What Have We Done to Our Fair Mother?

It's Earth Day, the Google doodle told me so... I'm not exactly optimistic about the fate of OUR planet, though THE planet will do fine (though we will pretty much take down all of our pretty, fragile fellow Earthlings, life will go on without us if we continue on our current path). The stories of marine life being killed by ingested plastic are disgusting, especially in light of revelations of systemic inaction nullifying personal virtue. There are virtual continents of garbage and the petrochemical industry is spending crazy amounts of money to delay, if not prevent, development away from fossil fuels, and the fact that the same organizations that fight climate action fought to obfuscate the link between smoking and health problems is a sick joke. Put succinctly, we are engaged in a global suicide pact so that a tiny minority of individuals on the planet can make shittons of money.

I am not ordinarily a 'downer', but this is a topic I have been harping on for the past decade of blogging. Take a walk outside, and gauge how long it takes to find a plastic bag stuck in a tree or blowing down the street. Check out the health statistics for asthma or for any of a number of cancers. Read up on plummeting insect populations (no worries, Monsanto will partner with Raytheon to build pollinator microdrones). It's pretty damn infuriating... the next quarter's profits are more important than the long-term survival of our species. The real shame is that we are taking the charismatic megafauna with us, though life is resilient and new ecological niches will develop on the flotsam and jetsam we'll leave behind, occupied by slimy little critters that don't tug at our heartstrings.

The title is a riff on a line from a song by the Doors, a band which I, like David Crosby, think is overrated... I think David Crosby is overrated too, though he has some good environmentalist content on his Twitter feed.