Thursday, August 15, 2019

"TO HELL WITH POSTERITY . . ."



. . . was  the title of an audio lecture that I heard several years ago.  The essence of the message was that there exists within society an attitude of  'get yours while the getting is good and let those who come later get whatever may be leftl'.
There seems to be a lot of that sentiment in the 'air' these days. (Pun intended !)

    During a drought, a tourist asked a farmer, "Think it'll rain?"
The response: "Always has."  In some places in this world, the  more accurate questions are "When" and "If"; and in other parts of the U.S. the question is more like "when will these floods stop?"

    Mark Erelli sang "We are passing this world on to our kids from the moment they step out of their cribs . . . "  If the current pace of consumption, pollution, and pillage continues, what are we 'passing on'?



Planet  Earth as seen from outer space


Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, novelist, poet, environmental activist  wrote that  "to cherish what remains of the Earth and to further its renewal is our only legitimate hope of  survival."  And another of his poems that I recently saw was even more poignant :   

           
If you believe that 'climate change' or 'global warming' are either hoaxes or much ado about nothing, the purpose of this post is not  to convince you otherwise.  Today I saw three separate items that reenforce my conviction that 'the times, they are a-changing'.  One was from an anonymous  source : "No amount of money, oil, or gold is worth more than the bees, trees, and clean water."  The other was a news release from NOAA noting that July 2019 was the hottest month on record and that 9 of the 10 hottest Julys on record have occurred since 2005.  Furthermore, "the record-warmth shrank Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to historic lows."

Dr. Rachel Cleetus, an economist and policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a New York Times article on August 15, 2019,  said that "this is not a challenge we can overcome as individuals [but only] by pooling collective resources, whether it's time or dollars or political action, that we will get to solutions."

And, while I believe her assessment to be 'spot on', I do not think that it absolves us from our  individual efforts to 'save the planet'.  There is still truth in the admonition that we should plant a tree in whose shade we will never sit.

Years ago I heard Dr. Fred Craddock say that those who cannot see beyond the time of their own birth and death are "orphans in the universe".  Posterity matters !!

Satchel






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