It No Longer Matters
It's time for me to gloat a little. For years we've been reminded that we're headed for the "tipping point," that time when global warming becomes unstoppable if we don't do something. And I've been saying all along that we'll hit the tipping point no matter what we do, principally because not enough people give a shit. Now, some of the leading environmental scientists are declaring that we'll hit the tipping point no matter what we do. Well... I told you so.
I have a few environmentally-minded friends who have been champions of all the popular talking points: Recycle! Conserve energy! Avoid fossil fuels! And so on. I simply don't have the heart to tell them: it no longer matters. Nothing we do now will change the outcome: the earth will be reduced to an inhospitable cesspool in just a thousand years—or perhaps much sooner. Indeed, many things are happening far faster than the scientists' "worst case" predictions; those of us who have been keeping an eye on such things have noticed alarming changes just in our lifetime.
In my college days I'd have been shocked by all of this. Today, I've become such a cynic about people that my reaction is, "Oh, well." In a word, human nature is appalling. We're reactive, not proactive, and usually only in extreme crises. We're lazy, greedy, ignorant, and biased to such an extreme that, if something is obviously white, many will swear it's black—and defend their right to say so with deadly force.
So, what does this mean? Well, for starters, don't bother recycling. As it is, a tiny fraction of our recyclables are actually recycled anyway, and we still haven't figured out what to do with non-recyclable waste. May as well just dump it all in the ocean—to join the miles-wide floating garbage heaps already collecting there. And don't bother worrying about clean air or water initiatives. Our increasingly hostile political environment is undoing what little progress we've made in the last few decades by relaxing or outright rescinding regulations.
Solar power is not the answer we thought it would be, especially since the industry is getting tied in knots by political and economic forces. Likewise, wind power is not as beneficial as we'd hoped, considering huge numbers of birds and bats are being slaughtered. Even hydroelectric energy comes at a price: the process of filling a substantial reservoir in order to run the generators produces massive amounts of greenhouse gasses due to all of the rotting plants that get submerged. Besides, many of our reservoirs are drying up. Then what?
And don't bother with electric cars. They're just a fad anyway, and do not represent a significant shift away from fossil-fueled transport. For every electric car on the road, there are hundreds of thousands of gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs; it would take centuries to get rid of them all, and we have far, far more pressing matters to address. Besides, does anyone actually believe that fucking Trump-ass-sucking creep Elon Musk is going to help save us? Sorry, folks, his agenda is to make more billions by proving just what a conceited, self-centered son of a bitch he is.
You see, folks, there's no free lunch. If we really put our minds to it, we might be able to slow the inevitable a little bit, but it's still inevitable. Anyway, the thought of such a concerted effort actually becoming real is, sadly, rather laughable. So, what the hell, we may as well all party like it's 1999. We've killed the planet, and there's nothing left for us to do. Go ahead, build more McMansions. Buy more SUVs. Drain the southwestern rivers completely dry. Dump our trash... anywhere. Who cares?
And who among us will mourn the eventual passing of our once-beautiful Earth? Surely not the super-rich, as they build their mega-yachts and demand that cities dismantle historic bridges so they can float around thumbing their noses at the lesser folk (true story). Surely not the super-poor, who are entirely consumed by finding food and shelter and pounding out more babies to follow in their footsteps. Surely not the super-rightwingnuts, who are scheming to force their agendas upon us: encouraging unchecked growth, supporting the most harmful big businesses, and suppressing any green initiatives. Surely not the super-religious, who do nothing but fervently pray that their MIA deity will fix the mess they helped create. And surely not the vast majority of everyone else, who are too busy keeping up with their fashion and makeup influencers, or killing wildlife, or "entertaining" us with fake wrestling, or a billion billion other things that mean absolutely nothing.
More than a few science fiction authors have posited that humans are actually a viral infection of the Earth. And when you think about it, they're right. Look at what we're doing: multiplying out of control, consuming everything in our path, killing indiscriminately—we've become a blight, a pestilence. It serves us right that we're destroying ourselves. But it's so very sad that we're destroying everything else in the process.
We're not just shitting on the planet; we're slitting our own throats in the process. Proof beyond a shadow of a doubt we do not deserve the oxygen we consume. So, I call for a war on mankind: make homo sapiens the next endangered species. If we become extinct soon enough, the Earth just might have a chance to recover from the crimes we've committed against Her. Because I wonder: Will Earth be around long enough after we're gone to recover from this evolutionary blunder? Or is Earth destined to become another Venus, evermore uninhabitable?
In other words, it's too late. It's too late to save the planet. And it's not worth trying to save humanity. Just keep doing what you're doing now (assuming that's anything at all), because it no longer fucking matters what anyone does. Case in point, I have no illusions that my rants could possibly serve to change anything; they're merely a way for me to vent about the most vile, evil things ever to exist in the known universe: us.