Where's the Freaking Passion?

It's probably just too much caffeine, but I fear not. I mean, where's the freaking passion?

To wit:

James Hansen says we've got less than ten years -- ten years! to prevent the levels of CO2 from rising to a level where they are certain to trigger a self-perpetuating cycle of "catastrophic climate change..."

We're already seeing ominous signs that ten years may not be enough to prevent the ongoing crisis of environmental collapse.

For example:

The Apiary Inspectors of America report that a quarter of the nation's bees are gone, and no one knows why.

(It reminds me of the epidemic of stories that began to appear in the early 1990s about the disappearing and deformed frogs -- which were attributed to all sorts of causes, including increasing UV (from ozone-depletion, thank you DuPont), endocrine-disrupting chemicals, habitat loss, etc.)

There have been large outbreaks of fish-killing viruses in the Great Lakes and elsewhere.

"Somewhere between 2.7 and 270 species are erased from existence every day." Including Earth Day.

Barry Commoner once said that the first rule of ecology is that "everything is connected to everything else."

So that every day we are essentially losing a part of ourselves. And to live in the kind of denial necessary to maintain the illusion that everything is fine, the dosage of the opiates of the people will have to be raised.

Marx said "religion is the opiate of the people," but that was before television. I don't know about you, but when I visit a friend or relative who has hundreds of cable TV channels, I can surf all night.

The point is, we've all become addicts. We're addicted to fatuous emotions. To oil. To guns. To shooting people for their oil in god's name. And to the Internet, where I just found this quote from Kurt Vonnegut:

"Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on."

And we're addicted to cigarettes and sodas and NASCAR and b-ball (go Bulls!) and golf (talk about fucking with nature) and cell phones...

Which reminds me of those bees.

To me it's not surprising that biologists believe that half of the species alive will be gone by the end of the century. What surprises me, given commoner's rule, is that we expect that the rest of the species will still be around!

I certainly won't be. And nor will you. And since we grow up to think about very little but ourselves in this society, our careers, our genitalia, our bills, what came in the mail, we manage somehow to put it all out of mind. Maybe we'll plant a few trees and give a few more bucks to the Sierra Club next year to assuage our conscience. But have you ever REALLY tried to imagine what life will be like seven generations from now?

a couple more quotes I found on the web:

"More than at any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
- Woody Allen

"Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness."
(by the author of The Mass Psychology of Fascism)

Religious or not, some people seem to still have genuine hope for humanity.

I hope there's hope. But sorry, that's about as far as I can go for now.