Earth Day is my Birthday

All of our eggs are in one basket, I have said it before…we live here, all of us-all-together and we have no place else to go.

The world is a big place and it can take a lot of damage, but the ecosystems we depend on are specialized and fragile. The world itself will survive many things that we as individuals in our microspheres and biomes, collectively cannot.

We are in peril, and it has never been more obvious than right now.

We are responsible for the world’s care; it is a sacred obligation. We have been charged with its care by our holy-books, in sacred-texts throughout the earth, and more importantly, by the aegis of common sense, because we live together on this common-wheel; we are responsible for and to each other and all future generations of humans who may yet come to be.

The care of the world is a categorical-imperative; if we do not fulfill our obligation, Mother-Earth may just shrug us off, or shrug just enough that a calamity will ensue, sufficient to alter our future destiny forever, changing our cultures, our languages, even our DNA.

Listen!

There are natural disasters pending, they are built into the structure of the planet, into the thinness of the mantle, intersecting with heat emanating from deep within our planet’s core. There are massive volcanoes and there is continental drift; the geological forces at work just below our feet could easily destroy us all in the space of a few heart beats…

If we allow it.

There are calamities heading our way from outer-space, there are celestial-bodies soaring through the ether already on a collision course with us. There are asteroids and comments that we will strike the Earth, if we are unable to work together to change their course, these certain eventualities will overwhelm us; they are baked in…these impending disasters are the real existential threats we face as human beings, not the petty wars and disagreements we engage in by choice..

Note well: foreseeable events represent opportunities for the advancement of science and the unification of humanity; given enough time it is possible that we could harness the power of volcanoes and turn their destructive energies to the benefit of humankind, or move the near Earth objects from our path and capture them for their mineral wealth.

We need time, but more than that we need a willingness to understand the challenges we face, if we are to rise to meet them.

We face other threats right now, immediate threats, viral pandemics and the social disasters of our own making.

We are changing the climate, the planet is warming

Our oceans are becoming acidic, we are changing their salinity.

We are filling our atmosphere with toxins.

Our glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising

We are polluting our freshwater lakes, rivers, and streams.

Our topsoil is eroding, our forests are denuded and our coral reefs are bleaching.

We are consuming a diet of plastics.

Our stewardship is failing.

We are divided, against each other…by greed which drives a short sighted political mindset that seeks to and succeeds at turning people against their long-term interests.

Politicians and their wealthy patrons, silence and undermine our scientists, cast doubt on any field of inquiry which might lead to a curtailment of their industrial enterprises, and they do it for short-term profits.

They treat the Earth and all of our resources like a grab-bag full of goodies for them to plunder, like children with a stick whacking at a piñata.

We are failing.

It is Earth Day 2026, and all of our eggs are in one basket, the basket is fragile and there is no other.

Earth Day is re-birthday…let us remember.