Extinction: The EARTH System

Is this really our fault?

CAN YOU FIX STUPID?

Wendy Darwin in the home office today, it is a sunny clear day with highs around 90.  My bug-friendly garden is doing well, thank you very much, but I am seeing the unfolding of MASS EXTINCTIONS for The EARTH System. Friends, we are Darwin Award-ing the EARTH, darwin-awarding bigly.

Why are we doing this? Why over-harvest the fishes so they dwindle away? Why level mountains entirely, gaining minerals but killing a balanced ecosystems? Why this year burn MORE Fossil Energy than last year? WAS LAST YEAR not good enough? WAS LAST DECADE so devoid of sparkle? Read more on my upbeat daily blog!

My colleagues, we, the people of Earth, have caused a global extinction event that is rapidly unfolding in a patch of earth near you. Remember your childhood. Ask an elder. Look around the place you grew up in. What I see is an insect apocalpyse, 90% of insects missing, no frogs or crickets anymore, no snails in this agricultural mecca.

Why are we doing this? Eating the big spawn fishes, destroying forest communities for the minerals beneath, burning MORE Fossil Energy every year? This species, my species, refuses to even level out its consumption of The Earth System resources.

Around a blazing fire of energy people sit, attention fully engaged by their devices and bowls of fine red wine. Inspired by Nate Hagens The Great Simplification

Like we have activated a “more-more-more gene” that propels each and every Global Nation to strive for MORE. Because of our CO2 poop—the waste gas of combustion—many harms are inflicted on The Earth. The Antarctic icecap is measurably melting. The oceans are warm and acidic, dissolving shells and lowering oxygen levels. Microplastics—another waste product of burning Fossil Energy—fill the waters of Earth. Entire ecosystems are beginning to succumb to human pressures.

The Great Coral Reefs of our blue oceans.
The Emperor Penguins and Polar Bears.
The Honeybees Family.
And ask yourself, “Self, are there fewer frogs and flying bugs nowadays?“

“BUT WENDY IS THIS OUR FAULT?”

A cynic might justifiably say that we evolved to be like this. Humankind is a child of The EARTH System. And it is well known that our human stupidity has a genetic component. “You can’t fix stupid,” the saying goes, as if stupid is a permanent condition of the Human Species.

CAN YOU FIX STUPID? That is the proposition of The Darwin Awards, that you CAN fix stupid. THE 1000+ Darwin Award stories I wrote, the 6 books I published, the tens of thousands of reader submissions I read, ALL was an effort to “fix stupid. “ I am committed to posting daily on various topics in this complex human predicament confronting the The EARTH System.

Because our social and economic systems evolved
to get us into this predicament, they can
darn well DEVOLVE to get us out of it.

It’s bad for our health and sanity to live in this polluting, climate-chaos, Post-Truth, financialized, Corporations-Are-People-Too, rich class/poor class world.

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ZOOM MEETUP SATURDAY 5PM PST to discuss.

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FOOTNOTE

Our daily lives in pre-industrual times were actually quite nice. I am a member of the SCA and I can tell you absolutely, that we had learned how to live well, well prior to 1600.  Many people assume life was wretched prior to The Energy Surge. But that is false propaganda. We are the TOP PREDATOR on the planet. As the top dog on this planet, it is easy-easy for us to meet our basic needs, and spend the rest of the time perfecting arts and skills. Pffft. Let’s have technology AND an energy frugal lifestyle.