You can understand if they, anyone under 30, want to toss us over. We have certainly handicapped their future.
You can understand why we might want to toss over some of us. We, collectively humankind, have blown it, in more ways than we care to enumerate.
Some of us began with concern and then warnings. Some of us heard the siren and began fumbling toward correction. Some of us nailed down the science and heightened the alarm. Some of us got more serious, more ardent, more engaged and it is precisely there, on this front line between knowledge and action where "we" became frayed and then undone. We became a DMZ between foresight and negligence, between us and them, though we are all players in the dirty deal.
The planet had science, and then big money bought some of it. When scientists told an oil company decades ago fossil fuels were killing the planet and that meant ocean levels were rising, they decided to raise the level of their drilling platforms and keep the dark secret as a gift for their descendants.
The UN Red Warning for Planet Earth confirms what we had been told, tells us it is worse than we knew, and it is an indictment for all of us. We are all guilty of this crime; those of us who worried about the science and tried to make changes, those of us who knew the science and kept on doing business as normal, those of us who "knew in our hearts" we were doing a slow motion dance with death but still relied on legal and political means to make change, and those of us who put wealth and profit above all else! The power was in the big money and they bought lobbyists and congressmen and senators and wrote laws that were phony and ineffective.
Edward Abbey, like all of us, was flawed, but he spoke truths and is a godfather of a strain of environmental awareness also known as Eco-Warriors.
He said, "sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."
There's been a lot of that.
We have done an accounting and learn we value money and material over the sanctity of life; ours, nature, the planet and the future. By thousands of actions we have all plundered the kid's future, a murder by a multitude of blows.
All of that board room business and "economic cost" blather and all of the political mumbo jumbo got us to where we are. Humankind has been hoodwinked, seduced and is being undone by our greed.
As someone who has studied non-violence I am conflicted now, wondering if political guerrilla war fare might not have forced a better outcome, and drawn more attention to the selling of our soul.
Abbey wrote, "Better a cruel truth than comfortable delusion."
If there had been serious "monkey wrenching" we might have had more sway, more impact in protecting the future. My late brother John was a radical, a street fighter, while also an effective psychological clinician. I think now of some of our long and deep conversations. I might have better served my grand children if I would have stepped out of the neutrality of journalism and joined a fight.
As did others, I spent years reporting the story, even investigating environmental crimes. Our work informed, but being right and even being righteous doesn't guarantee success.
As worthy as it might be to batch grind all of us of a certain age into dog food, I would urge the inheritors of tomorrow land to forget about old scores and instead go to work immediately in applying all knowledge and science to making adjustments, modifications, and new ways of living. Where and how you live, raise food, get water, cooperate, and even multiply will and should change. Yes, we need to stop doing damage, but you will have to make profound changes just to survive.
Screw the profit motive. Find a way to value the totality of all human life. Nation's divide and create barriers including to solutions. The planet makes you all kindred, regardless of old power structures. Bridge and then diminish them. Be exhaustingly careful where you put your trust. Don't let money pimp science. Put cooperation and communitarian objectives into problem solving. Depose political and royal kings, queens, potentates, war lords, strongmen and those who rule or possess power because money bought it or made it happen. If money rules, life loses. Classism will only complicate the enormous challenges you will face.
We fly computers into the heavens, rich men ride rockets for fun, but we can't house, feed or medicate people and we continue to poison our home. You in tomorrow land need to find better ways.
A few years ago some of us thought we could fix and make better. We failed, especially on the big matters.
For those of us who will not venture deep into tomorrow land, let's get out of the way and for once begin to act in something other than our own selfish interests. Let's behave as though there is a future that has a value that exceeds our materialistic cult and age. Let's pray for the well being of future generations.
For those of you who will inhabit tomorrow land, respect the science, respect life, respect each other and do good, for the sake of everything.
See you down the trail.
