OUR planet is doomed . . .

I’m not exactly sure from where a writer derives their inspiration; if I had to hazard a guess, I would posit that it comes from his or her consciousness. In other words, the totality of one’s sensory experiences.

The thought occurred to me immediately after reading the following: “The reality is that within the working lifetime of people reading this review, the fate of our planet will be decided”. The statement evoked many emotions from within me, which can be best summed up as: what an egocentric, narrow-minded and foolish thing to write. I excerpted it from, of all things, a review of the book Coal: A Human History. While placing most of the blame on the lax environmental policies of the U.S, the author is making the point that if coal continues to be burned at the current rate, our planet is in big trouble. Now if his point was that Homo sapiens is in trouble, I could at least understand what he was thinking (though coal or not, we’re still in trouble!!). But physicists figured out long ago that the fate of Mother Earth is in the hands of Mr. Sun – once he runs out of gas in another five billion years or so, Earth will, well, you know . . .

Anyways, my point is this: no matter what we do to the planet, it will get on just fine, with or without us. It is not OUR planet, it just happens to be where we reside. I get irritated by the notion that we are its keepers, because we’re not. I believe some of us are concerned with preserving it the best we can, at least in part so that it remains habitable for our offspring; this to me is a perfectly normal biological action. However, if we’re going to determine the absolute fate of our planet, I suggest that it will take a bit more than burning some coal and driving around in gas-guzzling S.U.V.s (more on them later).