Revealing the Architects of Our Future: The Greedy and the Insane

Watching Our Planet Spin Out of Control

Anyone who watched Journey to Planet Earth and wasn’t moved, should check their defibrillator or buy cemetery property… Mostly, what they talked about offered not much that was new for someone who eats, sleeps, talks this stuff endlessly but it was a surefire reminder that in the presence of apathy, nothing happens. And it the apathy is bad enough, it can destroy the world. Literally.

The polar bears are still beleagured and likely to die out if something isn’t done to reduce the ice melt. Not much we can do to cure that one at this stage of our neglect. But what many don’t realize is that the Emperor penguins who we all adore are beset with the same problems. If the ice melt continues, it will end their world. They will not be able to trudge to the ocean and back. And their world will collapse.

Some things may not be common knowledge. Like the clubbing of one of the smartest species on earth, the Dolphins who are being killed by Japanese who take a few out of the hundreds they destroy every year for aquariums and shows and allow the rest to die a horrible death. Some might not feel as generous to sharks; but they are a misunderstood and beautiful species perfectly suited for survival if we weren’t killing them by the hundreds of thousands just to get their fins.

During the series, we are reminded that New Bedford fisherman sit idle because there is no more cod-fishing in what was once the richest of spawning areas. The big fleets that roam the seas indiscriminately sweeping the seas like vacuum cleaners and discarding the less popular species are not only destroying sea beds, they are polluting the ocean in a way that will have major consequences for species struggling to survive.

Moreover, these same fleets who have depleted our coasts are now headed to the coast of Africa to take away the one food that sustains African populations; without fish, death from starvation in the poorer countries will soar.

Our apathy will not resolve the short term issues that plague the seas. They will not cure the barrier reefs that are affected by the increased carbon dioxide and growing acidification of the seas; nor will it put an end to a misguided policy of preferring water for the farmers at the expense of the Pacific salmon that returned home to their spawning ground only to discover that damming and reallocation of water resources have left them without a home. More than 100,000 died as they journeyed up the river from neglect.

All of this, of course, is a very sad story and much of it we’ve heard before; what we haven’t heard is an outcry from every decent, well=intentioned citizen who demand that enough is enough. We, the only creature powerful enough to have an impact on our surroundings, have allowed greed to get the better of us.

What can any rational person think except that we’ve lost our minds!...
That we have lost our way; mesmerized by the allure of gold, we have sold out our futures!....

Someone in 1999 asked me, “What difference does it make who I vote for; they will only be in office four years!...”

We now have the answer.

The Armchair Curmudgeon
Les Aaron