Heal the Earth

I don’t believe anyone living can deny that most world citizens in June enjoyed the clearest air ever inhaled in day-to-day life.

As a boy in the early 1900s, my father could climb a high ridge above Pasadena, California, and actually see coastal waters. From the flat lands of India, one can gaze upon the snow-capped Himalaya for the first time in several decades. The toxic, constantly churning clouds of 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 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 some great U.S. 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 constitutes the “new normal” bobs up over the horizon, we humans will fall back into a toxic world and the other very real nightmares in front of us. Human population and climate issues will require at least as much fortitude, discipline, and sacrifice as we currently employ to combat this coronavirus.

Who is doing the essential hardball thinking? Who is laying the groundwork for the future instead of buttressing what amounts to a bankrupt status quo that cannot be sustained?