Our ways of thinking about life are not in phase about the cosmos around us, the proof now is visible the ecosystems that sustain life on earth are dying and the very climate we live in is changing drastically.
Scientists are telling us we are in the verge of cataclism, and philosophers and thinkers have long been warning about the alienation of man from earth and his environment.
Right now the paradigm needs to shift our priorities are not in the right place that is why we see at last systemic impact on the climate and on all the organs and ecosystems of the earth.
Earth sustains us in many ways that we even recognize or acknowledge, yet we are destroying it. It is a self-destruction act that is similar to one the addict person, who can’t keep from taking his drugs(fixes) even though he knows he is on the verge of calamity.
One of the rare ways that make addicts wake up, are shocks, whether emotional or physical. These shocks create a break that is hard enough to awake the person.
In our case the last events that we have lived throughout 2020-2021, and that we may still live for some few years, are one of those. Painful for many, but welcome because they break the paradigms of thinking about life, about the routines, about what is possible and what is not, what can be done by humans and what is not. No one would have believed you in 2019 if you told them that cars, planes and mobility will be severely reduced in many countries in the world, you will be treated of an insane person if you ever said so, or at least you will laughed at. Yet, this is what is needed for climate, except it needs to be for the long run not a small period of time. To fail in doing so means, we are displacing the problem even further and risk even more severe consequences in the future (almost a la covid if no lockdown is done).
The objection from people is the economy, What people will do for work ? What about freedom of movement ? How are we going to feed people?
The problem is taken upside down, if nothing is done now and we do not restrict frivolous and unneeded movement, waste of energy, then, we risk into going into a world that even if we work hard we will not be able to feed people because the ecosystems will have collapsed and no amount of technology may help us. And even if so, life would be severely reduced.
Another argument is that we all going to die anyway, why not just enjoy the ride now, and to hell the next generations…
Weirdly enough, this is the same argument that I get from people who smoke or drink. Why care about tomorrow, if I can be happy today?. The issue here is that you are not just being happy today, which is a philosophy I tend to agree with, but you are borrowing immensely from tomorrow, and that tomorrow is coming way sooner than you think with all its unintended consequences.
By being unconsiderate, we are slowly killing a place in your heart that keeps life beautiful, the hopes, the joy, the beauty of doing a good act. We feel it, the heart feels it, and the earth too.
It is almost impossible to continue arguing here without going metaphysical, and without bringing up virtue and ethics. A person who does not care will not care. But individuals in society as whole needs to be informed of its acts and needs to be given clear choices about how to live their life and what impacts they have on earth and the future of society, and this by reforming first and doremost the economic systems ( By forbidding the interest debt based economy ), education systems (by reframing our values), the political ( by decentralization ), the agricutural ( by permaculture ), the technological ( by taking drastic measure against overconsumption such as restricting movement at night from motorized vehicules, retricting lights use in cities at night, by using technology only when its needed and not everywhere, anytime and anywhere).
Caring for earth is caring for ourselves.