Murder
After reviewing many of my prior rants, I came to the conclusion that I'm wasting keystrokes. I'm likely preaching to the choir, or perhaps I just like the sound of my own keyboard. But I have at last come to the conclusion that there's only one thing left for me to do.
I am going to sue the entire human race for first degree murder of the Earth.
In our increasingly litigious society, it seems only fitting to up the ante all the way to max. But make no mistake, this is not a frivolous lawsuit.
Charges include assault, battery, malice, willful neglect, abuse, torture, bodily injury, mutilation, poisoning, suffocation, terroristic threats, among countless others.
As for evidence, it abounds, to the extent that, even if it was possible to itemize every piece of evidence, it would likely take decades and result in a half-million-page document. In the interest of brevity, I'll present the most salient points, starting with observations on human nature.
Evolution, a process that has brought about the wonder of life, clearly has a fatal flaw; we are the result of an evolutionary blunder, an unfortunate shift from a balanced co-existence to an unbalanced state where a single alpha-creature becomes hell-bent on world domination. The very thing we pride ourselves on—this thing we refer to as "intelligence"—has brought about the end of the world.
The Earth has faced natural disasters aplenty, but never one like this. Regrettably, only a handful of us are able to perceive what is actually happening: a manmade disaster that's been consciously, purposely, deliberately, willfully executed. Murder in the first degree. The victim still has a pulse, but she's mortally wounded. She cannot be saved.
Worse, humans are killing her slowly, by degrees. For instance, when a species goes extinct, two things occur: one, it creates an imbalance in Nature that can take decades or even centuries to correct. And two, that creature is forever gone. After a few million years, a new, vaguely similar species might arise to replace it, but it will not be the same. Now, multiply this by hundreds—per year (that we know of—the actual number is likely more).
Oh, and by the way, when the last of the simians are gone (which will be soon), we will have no ancestors left—in other words, there will be nothing to replace us. But this assumes we ought to be replaced; if there was any species that deserves to go extinct, it's homo sapiens, the most wanted, dangerous criminal in the Universe.
Humans have started a bomb ticking that will eventually decimate almost every living thing. Sound like an exaggeration? One invisible bit of evidence: PFAS, a.k.a. "forever chemicals." They've been found literally everywhere. And they're not going away, hence their name. Instead, they'll continue accumulating until they reach toxic levels. There are thousands of variations of this class of chemical, and we are not stopping their production... not that it would matter if we did, since the damage is already done.
Even when we try to fix a problem we created, someone will come along and undo all of our progress. The hole in the ozone layer was blamed on CFCs and related chemicals, which were banned. Wouldn't you know it, just as the hole was beginning to heal, new "illegal" sources of CFC production have been found. Profit trumps everything. The Earth can't win for losing.
The above doesn't even constitute the tip of the iceberg; our penchant for creating harmful chemicals such as fertilizers, or substances like plastics, is bad enough; worse is our total lack of regard toward their use, management or disposal. Or even their transport—East Palestine, Ohio, ring a bell? Water pollution has seen an alarming uptick just in the last decade. And of course our brilliant political leaders are weakening air and water pollution standards because of course doing so lines their wallets. No fucks given for our home planet—the only one we have.
And we'll never stop making carbon dioxide, either. Ever. We can't. We've painted ourselves into a corner. Unfortunately, even if CO2 emissions stopped instantly, worldwide, nothing would change. "Worldwide efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are currently not on track to meet the 1.5° Celsius Paris Agreement goal, the U.N. Environment Program said." (Shocker!) So the scales have already tipped; we are now headed down a one-way dead-end road toward a global meltdown.
Deniers were having a field day over the record winter storms North America experienced in 2023. But these morons do not understand how global warming works: even a tiny increase in the overall global temperature will trigger an avalanche of repercussions, including more intense weather, such as colder winters and bigger, more dangerous storms. But make no mistake: regardless of how much snow and ice may fall, the overall global temperature is still on the rise, and the dangers will increase still more, until we begin seeing global catastrophes the likes of which no one can even imagine.
There are simply way too many problems facing us; we've set the stage for disasters on so many fronts that, even if we genuinely wanted to, we couldn't solve even one, let alone all. Pollution. Deforestation. Species extinction. Overpopulation. Melting glaciers. Rising oceans. Forest fires. Extreme drought. Freshwater depletion. The list goes on, and on, and on.
But it doesn't matter how much some of us may know or what we say; people simply are not going to change, even in the face of impending doom. People will forever remain ignorant, greedy, selfish, stupid pieces of shit that don't deserve the oxygen they breathe. The clear and present danger is not what might happen to them; it's them. People have killed the planet and, worse, they do not give a fuck.
Consequently, I'd invoke the death penalty. For everyone. No one is innocent; everyone is guilty by association.
However, the execution of all humans would create a problem for every other living creature, all doomed to a slow, agonizing death because of what we've done to the Earth. Now, if someone wanted to take a "humane" approach (as ironic as that may sound), and solve two problems at once, let's set off every nuclear weapon we have, and scorch the entire planet. It might be billions of years before life reemerges (assuming it can), but at least we'll have offered an end to the suffering of every living thing. Every minute the planet continues to exist as it does now is yet another minute of global pain.
Remember this: sentience is not an exclusive attribute of humans. Now, imagine what we're inflicting on all of those creatures who have no words we can understand. All they can do is scream in agony.
Give a shit, for once.