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“The first polluters, remember, were anaerobic single-celled organisms who forever destroyed their own eco-system and permanently altered the Earth with their main waste product, an extremely toxic and reactive chemical. What was it called?
“Oxygen.”
1. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
I remember when the environment became important again. It had been important in the 70s; one of the lasting effects of the Summer Of Love was a concern for the environment. It was called “conservation.” Marvin Gaye sang about the ecology. Every other villain the Super-Friends battled was some dire polluter. Dr. Seuss wrote The Lorax, which had a subtle environmental theme to it. And then it went away. In the 80s, the last thing anyone cared about was anything as long-term as the environment. But it came back in the early 90s, same time that Woodstock came back. Except this time it was called being “ecological.” They started celebrating Earth Day again. They made a show about an environmental superhero, named Captain Planet. Seriously. Look it up sometime. Then everyone stopped caring for a few years, until sometime in the last six or so years, probably really taking off with the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, when it came back in its most smug and pernicious form ever: GREEN.
Now, there’s a lot of debate over global warming and global climate change, whether they both exist, or neither exist, or if they’re really just the same thing. The one side accuses the other of being professional alarmists. The other side replies that the one side is in the pocket of big industry. Round and round it goes, the debate over whether or not we are irreparably damaging our own ecosystem. No one questions that damaging the ecosystem is a bad thing. A very bad, bad thing.
No one but me.
Pause to let that sink in. You’ll want to digest it. I can hear some of you expressing outrage already. “What do you mean it’s not a bad thing? Why,” I hear your internal monologue protest, “without the delicately balanced ecosystem of this fragile, frail blue ball in the sky, how can we hope to survive?” And all I can say in response is to stop worrying about the ball in the sky, and work on growing a set of balls in your pants. We must destroy the Earth to move on.
2. Get Off The Earth
Did you know that we have the technology to leave the Earth right now? Okay, but did you know that the universe is infinitely large? Okay, you did. Did you know that one day the sun is going to heat up so much that all the water on the Earth will boil off, and that will be the end of all life that we currently know exists? And sure, sure, it’s not for a few billion years but my point is, we can’t stay here. Even if we get into a perfect harmony with the rest of nature; even if we manage to find a way to continue our own intellectual development without correspondingly exploiting and ravaging our surroundings; even if we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya; one day the Sun is going to murder us all.
So, it’s either struggle to eke out an existence on the limited surface of a single planet, squabbling over the finite amount of resources and land, or leave the Earth and explore an infinite universe. Infinite. I’m not totally sure I can comprehend that.
But as long as people are weak and spoiled and lazy and complacent, we will never leave the Earth. We’ll send celebrities up for photo-ops. Maybe put some luxury space stations in orbit. And that’s it. Given our druthers, we will never leave the Earth. My pal Attila said it best years ago: “Why would I leave the Earth? It’s got everything I need!” As long as the Earth can sustain human life, we will force it to.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
3. Nuke The Whales
If we’re ever going to be shaken out of our complacence, it will take something as drastic as acid rain and mega-tsunamis and flooded cities. We will need to have our comfortability hammered out of us. We must destroy the Earth, or rather, the Earth’s ability to sustain us, if we’re ever going to accept our destiny in the stars.
Leave your car running.
Quit sorting your trash.
Chop down a tree.
Pour bleach into the river.
Burn a pile of rubber tires.
Leave a carbon footprint the size of a dinosaur track.
Do this and more and destroy the environment, and do it without shame. Once the bulk of humanity has left the Earth (leaving only a handful of cultural throwbacks like the Amish and hippies behind) the Earth will repair itself. It’s like a self-cleaning oven. Or, better metaphor, a living thing. We have become an infection, a cancer, and once we excise ourselves the biosphere will heal. It will recover, and thrive, and grow. It will be beautiful, and our great-great-great-great-descendants can come visit it; and they will see something none of has have ever seen, not since the day they first rubbed two sticks and made a fire: a totally pure world with no human interference.
And then the sun will still boil off all the water and that’ll still be that.
“I feel like some points you make would shut these hippies up.”
“Nah. Fucking hippies, the only thing that shuts them up is a killer Dead song.”
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