to our little Koi family swimming around our pond, Harriet, Nick and Nora. As they nibble away, I think, some day, not too far away, I won’t be here to toss those food pellets. And I won’t see that sun rise each morning, as I take its picture and thank the lovely morning for reappearing.

But I think also, that the sun will still arise each morning. And if the koi kids are lucky enough, someone new will sit on our bench and continue to toss out some food for them.  But then I begin thinking anew about what that changing climate will do to the entire area.  Will this area become too warm for humans to live here?  Or will the storms continue to intensify to the point that the area becomes unsafe?  And could I have a conversation with anyone important enough to actually do something to head off the worst of the possible forecasts? And might they actually take action that might preserve our environment?

And then I thought about that recent NASA program, in which they fired off a missile and caused it to collide with some vague asteroid wandering about up above us. But that was simply a test, wasn’t it?  But suppose there was an actual asteroid up there that was beaming towards us. But it might not strike us for a year. Would we do something to head it off? Well, Yes, we likely would. And why? Well, because the action we would have to take would not require us to change our attitude towards any money-producing entities. See, that’s the clue. If taking action to head off an approaching asteroid might require us to stop producing coal, or to cease production of gas-powered vehicles, then we would likely just open another bottle of nice wine and pretend that the disaster likely will not happen for such a long time, that we need not actually do anything.

See, it’s money that controls everything. Well, money and organized religion.  But in this case, money is the damaging entity.  And when I think about that, I begin to understand that humans are a deeply flawed species.  If there were actually a God up there somewhere, humans would be her biggest mistake. Although humans are full capable of acting to preserve the world around us, we are also so mentally flawed that we are as likely to avoid taking action as to actually do something intelligent. 

Think Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump, or Adolph Hitler. Think Mitch McConnell, or Amy Coney Barrett, or Ron DeSantis, all deeply flawed humans, fully capable of acting to destroy humankind.  And why are all these deeply flawed, and evil humans in positions that allow them to prevent intelligent preventive actions by less flawed humans? Well, mainly because the not-so-deeply-flawed humans actually asked them to take charge of our world, ignoring their potential for permanent harm. Yep, we put them there folks. And now, we are being forced to sit around like dinosaurs, awaiting that fateful asteroid called Climate Change to bang into our little planet.  We could throw them all aside in that thing called an election. But will we?? Who knows?  Even the Shadow likely doesn’t know. Stay tuned, those election thingies are almost upon us again. We will see how stupid the remaining humans are.