The Green, Green Roots of Home

Another from the greatest hits file, Thu Oct 15, 2009

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Somewhere in the cold and empty and endless depths of space….there is a tiny oasis of life.

It exists, perhaps by mere chance, in a narrow orbit around an undistinguished star. An orbit that takes it just close enough to keep it from freezing and just far enough away to provide the heat needed to sustain life.

The blue life of the oceans and lakes. The green life of the forests and jungles. Life appears and struggles to exist on the highest of mountaintops and in the lowest of deserts. The life that distinguishes it from all of the rest of the universe is a pervasive and dogged and unrelenting force, adapting to the fiercest environments and overcoming and overgrowing all obstacles put in its way.

A life force so great, so indomitable, that it took a small hairless ape and evolved it in to the dominant life form on the planet in the blink of an eye, as judged by the time line of the universe it inhabits. Evolved one small creature to the point that that creature is the only thing that has the capacity ….to actually end all life on earth.

For four decades, life on earth hung in the balance, suspended between the will of two nation states that had the capacity to launch enough nuclear firepower (the very power that fires the suns themselves) to change the climate to make the earth uninhabitable. Somehow we overcame our self-destructive urges and resisted using that power. A dramatic crisis, barely averted, and more by luck than by plan.

But leaving an undramatic crisis behind. We somehow managed not to blow ourselves and all life on the planet up in a great conflagration. Instead we have decided, it seems, to smother ourselves to death in the greenhouse gasses we produce.

Or to be more accurate, a small subgroup of humans are attempting to smother the rest of us, and our children, and our grandchildren.

If we lived in a rational, sane, world that is how the stance of the Republicans and the Captains of Industry and their lobbyists would be viewed. Consider the logic. They say that we cannot save the world because it would cost them money. Money that they won’t need, or have a place to spend, if they get their way and make our planet uninhabitable.

These are the same people who have started wars to ‘fight terrorism.’ But what greater act of terrorism is there than threatening the whole planet for no other reason than greed? These terrorists are literally holding the future of the world hostage.

There are NO credible scientists who deny Climate Crisis. The ONLY people on this small oasis of a planet who deny it are the ones who profit from denying it. While all the while the symptoms of their disease of greed become more apparent, and as the symptoms do become more apparent, it becomes obvious that there is FAR more to lose even by the only measure they recognize, by failing to act. Even they, in the long run, stand to lose more by not acting to change our world, than by pretending that nothing is happening.

And yet these “terrorists” who are holding the future of the world hostage fight fanatically against the changes that will save our planet.

The only planet we have.

Our world, this tiny oasis of life in the vast freezing reaches of space is fighting for survival. Fighting to have a future. Fighting to find sanity.

We are poised on the brink, we are at the turning point, and there are signs of sanity on the horizon. A woefully inadequate bill, that is yet still landmark of progress, has passed the House. And is poised, just as our future is, to enter the Senate Chamber where, in effect, a group of one hundred humans will determine the future of the planet. In this insane world, 41 people can stop this landmark building block of a bill, a bill that is just a tiny step in the direction that we need to go, and yet even that tiny step is in peril of not being taken.

These are the same Class of people who take us to war, who crash the economy, who torture, who refuse us health care, who allow children to go hungry in the richest nation in the world, who claim sovereignty over the bodies of women they don’t even know. They are a tiny percentage of the population of this tiny oasis, and yet they somehow have the power to put the entire planet in peril for the sake of their greed.

And they are undeniably doing so.

If the planet, the oasis, our only home, is to be saved, these people, this Class of people, this Ruling Class ….must somehow be defeated.

And their is only one force that can defeat them. The life force, the life force as represented by the OTHER 7 billion people on the planet rising up and saying NO! We will not allow you to destroy the habitation of our planet, our home, merely for your greed.

For all of human history, the interests of the Ruling Class have held sway. Unfortunately, tragically, the rest of humanity has accepted and resigned ourselves that this is the way it must be. We have not risen up to say them nay, we have fought back against them only in desperate fits and starts, isolated by geography…..and information.

We are no longer isolated by geography and information. We have the tools to resist, the information to resist by proving them wrong, we have the power to come together and defeat them…..merely by raising our voices in sufficient number and telling them NO.

They will not stop, they will not have a sudden change of heart, they will not surrender. They will not save the planet.

Only we can do that.

The only question remaining, as far as the future of our oasis of life, as far as the future of our only home is concerned is this: Will we, We The People of the Planet Earth join together to stop them from destroying the planet.

And will we do it in time.

On the small daily scale, we fight for issues. We fight for Progress, we fight for Change. But all those fights are small, compared to the one overriding, overarching fight we are in, the fight for the survival of our planet.

The fight for our future, the fight for the future of our children, the fight for the future of our grandchildren and for the future of all the humans yet to be born.

The fight for this small oasis of life in the vast frozen reaches of space.

The fight for our only home.

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