Camraderie under a mahua tree” by Nagarjun is marked with .

🔊 Listen to This Story

There’s a view that fighting climate collapse would be terribly difficult, and require great sacrifices and suffering. For this reason, most people would rather continue on our present course. Change would involve severe risk and unpleasantness.

The obvious flaw in this view is that our present course is making a beeline for climate collapse and an unending succession of greater and greater misery. Of course, this misery would be born by our children and grandchildren more than by today’s adults. Does anyone find comfort in that? If so, well, what kind of people are we, anyway? And not just “we”. What about YOU?

Because if we are unwilling to get the ball rolling, to stand up to those who are dismantling the biosphere, then we are complicit in the climate’s destruction and not much better than the criminals who are doing most of the damage. If YOU refuse to make the effort, the person dooming our children’s chances to survive effort is—to some degree—YOU.

True Resistance Is a Win-Win-Win

My contention is that NOT fighting for the survival and the health of the biosphere and the future of our children is a total loss and an unforgivable mistake. We gain nothing by putting our heads in the sand because continuing as we are is impossible. Our massive ongoing C02 emissions is taking a dire situation and making it ever-worse. We MUST stop, and to do this, we MUST take authority and power away from our “leaders” and the ultra-wealthy people who have purchased those leaders.

At this late date, this is the only way and we must move quickly.

BUT, if we do what’s needed, we will sharply reduce suffering along with CO2 emissions. Why? Because we will be ending an abusive, cruel system of exploitation. Because we will be ending a culture of greed and selfishness and cold-blooded competition with one that is nearly exactly the opposite. Our survival and future well being requires living in sync with Nature, not destroying Nature. This will require compassion and empathy, not greed and selfishness and cruelty and abuse. This will require valuing human beings, and all the species that share this Earth with us. It will require respecting and caring for the Earth itself.

The world that we must build will be a much better one to live in. Instead of racing endlessly for the thrill of the newest shiny piece of commodified crap, we will enjoy each other’s company, and our environment and fully experiencing life. This would replace the hour after hour and day after day doing meaningless work, mostly to benefit a self-serving and lazy boss, under a system that endlessly enriches a few thousand undeserving louts at the expense of most of our time. That is, most of us have sacrificed most of our lives for a few very bad people, salvaging a few scraps to take care of our children and ourselves.

Do you think you could bear to give that up?

Who would win? WE would win. OUR CHILDREN would win. And even OUR ADVERSARIES would win because they would fail to destroy the lives of their own children along with ours. They’d lose a few dollars and retain their souls.

Our Progress Came From Science, Not Plutocracy

Scientists are, for the most part, interested in understanding the world and figuring out how things work. There are many ways to earn money, but science offers a particular kind of satisfaction beyond the financial reward. Every advance in our understanding was made by scientists, not politicians or businessmen. The latter have applied science to their self-serving needs at the expense of the rest of us and at the expense of the climate and sustainability of the Earth.

If we don’t use science to abuse our planet—and thus ourselves—science is a force for good. It is not the sole solution—technology won’t fix the damage we’ve done, although intelligently applied, it can help. A major part of repairing the damage is to stop doing destructive things. Science helps here, not by adding technology, but by advising what actions to take and their likely effects. It is climate scientist who have been telling us—to no effect, as yet—to stop burning fossil fuels and just leave them in the ground. We also know that superfluous production of useless things further poisons our air and water and overflows in our landfills.

Science isn’t technology. Science is a method of obtaining knowledge. And intelligent and humane use of this knowledge is what can save us.

Please visit EarthRebirth.Team and find out what YOU can do to help.