Deadbeat Species

I don’t believe many living today can deny that most world citizens currently enjoy the clearest air inhaled in day-to-day life, post industrialization.

As a boy in the early 1900s, my father could climb a high ridge above Pasadena, California, and actually see coastal waters. From the sweltering flatlands of India, one can gaze upon the snow-capped Himalaya for the first time in several decades. The toxic, constantly churning clouds of heavy pollution essentially anchored over metro-industrial centers have nearly disappeared and both flora and fauna have returned to contested terrain.

The situation proves Mother Earth can and will heal herself if given the chance. The problem is this: The most arrogant, filthiest, gratuitously violent, deadbeat species on the planet can barely even muster the intention to pursue and secure the integrity of what two great world citizens have referred to as “Spaceship Earth.”

Human beings are the core problem. You think we are in rough water now? Just wait! As the virus ebbs and flows and a return to what will constitute the “new normal” bobs up over the horizon, we humans will most likely fall back into the toxic world and the other very real nightmares in front of us. Population and climate issues will require at least as much fortitude, discipline and sacrifice as we currently employ to combat this coronavirus.

Who among us is laying the groundwork for the future instead of buttressing, yet again, what amounts to a bankrupt status quo that cannot be sustained?