The Sixth Layer of Future
If you read last week’s post, What Do You Want… for Your Grandchildren, you read about five layers of future to be concerned about. There is a sixth that needs to be addressed before all others.
At the end of last week’s What Do You Want?, I referred to, “The Fifth and Final Layer of Future” which wasn’t the final layer. Underlying all the other layers is what I’d refer to as an “ultimate” layer without which the other five no longer matter.
The Sixth Layer of Future
The sixth layer of future is the planet. The continued viability of the planet Earth as a place where people can live. Where there’s clean air to breathe, land masses are not submerged under water, and the weather doesn’t become so crazy that nobody can survive.
I’m not going to cite all the statistics and projections. We’ve all seen them and heard them enough to last a lifetime. Perhaps a foreshortened one…
We still have climate crisis deniers among us, and if you are one of those reading this you probably don’t want to waste any more time here. Perhaps you could watch some weather reports. Read some news. Open your eyes and your mind. The evidence does not come from one person or another, nor from one political party or another, or from science vs. religion.
The evidence is right in front of our eyes. Crazy weather causing floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other disastrous damage all around the world at a pace never before seen. Wildfires everywhere, some so bad that their smoke fouls the air thousands of miles away from them.
Mother Earth is angry, and she’s striking back.
First Things First
One of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Put First Things First.”
Nowhere does this apply more perfectly than when discussing the potential impact of the global climate crisis.
People often ask me why they no longer hear me talking about politics, or the many cruelties we suffer at the hands of each other. Man’s inhumanity to man. People who actually have the nerve and the sheer stupidity to denounce diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The insistence of a way-too-large segment of our fellow citizens to prefer the leadership of an abjectly stupid, selfish, shallow monster.
Surely there are as many things going on in our world that cry out for our attention, and demand that we address them. Safe to say there are more and more of them all the time.
But I say, “so what?”
So What?
This is going to come out brutal, but it really needs to be:
If we don’t solve the climate crisis, our grandchildren will not have a habitable world to live in.
When you’re dead, none of the rest of these things matter. They become completely immaterial. If there’s nobody alive to worry about them, they are no longer a worry. I’m not attempting to be alarmist when I say this. Just objective. If we continue along the path we’re on now, the ice caps will all continue to melt until they’re gone. Ocean levels will rise, flooding and wiping out all the coasts of every continent. Weather patterns will be so drastically altered that any remaining land masses, if any, will be decimated by wave after wave of bizarre weather systems.
Ultimately, every human on the planet will be killed… if we don’t make enormous changes now. Have you wondered why all the billionaires are building spaceships for themselves? Yeah, that’s why.
So, for me, the rest is really “So What?”
The Insidious Challenge We Could All Use Help With
Here’s where you come in.
Every organization I’ve tried to work with to help overcome the planetary malaise has been a disappointment. None move fast enough, and many I suspect arent’t really moving at all. So, I’m really writing this to ask all of you, my beloved readers, if you have found any channels where we can all do some good by getting involved? I’ll gladly share your suggestions here so everybody can lend a hand.
I’ve often said that when the history of the end of the world is written, though there’ll be nobody left to read it, it will report that social media was the match that lit the final wick. With so many urgent pleas for contributions it has become virtually impossible to tell the good from the bogus. I’m hoping some of you have identified reliable ways to really make a difference.
I desperately want to leave my grandsons a livable world. I’m pretty sure you do too.