A Year Unlike Any Other
As I look back over the past year, I wonder what historians will say about us. I probably will be long gone before a reasonable perspective can be used to evaluate where we, both as Americans and citizens of the world, find our place in history. This pandemic is neither the worst we have experienced (see the Spanish Flu), nor will it be the last we will ever see.
It seems that Mother Nature is not pleased with us and is sending a shot across our bow, a warning that many of us seem to be ignoring. We can’t go on like this. Our lifestyles, indeed our very attitudes, are not sustainable. As human activity encroaches on more of the natural world, habitats and ecosystems disappear and along with it our defenses against hostile microbes, viruses, and prions. It seems that we humans are improving our lives right out of existence. And we don’t seem to be learning from our well-documented mistakes, ranging from the engineered devastation of the Everglades, to the imbalance resulting from the near extermination of free-ranging wolves, to the slow strangulation of our atmosphere by destroying its Amazonian lungs, to the literal strangulation of many marine species by carelessly discarded plastic. Our hubris is breathtaking. Now, with over three million dead worldwide, we think we are on the road to having beaten the corona virus. I say, “Think again.”
It is nearly impossible for us to make the difficult choices needed to sustain us, as no one wants to be the one accused of promoting those unpopular higher taxes or taking away what many people view as our “freedoms.” We may think that the government can’t tell us what to do, but natural forces may not give us a choice. We are merely one species to inhabit this world. We have no right to dominate other living things for our own convenience and comfort. We are not going to be saved by a so-called Rapture. We are foolish if we think we can destroy this world because there are other planets we can colonize. We don’t deserve to survive if we cannot live responsibly on our own earth. This last year has been a clarion call to change our ways. Is anyone listening?