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Live Earth, Thank You Al
for release 07-08-07
Washington DC
by Lightning Rod
The Poet's Eye watched the Live Earth concerts yesterday through the miracle of satellite television. My TV was busy sucking from the power grid. The parking lot of the concert venue was packed with Hummers. People were recording the event with cell-phone cameras. The stage itself used more kilowatts than some small African countries. There was a tinge of the absurd in the air.
Our planet is an ever-changing orb, and the history of climate change is vast. Consider it from this perspective: at one time the Earth was a molten mass of magma. That's about as much global warming as any place can stand. But we're talking four billion years ago. Since then things have, in general, steadily cooled.
I know it's fashionable to be in a panic about global warming. We are being taught to count carbon emissions like we count calories. Soon they will be selling carbon credits like the Catholic Church once sold indulgences. Counting calories has done no more to curb obesity than counting carbon emissions will do to curb 'global warming.'
On the auspicious date of 7-7-07, Al Gore throws his gala string of concerts all over the world to raise consciousness about global warming. On that same date, more people were married in the US than on any date in history. Which do you think will have more effect on this planet? It would be a close call between minor and miniscule.
I'm sorry Al, but I'm just not buying it. Here is why: Dinosaurs didn't drive SUV's and THEY are extinct. They had nothing to do with their extinction. It was a matter of forces beyond their control. They weren't driving the asteroid.
I think it is arrogant to believe that we, mere human masses of protoplasm, can have that much influence on forces, large forces, inexorable forces beyond our control. Everyone in the world could stop burning anything to stay warm, park all SUV's and even quit breathing (which emits carbon dioxide), and it would not affect the larger forces which move our planet. Ice ages and hurricanes, volcanos and ocean tides and earthquakes and the Gulf Stream don't care a whit about what we humans and our machines are doing.
Let's look at the positive side of global warming. We could have summer all year round. There could be beach front property in Denver! Antarctica could be the hot new vacation spot, Manhatten a wading pool. There may be wheatfields in the Sahara and somebody will figure out how to catch the runoff from melting glacial ice and put it in plastic bottles to sell to you in grocery stores. The planet adapts, like humans adapt. And we will adapt until we don't. I'm betting on the planet to last longer
I say to you, "Don't worry, the planet will take care of itself. Mankind may not prosper in perpetuity. Neither did the dinosaurs or a million other species. But hey, that's life on the big planet.
I know that I'm sounding like a Republican or a social Darwinist here, but maybe it's because my telescope is too long. Maybe I'm looking at it from too large a perspective. I just think that this planet sees the entire human race, all six billion of us, as so much moss growing on a rock. The planet has other agenda than worrying about our farts. And we don't need to worry about the planet, we need to worry about ourselves and how we get along together, moss that we are.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like a good concert. Alicia Keys was great as usual and Melissa Etheridge was a superb rock evangelist and I enjoyed seeing Cat Stevens in Germany. But do I think that a concert, even a slew of concerts on one day, is going to make any difference to the Earth? No. To the Earth, it is just incidental background noise.
But here's the real inconvenient truth: no amount of conservation, retrofitting or other minor screwing around with our environment is going to stop the inexorable progress of this planet. There are forces, natural forces, that are bigger than our species and bigger than our planet. Get over it. Live. Get in your Hummer and go to a concert.
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