Last night I sat on our back deck long after dinner was over. The hills to the east are covered in a blanket of green. The view southwest toward Diamond A is a patchwork of green, gold, and patterned grids of vineyards. How beautiful our valley is, yet in moments it could all be gone, because of our inability to face and deal with the reality of climate change. As the Pickett fire burns, the memories of 2017 return and I cannot stop thinking about human stupidity.
What is it about humans that causes them to place inordinate amounts of energy, resources and money into stupid endeavors, while ignoring the threat that will destroy everything that was given to us by nature? Why are we blind to the great beauty that surrounds us, while we are dazzled by bright shiny objects with no intrinsic, enduring value?
Drill-baby-drill, giant energy-sucking data centers to support an explosion of AI, self-driving cars, nuclear power plants on Mars and the moon to mine rare minerals, cryptocurrency, monster houses, monster trucks and monster everything, all just bright shiny objects. Think of the vast human resources we devote to these objects, these schemes. Think if it were redirected to reality, to saving our planet and ourselves.
Why are our grocery aisles filled with processed junk food? Each day massive amounts of plastic wrapped everything is produced and thrown away. We crave and need dozens of electronic devices that talk to us, feed lots and factory farms to feed our need for meat three meals a day, every day. For a good gauge of where we are, take a look at all the piles of plastic, throw away, worthless stuff available from Amazon that we can order and ship to our homes instantly. Why are these the engine of our economy? And why is it an economy that must grow endlessly, by constantly adding to this list? People ask me, “Why don’t you have this or that?” I answer that I don’t need it, it will not make me any happier than I am now, and they shake their heads.
We roll back emission standards for vehicles, do away with tax credits and incentives for renewable energy, we build, build, build in areas where the groundwater is already dangerously low. When someone speaks up for life, for our planet, they are labeled and discredited as old, out of touch, unimaginative, backward. Such people may be backward, in that they think back to when so called primitive societies knew that our lives, everyone and everything on this planet, is interconnected, and were in awe of the great beauty that gave them life.
What would make me happy is some moderate progress in getting rid of the pile of stupidity that is running our country. But, even then will we – can we – come to the realization that we must save our planet and thereby ourselves? Can we reach the conclusion that our energy, all our human efforts, could be redirected to the most important task at hand? Or will we continue to be dazzled by talking to Chat GPT or riding in a Waymo, believing they are hallmarks of human ingenuity and progress, while finding the ideas of renewable energy, greywater systems, adaptive reuse of buildings, organic agriculture and sustainability of no importance?
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