People who have taken some notice of my newspaper columns over the last decade know that I’m not exactly optimistic about the future of the planet. Understatement.
Indeed I’m definitely in the camp that can’t comprehend how anyone in their right mind thinks this level of humans on an overheating globe are somehow gonna’ make it. Yet, I’m OK with this. Positively sanguine.
I spent years fighting for New Zealand’s freshwater, for example, yet I’ve now stopped dead. No point in fighting a battle you simply can’t win. I’m not a quitter. Oh no. But I am a realist. I know enough to know when to call it a day. BigAg has won that war.
I don’t blame them for it. Everyone’s clinging on to a life raft of hope. Jobs and the economy have always been humanity’s number one. But never more so than in the dying days of order and rationality. Wait ‘til things get really bad!
Our species deserves everything it’s got coming. We’ve never listened and we’ve never learned. We blindly march forward towards our suicidal demise because we don’t know what else to do. Politicians have proven wilfully useless, and their masters - the corporates - want them to remain that way. They won’t disappoint.
So as we head into 2021, don’t show you’re obviously a bit of a dolt by saying you can’t wait for 2020 to end. Because our collapsing, overcrowded orb doesn’t actually run on calendars. It runs on its own internal rhythm. Things will not be getting better next year.
You may personally make more money, find that dream job, buy a new house, have a kid - whatever. It’s all a veneer. You may feel you’re going up, but, in reality, we’re all going down on this beautiful, cruel, incredible, one-and-only home called earth.
It’s already locked and loaded, and written in the stars. Nobody’s gonna’ solve the climate crisis, world poverty, or the coming breakdown of democracy. And in your bones you know that.
At this year’s end, enjoy the ones you love. And the animals. The saddest part for me is that we’re taking them all with us and they’ve done nothing to deserve it.
Here’s a pic of a gorgeous bird of prey to remind us of the biodiversity we’re losing. Every single day. Tick, tick, tick.
Although I probably won’t much like what’s coming, I have to agree that we humans have asked for it. I, too, feel sorry for the non-human animals, and how we have destroyed their world. If nothing else, though, I can say that I tried to make a difference, unlike the great passive majority who will be left with their mouths hanging open when the shite goes down. Ahhh - it felt good to get that out.