The Long Run, Part Two

As Pope Francis put it, “Civilization requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilization.” Destroy: true, but scary. Too much fat-shaming of our ever-more-obese species. To use current therapeutic lingo, let me “deploy” an “intervention” for emotional disorder:

1. 1. Calm yourself.

2. 2. Breathe in, breathe out.

3. 3. Again.

4. 4. Again.

Ahhhhhh ...

Now, selves collected, more about Homo sapiens, wise humans: heck of a species! What a long haul preceded us! Supereons, eons, eras, periods, epochs, ages. Formation of the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, if that’s a number that you can wrap your mind around. If not, try 4,500,000,000. (Keep in mind that a million is equal to a thousand thousands, a billion equal to a thousand millions. Or try thinking of 45 million centuries.) But if you’re still at sea, so to speak, needing a point of reference like markers on shore that surfers use to triangulate position, think of something older. Like, say, age of the universe: 13.82 (?) billion years, give or take several million, during which stars and planets had been forming.

In the Young Earth Creationists’ view, however, the earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old, which makes a compelling case for believing in the Christian god: such numbers are human scale. But since I’m not (yet) a Young Earther, let me stipulate that organisms on Earth emerged 3.5 billion years ago, sexual reproduction a billion years ago, cells with nuclei 2,100 millions of years ago, animals 590 millions of years ago, vertebrates 530 millions of years ago, animals with four limbs 400 millions of years ago, mammals 220 millions of years ago, and primates 75 millions of years ago.

As for us, they say we’re all that remains of the hominin clade, the human genus Homo, from a mere two million years ago, branch of a taxonomical tribe belonging to the family of great apes. And, as noted, our own kin arrived around 300,000 years ago having achieved erect posture, bipedal locomotion, use of fire and tools, loss of some body hair, and larger brains. Hard to remember, as Peter Brannen cautions, that we’re no more than a “provisional moment” in Earth history.

Which brings us—Reader, look alert; stay right with me—to Wilbur & Orville, Kitty Hawk,1903, and whoosh! mass air transit. Wings that have carried me to this middle-of-the-ocean so many times. Amazing, though, as is our nature, we never-have-enoughs complain: slow security-check lines; crying baby in the next row; shrinking seats / no leg room. Toilet walls closing in.

As Leif Wenar appraises it, ours is “the most peaceful era in recorded human history.” But “Whenever humanity produces and consumes more energy”— think fossil fuels—the species not only is more tolerant but also “grows like crazy.”

Think biodiesel: vegetable oil to replace gasoline to slow global warming. Very good for soybean farmers, but increases the demand for palm oil, already used in hundreds of processed foods and cosmetics. Since worldwide farmland is needed for food production, more palm oil means clear-cutting jungles to plant oil-palm trees, which means deforestation, which means greater carbon emissions from the exposed soils.

George Monbiot terms such practices “trashing the living world,” that is, “pathological consumption: a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and by the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us.” Human hungers induced / produced by consumer capitalism. Ever more objects, kinds of food, choices. Limitless desires driven / facilitated / fed / abetted by the political power of oil companies, banks, and related industries. Arrays of products remarkable for any individual, possibly, but for humankind a... binge. Species self-mutilation.

Here’s a thought: like a wicked fairy godmother, wave a wand. Concentrate wealth and power; deem corporations people; keep war perpetual. Ring a bell?

Meanwhile, add comfort animals / porn / guns / racial hatred / smart-phones / credit cards, not to mention all that non-equine horsepower underfoot. Plus-plus a sprinkling of sugar and salt for mass obesity.

Robert Pogue Harrison wrote, “Nature knows...