Whenever I read about climate change, I think about that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard to zapped into the consciousness of a man on a dying planet. It’s the one where he plays the fife. For me, maybe that’s where we are now, but there’s no space ships to save us from the oncoming doom. The pandemic has shown that when push comes to shove, that we might very well be doomed. I saw this from a American viewpoint, and maybe the rest of the world felt a tad better about things, but it’s still heavily dependent on where you were living. I wouldn’t feel super great if I lived in Brazil, Russia, or India for example. With climate change, one of my very first fully adult-conscious moments was watching George W Bush pull us out of the Kyota Protocols as one of the very first acts of his stolen presidency.
For a multitude of reasons, but boiled down to 70 years of American corporations pressing on the American penchant for specialness, we’ve just become completely inured to the idea that we owe the world anything. It didn’t begin in 1950 or so, but it sort of being weaponized/multiplied at that moment. It was the pairing of originary American myth combined with the technology to cast it wide and far that did it.
Anyway, it won’t really end like the Star Trek episode, or probably even at all. But I do know it’s going to get worse and worse. We’re in the opening scenes of our own doom. Maybe dying in a giant meteor strike would be more climactic, but mostly it’ll be water wars or a new dust bowl or something like that.
Anyway, I feel pretty bad about the bats.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17910054-the-sixth-extinction)