silent spring, fat city, and being here now

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Isn’t the notion of Earth Day precious?

It should be every day, of course. So, what does this mean for every day?

Do you nearly cringe at the triteness of such a question? Aren’t you tired of hearing about deathly pollution and extinction-level climate change?

It’s all not trite, of course, for kids (who will inherit the Earth), for health care professionals, educators, community developers, progressive activists, social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, and Earth scientists.

Indeed, a holism of relevance is greatly to The Point, not some redemptive tokenism of preciousness.

Healthy planet, healthy nations, healthy regions, healthy lives...

Coincidently, last Sunday’s episode of “Cosmos: a spacetime odyssey” (episode 7, no longer available online) detailed how one scientist, in establishing the age of the Earth, stumbled into the epochal issue of lead poisoning that had become pervasive to Our atmosphere and our bodies. The amazing story was well told a couple of years ago, too. But “Cosmos” is a narrative gem, directed at inspiring youth to pursue scientific interests, wherever the evidence leads, which is commonly mysterious, wondrous, and critically important to human futurity. (Yet, the great message of "Cosmos" is the unity of science.)

Earth Day: Appreciate that the age of Earth gives it a viscosity of change that’s born from what gave the Earth its durability across eons. Risks to cimate change (that we’re waking up to recognizing now) have been building for a century or more—for millennia, since the Roman Empire established an urban desire for lead-made conveniences long before the Industrial Revolution (and long after the Golden Age of Greek origination).

So, even if world leaders could make the Climate Action Treaty work, two generations would pass before the Earth’s thin skin on rock was back to where it was before the first Earth Day, 1970.

Literally, We are shepherds of our future on this planet, in terms of what we make of generations making a difference in terms of a life made by days and hours. The Earth adjusts without regard for its species. Equatorial Earth can become as dusty as Mars, while life moves toward the poles. (In the year 2200, our heirs may see their hologramic telepathy module reminding that "You, too, can win a trip to Antarctica").

Our precious stories about how the Earth arose, and our precious stories of how the future should go mean nothing to Nature.

One academic writer recently cautioned that we need to learn “how to die in the Anthropocene,” but his point was (1) that there is the Anthro-
pocene: Once upon a time there was not; and (2) it may come to pass that We—our heirs—are no longer, as the Earth plods on regardless.

The Question of Being is how to live in the Anthropocene, how to govern Our evolving—how to secure Good Governance without killing millions of persons beyond the carrying capacity of the planet.

It's all about our lives at small scale. What are we voting for? What's worth consumption?

You know the routine, like friends' obese happiness "knows" you're right to care. (Give Mr. "I know I'm gambling" a Darwin Award!)

A mountain climber, a scientific researcher, an artist, a heart attack survivor knows that great achievement is done step by step by step. Otherwise, great achievement doesn’t happen, because It can’t be done except minute by minute, life by life.

In fact, I'm highly optimistic, deeply with optimistic others, about our potential for making fair flourishing prevail, beyond the “wisdom of the crowd,” rather: For a wisdom of the fair flourishing folks—the best intelligence of Earth prevailing for the future of humanity, as if the Earth learns to govern its own emergent intelligence (now, exobiologically attuning) for lasting, fair cohering of Our telic time-space.

Be for fair flourishing and lastingness.