January 15, 2020

I think it would be a really good idea if we gather together all the climate-change deniers, those who are in a position to do something about what’s happening to our planet but claim that it’s all a hoax. Let’s load them all up and send them for a nice visit to Australia.

Those pictures that come to us over the safety of our computer or television screens each day are so damn hard to watch, aren’t they? More than billion animals, dead. Some entire species possibly extinct. Carbon-eating trees and plants, gone. The loss of the plants and the animals has been the most devastating toll, because most of the area burning is not as heavily populated by people as some other areas of Australia are. But it was full of oxygen producing foliage and animals—creatures who are of this planet every much as we are but have no say as to how we manage it.

I don’t want you to think I am blind to the human tragedy here. I know that houses have been destroyed, and lives lost. Houses can be rebuilt in the space of months; foliage cannot. Animal populations cannot. David and I have lived through two fires, a few years apart, different properties. I know how hard it is to lose things, especially photos and personal mementos, which are irreplaceable. It’s like a victimization, so I am not deaf to the suffering that people have endured during this catastrophe.

Any loss of any human life is a tragedy, and human beings have not escaped this inferno. As of January 5th, 25 fatalities had been reported. One can’t help but want to scream in response to the total carnage, as night after night images of the flames—and the charred remains of what was are broadcast for all to see. What had been green and lush and thriving, has now been completely and utterly destroyed.

The animals and the vegetation can’t rebuild on their own instantly. That will take a long time, but I’m not sure how much of that quality there is if we don’t work on this crisis now.

I can’t get over the figure, a billion animals dead. A billion!

Those brave souls on the ground—volunteers from many countries including Canada and the Untied States—do what they can. Firefighters have arrived from other nations, and every effort is being made to fight the flames. But people can only do so much in that regard. Whatever actions they take is but a stop-gap until Mother Nature sends rain—and lots of it.

Pleas have gone out for financial aid. I often hear people say that they can only afford five dollars, or ten or two, and feel bad about that. They lament that their five dollars won’t do much. But if everyone gave even two dollars, collectively that would be a lot of money. It really does help, it makes a difference. And fighting the fires as they burn and caring for those animals that are being rescued, that’s vital work, no doubt about it.

But where we should be working, where the need is the greatest is to target the causes of this global catastrophe. We need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions, find ways to cut down on our usage of resources, and encourage our scientific community to come up with viable, sustainable solutions to diffuse the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and reduce the threat to the planet—and to the futures of our children and grandchildren.

We need a global effort to fight this global crisis.

Now, back to the climate change deniers. Those who ignore this danger, this crisis, because fighting it will affect their bank accounts. Their greed will be the death of us all. But they should know that even gold and silver will melt if the fire is hot enough, my friends. If there is any justice in the cosmos then those two things, the gold and the silver of the greedy will melt and trickle away, down, back into the earth from which it came, leaving nothing in its wake but a quickly fading memory.

What does it profit a man or woman to gain all that wealth and lose the earth? A rhetorical question paraphrased from another author, but I’ll answer it. It gains them nothing.

If we don’t wake up and tackle this crisis in earnest, all of us, together, then eventually, among the ashes, what will be left is nothing. Those who once had it all—the wealth, the prestige and the power will discover that all their battles, all their denials, all their lies have left them princes of a dead and rotting planet. 

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury