Human Arrogance
This made me laugh, but then I got kind of sober afterward:
George Carlin's The Planet is Fine; It's the People that are Fucked.
See, the take-away is that you don't have to do a thing - sit back, light a phattie, dig your hand further down into that bag of Fritos, and relax. Yep, the planet will be fine after we are gone, George.
Here's what sobered me up. We are going to take a disproportionate number of other species with us, and how fair is that? Also, it reminded me that I had heard this exact exhortation for personal environmental inaction from yet another ex-hippie baby-boomer.
Spider Robionson's Thrillin' at the Mac Millian #2: SUSTAINING THE PLANET...Sustaining the planet means widely different things to all of us-so let's try and define our aim. The phrase surely isn't meant literally. Terra was sustaining herself just fine for millions of years before the first oxygen-producing lifeforms infested her and wrecked her nice methane ecosystem, dooming entire phyla to extinction. Mother Gaia's not alarmed by “global warming”: she's survived vastly greater environmental changes more than once, and will again.
Not to discount the possibility that we are irrevocably making the Earth hostile to any oxygen-breathing fauna larger than a dime, say, but what I think these libertarian gray pony-tails are actually saying at the same time is this: My personal world is coming to an end. I'm where I never imagined I would be at 22 - over 60, breaking down, wearing out, and what I have figured out is that the Earth will be fine without this particular animal, when this animal (Me) dies off, it'll be okay.
I think these guys are unconsciously committing an act of intense self-importance (and being baby-boomers, what else can they do, having been the center of the universe for so long?) in noting their own mortality, and their own inability to impede its rushing onslaught, and projecting that onto the world. I am dying, therefore, all of mankind is dying. If I am okay with my death, everyone should be okay with the death of every other person.
Okay, okay, I know, come talk to me in (God willing) twenty years about whether I am resigned to my personal death and projecting it onto the entire biosphere, or just the human race.
George was right in one sense - he is gone, and we are still here, and so is the planet.
George Carlin's The Planet is Fine; It's the People that are Fucked.
See, the take-away is that you don't have to do a thing - sit back, light a phattie, dig your hand further down into that bag of Fritos, and relax. Yep, the planet will be fine after we are gone, George.
Here's what sobered me up. We are going to take a disproportionate number of other species with us, and how fair is that? Also, it reminded me that I had heard this exact exhortation for personal environmental inaction from yet another ex-hippie baby-boomer.
Spider Robionson's Thrillin' at the Mac Millian #2: SUSTAINING THE PLANET...Sustaining the planet means widely different things to all of us-so let's try and define our aim. The phrase surely isn't meant literally. Terra was sustaining herself just fine for millions of years before the first oxygen-producing lifeforms infested her and wrecked her nice methane ecosystem, dooming entire phyla to extinction. Mother Gaia's not alarmed by “global warming”: she's survived vastly greater environmental changes more than once, and will again.
Not to discount the possibility that we are irrevocably making the Earth hostile to any oxygen-breathing fauna larger than a dime, say, but what I think these libertarian gray pony-tails are actually saying at the same time is this: My personal world is coming to an end. I'm where I never imagined I would be at 22 - over 60, breaking down, wearing out, and what I have figured out is that the Earth will be fine without this particular animal, when this animal (Me) dies off, it'll be okay.
I think these guys are unconsciously committing an act of intense self-importance (and being baby-boomers, what else can they do, having been the center of the universe for so long?) in noting their own mortality, and their own inability to impede its rushing onslaught, and projecting that onto the world. I am dying, therefore, all of mankind is dying. If I am okay with my death, everyone should be okay with the death of every other person.
Okay, okay, I know, come talk to me in (God willing) twenty years about whether I am resigned to my personal death and projecting it onto the entire biosphere, or just the human race.
George was right in one sense - he is gone, and we are still here, and so is the planet.