As I write, hurricane Harvey is preparing for another
onslaught on Houston and the surrounding areas. There has never before been a
storm like it.
More than 50” of rain has fallen in 3 days, sea surges of 15ft
are expected, displacement of humans and wildlife is such that if it was a war
zone people would still be shocked.
This lonely blue planet is the nearest thing we have to
paradise. We are hunting through the universe for similar life supporting zones,
so far nothing even slightly resembling this blue dot has been found. We are
sending out messages in the hope that somewhere, somehow, they will be picked
up by other life forms. Maybe they should have been Mayday messages, for
knowing, as we do, that this blue paradise is all we have, we cannot bring
ourselves to respect it, enhance it, protect it.
The events in Houston were predictable – warming seas, more
moisture in the atmosphere, a slowing jet stream, polar ice melt… the list is
very long. We have known much of what we know now since the 1970’s. Many
individuals have declared intellectual independence and fought the tide of
consumerism and waste with great success. It is entirely possible to live as a
one planet person. But these cherished individuals do not make up a world
population – itself rising faster than the waters of Texas.
Instead of hearing the voices of science and reason, the
inhabitants of this one habitable planet have chosen to block their ears. Seduced
by the god of money they have chosen to pollute, spend, waste. They have turned
flood land into concrete deserts, poisoned the air we breathe, turned the seas
into plastic soup and built nuclear weapons to protect us from ourselves.
And the media reports the cost to the economy, the cost of
insurance, the cost to GDP, that 2 million barrels of oil are lost a day… and
so we fall.
The rains in Houston are so bad that the weather forecasting
service had to invent new colours to describe the deluge. It will stop of
course, for a while. And the desertification of other areas will inexorably march
steadily onwards. And the nuclear waste from Fukushima will seep ever more
poison into the ocean, and the cars will keep driving on fossil fuels…. and we
fall further.
The tipping point has been a long time coming. Between the
water and the desert there will be places to live safely, to grow crops and
live a good life. But there will be a lot less room, and self-preservation will
not bring out the best in humans.
After he had written Paradise Lost, Milton wrote Paradise
Regained. It is an altogether more simple work, emphasising the possibility of
reversal.
We have been bombarded with the ridiculousness of a
debt-based money supply in order to keep the economy going, bewildered by
political sleight-of-hand from short sighted careerists, muzzled by an
explosion of conflicting information, and malnourished ourselves on a diet of
GM crops, pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones and antibiotics. We may need
a spiritual redemption, but more than that, we need a practical redemption.
Humans are both God and Satan. The possibility of reversal
is in our hands. The path of no change is clear, but the path of reversing our
impoverished way of life has never been clearer. Complexity has led us to an
existential crisis. The clarity of simplicity can lead to something richer.
Redemption is a revolution in thought. Our food supplies,
our monetary system, our energy, building practices, our education, they can
all be rethought and simplified. Collaborative human thought and action can
rise above the tribulations of neo-liberal market capitalism and return us to
the values we all share and the ways in which we would rather live our lives.
Blood does not have to be spilt in this revolution, sweat
does. Tears are being shed daily, now. The shadow of Katrina is long. The
shadow of Harvey will be longer. How long will the shadows have to be before we
change to a healthier, more inclusive society.
Paradise can be regained. The possibility of reversal will
always be with us, but the law of diminishing returns ensures that acting now
is more fruitful than acting later. A telescope looking at us from another
world would ask, ‘What is taking them so long?’
