Do humans value life as an opportunity to make the world a beautiful, abundant place for all? Or, is life merely a postponement of death for some?
Can any of us be truly happy knowing that others are suffering? (One of the young Buddha’s first realizations: the realization that began the rest of his path toward enlightenment.)
Some have walled themselves away from sins and sicknesses and death but can they truly forget, with any amount of wine or drugs or money, the misery just beyond sight and sound and/or the death that awaits? Throughout all of time unspeakable crimes have been committed in the name of survival. Survival motivated by awareness of our own demise and our children’s. So, the persistent cries for love must become even louder to those who try to ignore or delete them. Can you see how a vicious cycle can result from these patterns? And, over generations, how obtuse the minds and hearts of the misanthrops have become?
Some have, at the expense of whole races, whole countries, whole social classes, attempted to isolate themselves while observing humanity as if watching a video or worse, playing a video game. The kill score must be very high by now.
Our Founders once envisioned the United States would become a shining city on a hill, a beacon of freedom and hope for the rest of the world to look toward for inspiration. We have surely failed at that ideal. In its place, a darkness has consumed us with lies, agendas based on greed and personal pleasures, abundance for a few while the rest, even in America, can barely afford both shelter and food.
The scripted media attempts to keep US citizens distracted by pointing blame at “Republicans” or “Democrats” or “terrorists” or “Russians” and ignoring the sad reality of millions of desperate souls all around us. That reality is closely related to the perceived enemies WE HAVE CREATED to justify the gush of resources flowing into “defense”. This too has its origin in fear, and specifically the fear of death within the minds of those at the top of the food chain.
We sit on the precipice of extinction. Not because of “global warming” or “climate change.” These are invented terms meant to distract from the reality of GLOBAL POLLUTION. We are immersed in a filthy soup of toxic waste. We have soiled our own nest. We are destroying our own means for survival. The fear of death (the death that motivates us to build all that we build) has blinded the Darwinian turtles who have climbed upon backs, upon backs. They are on top but they have no sustenance, only dead bodies beneath them. They have no concern, no sanity, no philosophy other than survival, and they spread this cancerous perspective to all whom they use and abuse.
The new normal is the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where nothing lives. It is the size of New Jersey. It is being fed and increased by fertilizers and waste choking the Mississippi River and also by the toxic still-leaking Deepwater Horizon BP wells and the accompanying dispersant, known as Corexit, which merely breaks blobs of oil into tiny particles which more easily poison sea life and humans up the food chain. The earth is large but humanity now has the means to destroy entire oceans. Global Pollution. (I am guessing the makers of Corexit do not live anywhere near the Gulf and that they would never touch seafood from that region…)
Which outcome is less desirable: to have a combustion engine pollution machine to drive in order to get to work and buy food, or having no food due to Global Pollution? Either way, humanity cannot sustain itself on this pathway, so the man-made pollution needs to be stopped at its source.
Many believe the terms Global Warming and Climate Change have a profit-motive and so the concept is easily dismissed. The proof of global warming (melting ice caps, rising seas, warming temperatures over the last few decades, etc.) is mentioned by most scientists. In the meantime, corporations continue to exploit and pollute the planet, tearing down oxygen sources such as the Amazon Rainforest; acidifying the oceans so the source of fully half of the oxygen on earth, phytoplankton, is dying (trees, shrubs and grasses provide the other half); animal factory “farms” that foul the air, soil and water for miles around (as well as fouling the organs of people who eat their products). The problem is not so much that weather extremes are becoming the norm, but that animals and people are dying due to Global Pollution. Right now, not 20 or 30 years hence, which are target years by which “change” must occur. Right now, we are seeing what it known as the “Holocene Extinction” or “Sixth Great Mass Extinction”. (And whether it is caused by human activity or “natural” makes no difference at all. It is happening, for whatever reason.) Animals such as lions, polar bears, elephants and whales, ocean creatures such as fish by the millions, starfish and coral reefs are disappearing, even insects are disappearing, as several recent international studies have shown. A 2017 German study estimates an alarming 75% of insects are simply “gone.” US farmers have observed colony collapse disorder in bees over the past two decades.
(As a side note, we are told that Einstein did NOT say “if the bees die, we die within four years” but I am now wondering if that is disinformation as well, meant to distract from the gravity of the bee die-off? Indeed, if Einstein did say that, it would be a dire warning.)
What is killing everything? Warmer weather. What is making the weather warmer? POLLUTION! Let’s call it what it is! No corporation wants to stop stealing from the planet and from future generations of all species. No corporation wants to clean up its own mess. (Just remember how BP fought a protracted legal battle to exclude itself from responsibility for destroying the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem for generations to come, if it ever revives.) Do miners put the earth back where they found it and do they purify the rivers they use as waste dumps? Do loggers plant new forests? Do nuclear power facilities have some magical way of stopping potential meltdowns or stored radioactive waste from polluting the water, soil and air surrounding them for miles and miles and for centuries to come?
These big poisoners of the planet would happily pay their “carbon taxes” in order to continue business as usual (and pass the expense on to their consumers) regardless of the long term consequences of their pollution. In the meantime, oil corporations have purchased huge swaths of Greenland, in order to make the transition from profiting off of oil to profiting from precious, fresh, potable water in the near future. Be-aware.
It is my contention that the owners and boards of multinational corporations, the greed and criminal behavior of these impossibly-powerful world players, is because they are the most frightened humans of all. Their fear trickles down as scarcity, toxic pollution of our planet and our bodies, resultant diseases, war and death of species. And though they can have body parts replaced and lead the cleanest of lives, postponing the inevitable is the best even they can accomplish.
Using the words “Global Pollution” instead of “Climate Change” reminds all people everywhere of the real cause of the issue, and the real culprits. “Pollution” is not a pretty word like “climate” or “change.” “Pollution” conjures up images of the Exxon Valdez oil spill - seabirds coated with sticky tar, entire coastlines thick with the black goo for decades to come. It conjures the scenes of Canadian tar sands - no life for hundreds of square miles, with potential exploitation of over 54,000 square miles! It conjures up Chernobyl - radioactive iodine still being detected in the milk of cows in Belarus 25 miles away and 30 years after the disaster in Ukraine.
The concept of Global Pollution motivates and empowers each of us to clean up our own small corners of the world. The fearful ones, the elite owners of the world’s treasures and resources, need to realize they too will die untimely deaths as a result of their exploitation of nature’s bounty. It is not to their advantage if they “love their children too” to waste and destroy what is also their only home. (At the very least, they will have no one left to clean and build for them, no one to cook for them and nothing to eat.)
“Global Pollution” calls on everyone, even and especially the reluctant 1%, to contribute to the cleaning of the planet. This is the REAL “moonshot” to end cancer - clean it up! This is the REAL end to the endless wars for oil - leave it in the ground! This is the REAL vision of harmony and cooperation among people and nations - a clean, safe place for all. There can be no later time for this sea-change to begin. Humans have worn out their welcome on this giving and forgiving planet we occupy. It Is time to END Global Pollution if we are to have a future of any kind.
