Friday, October 16, 2015

For the Future--too often, Waiting for the Rain

If I hate my own species, I have gone rogue, never a good thing.
And I haven't.
Too many people are on the earth, and this is impacting the world as I know it rapidly.
Animals, plant life are dying. We sort of see that.
We are killing the oceans, too. We dump our trash, our cremains, have oil spills, get all  excited about one or two shark attacks and start eradicating, and, huh?
I doubt my great-grandchildren will ever eat much seafood that was ever wild.  Weird, but that means it won't be as healthy, either.
With climate change, wildfires are taking out more homes, businesses, even communities. No way around it.
Time was, Syrian refugees could have been resettled in vacant land somewhere, some continent. Doesn't exist today, so we all have to move over. I don't blame them for leaving. Common sense applies. But we are still surprised and caught offguard when the street people move into our mansions, so to speak. We understand they are desperate, but they make us uncomfortable.

In my lifetime half the wildlife that existed when I was born will become extinct, except in zoos and refuges. Well, through the century they will continue to die.
For Southwesterners, it is so personal. No one my age didn't play with horned toads. Scratch 'em between the eyes, watch their bliss. Texas has a football team, the Horned Frogs.
No one thought they would die. Even my oldest son played with some. But they were gone when my younger son grew up.
I look at the world, at the universe, which my specie has given me an eye to, and it is exciting. I don't know what will happen in the future, even if we don't blow ourselves up.
But as so-called "stewards of the earth", mankind is pretty poor. We have littered for millennium.
The world will survive. Maybe people will, too.
I know in the past, each generation has thought they were making a better world for the next generation. I am so proud of my sons and granddaughters, and I think the world ahead for them, screw the economy, is going to be so much harder.
What I do know is that problems sometimes are easier to see than solutions we never dreamed of.
It got us here. I hope it gets us out.
This is a scary world to live in. It is not unhopeful.

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