On the first birthday of Earth Day, April 22, 1970, more than a million people marched up Fifth Avenue to Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park to celebrate the day’s events on an unprecedented scale.Beginning September 21, 2014, just days before the United Nations Climate Summit convenes in New York City, nearly 3,000 climate events are taking place around the globe. The two mile procession of the crowds assembled in Manhattan held a moment of silence “to honor the victims” of climate change.
Unfortunately, the UN summit assuredly will result in “treaties” of the participating nations, not the concerns of the people. It is the 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris, France where “leaders are hoping to stamp out a binding agreement.”
We all know what that means.
Treaties have little meaning to you and me. Treaties are for the powerful and rich, who, in today’s world knows no boundaries of nationstates or habitats.
Where did the degradation of our only hope and home begin? Where are the deep roots to be found?
It began in Genesis 1:28 where the god of the Abrahamics mandated that the creature he made in his image “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”
Planet Earth was never the same again.
In the course of time, calendarized personally for a human-only timetable, a callous regard for all living things took root in the beliefs that mankind’s destiny was sacrosanct. As ‘civilization’ grew, Planet Earth and all its biospheric assets were attacked, within and without, by the relentless siege-engine of human consumption.
In 1965, scientists and environmentalist announced that the current population of the planet, at 3.5 billion people, was passing its point of sustainability. Even then, most people and religions perceived Earth as a personal reserve to sustain only one living organism of any importance. This singular bipedal, gracile creature with its convergence of an exaggerated opinion of itself upon Mother Nature intertwined its needs intimately with earthly delights as determined by the supernatural power it assigned to itself.
In 1969, Christian peace activist and co-founder of Earth Day, John McConnell believed, according to Palms 115, “The earth has been given to the children of men.” Yet, taking the passage literally over the generations of mankind’s spīritus sānctus, men have indeed, occupied our planet as if it were their own. Earth became a private and exclusive sanctum for all men whereupon they denied to his brother and sister animals all that man gave unto himself.
This excessive display of greed with little or no self-control manifests itself in today’s corporate governance to remake itself in the image of man and to steal from all of us the treasured personhood of you and me.
It is no accident that there is an eerie parallel found in Genesis 1:26 where it is written, as the supercilious word of a god penned by men, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
With the damage done and the end of days at hand, can “All the kings horses and all the kings men put all the pieces back together again?”Who among you will be the first person to apologize to all living things “over all the earth” for the shame of our immeasurable unnatural decay of humanity‘s one and only shining moment?
~Vidda Crochetta
End of an era?
I found it interesting that the Rockefeller’s fund, created by the wealth of an oil tycoon, announced it plans to divest of fossil fuel holdings over the next five years.
It’s PR, backed by a too-late action, but interesting nonetheless. The days of doubling down have passed. Smart money seems to be moving away from oil.
Assuming there’s enough of a viable human future left...
The combustible engine, industrial-home fueling and excessive consumer packaging are a big part of the fossil fuels syndrome.
Fossil fuels has a bad name, in part, because of its rigorous and harmful extraction, refining, distribution, and product development needed to get it to the huge consumption market. However, there are many valuable products in the fields of health, cosmetics, food, clothing and others where petroleum is important.
Industrial and consumer fossil fuel uses will be around for a long time. Realistically, there is no such thing as ‘post-oil’ but more like a shift to reduce or eliminate the harmful industries associated with major environmental impacts.
Investments in those areas will continue, assuming there’s enough of a viable human future left before us.
If it bleeds, it leads
It was excusable, eh maybe, that the Sunday morning media covered very little of the march of the 320,000 in NYC for climate change.
But by late morning (and before) it was unmistakably clear that the nation’s and world’s path led to the day’s events.
When I read that the media kinda skimmed over such a watershed of concern, I dug a little more into stories and found that there was no violence and no arrests.
What was that about corporate controlled media….?
Supercilious Genesis
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Creeps sound about right.
Have a Happy Consuming Carnage Earth Day!
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
— Robert Frost. Fire and Ice