#EarthDay

Human Survival

Earth Day keeps coming around again, and that’s a good thing.

Earth Day was first observed by United Nations Proclamation on March 21, 1970, and again as an environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970, founded by U. S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (Wisconsin Democrat). The April 22 date was rallied around and is observed around the world.

Our friends Mark Foster and Deb Tout in Alpine, Texas, have helped to organize a thriving farmers market in Alpine, and they assist with a city-wide celebration of Earth Day each year. Mark promotes and grows organic fruits and vegetables, and is a guru in his field. He produces commercial quantities of organic vegetables, condiments, and eggs on less than 1 acre of rocky Chihuahua Desert soil just south of Alpine. The weather is cold in the winter, blistering in summer, zero per-cent humidity, with an average annual rainfall of only 10 inches. Gardening there is like gardening on Mars compared to the garden spot of western North Carolina where I now live. He writes a weekly newsletter (https://www.facebook.com/markthedirtfarmer) and waters veggies all night.

Will Earth Day have many happy returns?

I’m not worried about the Earth we love. The Earth, and Love, will endure. But will we? Look to your children, and grand-children, and so on.

The existentialist question is: if Earth Day were founded by decree of the humans, and humans are extinct, then is it still Earth Day? And, by extension, if humans no longer exist, could it even be an existentialist question—or even a question at all?

I was fortunate recently to find myself in a discussion of climate change that involved several dozen very intelligent, well-educated, and informed progressive persons who were pretty much on the same page. The collective CV of the group is impressive and, being there, I felt like a “mule entered in the Kentucky Derby” must feel. The field included impassioned environmental idealists, pragmatic environmental realists, and one or two Bolshevik bomb throwers—which makes for lively conversation.

There were many good comments. Quotes from three of those comments that caught my attention and caused me to write are:

“Our grandchildren are going to be as mad as hell at us.”

“The Human race may end up back in the stone age.”

“The Earth is our Mother.”

Mad Grandchildren—I hope that our grandchildren will be mad at us, with “be” the operative word. If so, that means that they survived for that long and have the opportunity to work on solutions for the situation we have left them. At this point, I think that this is the most hopeful possible outcome. Our grandchildren will be mad, and we will not be missed.

Back in the Stone Age—If the race ends up back in the Stone Age, then … some of the race survived. It could have been worse. They (the survivors of the Human Race) in a new Stone Age, even without Sabre Tooth Tigers, will have their hands full, … and we will not be missed.

The Earth is our Mother—The Earth is our mother, and she is the ashes of our mothers, and she will be our ashes no matter what happens as a result of climate change. What we have to fear is not our harm to the Earth, but how that will harm our race. An increasing percentage of scientists believe that the Human Race will be extinct in this century, and climate change might be the most powerful contributing factor—working along with overcrowding, global pandemic, and the list goes on, always including nuclear conflagration.

But no matter, The Earth will recover. She has done it before and she will do it again—she will regenerate over centuries and millennia. She won’t be the same, but we won’t be there to notice, and she will still be our Mother. She will endure. And she will not miss us.

We have met the enemy and he is us.
Walt Kelly –I Go Pogo (1952)

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This piece appears as an essay in the recently published "Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork" (2022) Booklocker.com.

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