Michael Benfield, one of the founders of the Green Party of England and Wales recently proclaimed “It’s too late to save the environment.” He told the BBC “I think we have succeeded in helping to educate… but we have failed in dealing with the battle for environmental survival. I’ll say to you now that it’s too late. The battle for the world’s environmental survival is, at this moment, lost.”
The scope and scale of the solutions which he believes necessary are simply too vast to be acceptable for any political party. The focus now, he stated, would have to be on mitigation.
There is little doubt that the global environment is in a state of dynamic free – fall. There is also little doubt that the driving factor is sustained, destructive human activity.
While it is important to separate fiction from fact and “wake up” to reality, expending energy on blame, emotions of guilt, remorse, belated outrage, etc. is useless and meaningless. Posturing and theatrics. It changes nothing. We have, undeniably, set a colossal process in motion. It will play out as nature seeks a new balance.
We can, at best, as Benfield suggests, attempt to mitigate / minimize the degree and rate of destabilization by adopting more sustainable ways of living. Expecting guidance towards this end by political leaders has proven fruitless. Their focus is supporting the industrial entities that drive the degradation of the environment and finance the body politic. They are, in fact, the stewards, guardians and enforcers of the system. Neither right nor wrong, good nor bad . . . just the way it is.
For example: March 6 (Reuters) –
Environmental groups sued the Biden administration on Monday to block the sale of oil and gas drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico.
The lawsuit filed by Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeks to stop the U.S. Interior Department from offering up drilling rights in 73.3 million acres of the oil-rich region later this month.
The Biden administration finalized its plan to offer the Gulf drilling rights last month and said bids are due March 28. The auction is seen as a test of industry demand for investment in the Gulf just over a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine cranked up pressure on the administration to increase domestic supplies of oil and gas.
A classic case of positive environmental action versus industrial opportunity for profit. No contest . . . big money calls the shot. Government bends over with a smile.
That leaves responsibility with us as individuals who can take control of our own lives and actions.
For instance:
The world’s oceans are polluted by a “plastic smog” made up of an estimated 171 trillion plastic particles that if gathered, would weigh around 2.3 million tons, according to a new study. (CNN). Governments won’t force manufacturers to limit production of single use plastics . . . but . . . simple solution . . . we can stop using / buying them.
Attempting to fix and rebalance the free – fall state of destabilized core environmental elements on a global level is, as Benfield acknowledges, a lost cause.
As the chaos of unbalance proceeds, an infinite number of dynamically linked variables come into play, resulting in unforeseeable, unknowable and unpredictable outcomes. Nature’s return to balance is a non linear process despite our attempts to fit it into understandable, linear, sequential templates and models.
The return to global balance is not something we can control. What we can control is our own personal behavior. Our actions are the tools of mitigation. How we behave and act affects the degree of continued damage that the environment sustains and consequently the overall extent of ecological instability and unbalance. Waiting for political / industrial leadership to guide us to a neat fix is tantamount to waiting for the devil to open the gates of heaven.
Ain’t gonna happen.
The world we live in . . . what we call the human world . . . does not exist in a vacuum. It is not the whole picture. Planet earth with all of the creatures that inhabit it . . . all of the drama, history, twists and turns that make up “our world” does not exist in a separate, enclosed, isolated, or in any way, special space. We are an element in an infinite, connected, evolving universe. Every event, movement, change, etc. that occurs on earth is connected to and resonates throughout the vast totality of existence. Not philosophy, spiritual belief, religion . . . just basic science.
It seems very likely that the accelerating free – fall and destabilization of of the world that we hold as familiar is building to a grand scale and that we are on the cusp of a dimensional or quantum change.
An incredible, exciting time to be present and conscious . . . an epochal opportunity to awaken and leave fiction and delusion behind.
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Joseph Carlisi – Biography
Born and raised in New York City, he earned BA and MA degrees in Philosophy at Hunter College of the City University of New York and then continued his graduate studies in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology working under the mentorship of Marvin Minsky. Joseph worked as a part time content and copy editor for Harvard University Press (science and medicine) while attending M.I.T.
After ten years as a university lecturer, researcher and administrator, he started and managed an advertising / public relations firm in San Diego, CA that handled a wide range of commercial accounts. On the academic side, he published a series of seven articles on animal behavior for Harvard Magazine and two books: “A Guide to Personal Power” and most recently “Playing God on the Eve of Extinction”.
Joseph Carlisi creates oil on canvas paintings that can be described as vivid, surreal and unexpected. His paintings have been exhibited and sold in: Honolulu, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York City, Miami, Tokyo, Yokohama, Amsterdam, Berlin and Salvador Brazil.
Joe’s art is available for purchase.
Contact him at carlisijoseph@yahoo.com.