Despair of making any material impact on the situation is one reason people don’t do anything. Another reason is that we in the global north are simply too goddam comfortable (and busy; and busy being comfortable). Sure, maybe it gets really cold and then really hot then really cold; but we have central air and heat still. Maybe those poor folks in Puerto Rico – or Houston – had their electricity and water supply knocked out for years; but ours still works. We have not been inundated by masses of displaced persons; not yet anyway. How can one possibly believe that the bottom is falling out, when the view out your window stays largely the same and when you can still get gas to drive your car?
If you do not live on a coast; if you do not get much of your food or livelihood from the oceans; if you do not depend on glaciers for your water supply; if you do not live in a desert; if you do not live in the tropics; if your dwelling is not likely to collapse in high winds; if all those things are true of you, you are one of the haves. And you will be joined, in just a few years (or months), by the have-nots – which is to say, a majority of the population of the planet, whether they live in lower Manhattan or Dhaka. It may be that most world cultures have end-of-the-world myths because many of their members have had to deal with the end of their world – or that of their neighbors. Apocalypse, Ragnarok, Qiyamah, the coming of Kalki or of Maitreya, the multiplication of suns and evaporation of all fresh water – take your pick. But a lot of these also provide for some kind of regeneration or rebirth – after myriad kalpas of time, maybe. A metaphor for a rebirth of human society? Or re-evolution after a mass extinction? Perhaps we need an end-of-our-world story – with a happy ending. Perhaps we will grow different emotions soon.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |