I’m going through a new level of understanding about global climate change.  It seems that there is not going to be any way of avoiding terrible, terrible suffering.  There is so little that I can say to describe how heavy my heart is about this.  It is just a process that I will have to go through, I guess.  First to distinguish that I do not have to ‘accept’ the situation fatalistically yet I have to accept it because it is real.  And I can still hold that it is unacceptable, because we have everything we need to resolve the problem except the awareness and the ability to take communal responsibility.  The thing that makes me saddest is the beautiful animals who are vanishing never to return.  It will take hundreds of millions of years to replace the diversity of species that we have killed in the last 50 years.  It all makes me want to say that human beings are delusional, greedy scum.  But I know we aren’t, or at least we are more than that even if we are that bad sometimes.  We humans possess every resource that we need including the inexhaustible goodness of our hearts.  There is already the technology to change all of our power systems and scale back the disaster for a softer landing.  I’ve read a ton of books about this!  But it looks like we are not going to put it all in place in time.

Polar bears, tigers, beautiful songbirds–please forgive us.

I have given up driving my car mindlessly around town and riding my bike instead.  By this means I saved 70% of my mileage, amazingly.   That feels good.  And I buy wind energy from the electric company, and biofuel for my heating, and carbon credits to compensate for my footprint whenever I fly anywhere  But still, I know the way I live is contributing to the imbalance and that my efforts alone are not enough.  We are all caught in the network and systems need to change.  So–I try to talk about it, like I’m doing now, and I sign petitions and try to keep my eye on the slim ray of hope, hoping that I am contributing to people’s coming to understand what we need to do and that we need to do it together.  The long term view is that the earth will survive, of course.  The deep energy of the cosmos is ongoing and not subject to being altered by our misunderstanding.  But there is no such thing as ‘sustainable growth.’  We are over the edge already.  I’m REALLY REALLY SAD ABOUT THIS.  There is nowhere to run.