Global Warming

It’s unbelievably hot even now, and it’s almost midnight. This is a summer as the seldom come, but perhaps this will be the rule soon. There’s no doubt that the weather has become unpredictable, and that isn’t at all positive.

Have we reached the point of no return or is there still a chance to sort out the mess we humans have created? It’s difficult not to doubt our ability to clear up the mess. After all, we worked on it for centuries. Not funny. The way things develop causes me alarm, and not only me. The great ideas that people develop to set things right, partly go under because of lacking funding, partly, because there are large concerns wishing to maintain status-quo. It still isn’t clear to many that once we’ve killed all the fish and devastated the earth there won’t be anything but money left: and nobody can thrive on eating money. It isn’t easy to believe that this world’s capitalists want to make survival impossible. On the other hand, their actions speak for themselves. Turning everything into a question of money will dig humanity a grave in the long run. Will the usual six feet under be enough to cover our ecological sins? Who knows?

We know only this: the earth is under considerable stress, but the arms manufacturers, the upper (rich) one per cent, the medical giants, the politicians, the religious fanatics, the cigarette and soft drinks companies, all pull in one direction: profit. No matter what happens: Nach uns die Sinnflut (when we’re gone: who cares). If the poles melt, we can sell more ice-cubes. If an atomic disaster hits, we have shelters (if we belong to the right group). At the same time, dedicated and thoughtful people invent anything from eatable use-and-throw-away cutlery to solar panels. Everything they do, they execute with one sole purpose: saving this earth.

Hoping and praying isn’t enough now. We need to clean our oceans, we need to counteract the climate change, we need to adjust our thinking from greed to fellowship. If we don’t we’re set to take the tumble like so many cultures before us. The worst part of this is that we may be the one culture that takes the environment down with us. Landfill sites, pollution (atomic as well as chemical), waste: from food to plastic, from water to land, all of this will bring on a disaster of a scale we can’t imagine. If we can, we certainly close our eyes and our minds towards this knowledge. Is there still hope? Maybe, but with every day we wonder and hesitate the smaller our options become. What can we do? We can reduce personal waste, we can refuse to buy damaging materials, we can recycle, repair and care. But all that will make a microscopic dent in the destruction set to happen, if we can’t work together to save our earth.

 

 

© HMH, 2018


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2 responses to “Global Warming”

  1. Lucinda E Clarke avatar

    True words, why does no one listen?

    1. Hanne H avatar
      Hanne H

      Beats me, Lucinda, but we mustn’t stop talking and writing about this. It might feel like shouting into the woods, but, as I see it, there is no alternative. If we don’t act, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.

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