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| Almost every comic's favorite standup, George Carlin delivered a wonderfully timed set on "Saving the Planet."* |
George Carlin, whom I revered for many reasons, was an environmental skeptic. He’d joke, “Why worry about saving the planet? The planet is going to make it. It’s huge. It’s been around a lot longer than we have and it will be around a lot longer than we will.” But George was wrong.
We now face two certainly effective ways to end the planet: thermonuclear conflict and total environmental collapse. Either will summarily rid us of those tiresome buggers, humanity, who will decide which way wins (or loses).
Should we place all our dollars and hours into one big fight many fear cannot succeed? Aye, there’s the rub. People disagree massively on whether humanity can permanently end war. They offer, “At least we’ve had success on laws protecting air and water. Oh, yeah? Let them talk to any of Dump’s idiot cabinet.
Like Rex Tillerson, economically, they know only one solution: Growth. Growth will save us. It has before. It will always save us. These are not farmers who let one third of their fields lay fallow in yearly rotation. They have no concept of the overgrowth which is poison.
Mine, fish, plant, speculate until the earth, the seas, the ground, the markets cease to yield anything of value—then take from your neighbor. Comics reproach, “Why did God put our oil under their sand?”
Now, as many have-nots comprehend how they came to have nothing, and desperately envision a future they will likely never see, countries of disappearing and depleted resources have nowhere to turn for relief than to the fictions of murderous dictators, who assure them of an abundance at least beyond death which they cannot deliver on earth.
Is there a hope the wealth of the industrialized countries will be selflessly invested in such under-developed countries? Without establishment of an unprecedented reign of justice it won’t happen. In the past investment has occurred only in an extractive strategy as a political or economic colony. Consider most nations where oil has dealt them a “resource curse,” where companies made agreements to share profits with the government.
How much of that wealth became Mercedes, Bugattis, and McLarens, for the families of the governors, Western educations and lavish homes for their playboy sons (but not daughters), and multiple palaces for themselves instead of schools and hospitals for their citizens, or worse, into paid bodyguards, armies with every weapon on the market? The severely oppressed will find a way to free themselves and they will remember who first helped produce their chains.
Today there are operative in this world too many maniacs, too many disputes, too many weapons of far too much destructive capacity, for us to conclude reasonable people can afford mounting two campaigns—one to save nature and one to prevent war? The risks almost guarantee there will again be wars of untold violence, destruction, maiming, and death.
This presentation then comes down to the question, “How do we want to die? Inhaling radioactive dust? Or starving, when no food can be grown, and dying of thirst because all the water is poisoned?” I can say this for certain: If we take no action first to end war, it will make no difference. There will be nothing left worth conserving.
c. J.S.Manista, 2017
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