I woke up feeling super sad.   I woke up thinking about the state of our planet, and the fact that it’s mostly America’s selfish and shortsighted corporatist leaders that don’t give a damn about taking care of it or leaving it intact for future generations, who are at fault.   The things they do don’t just affect life and the environment within our own borders; their actions affect the entire world.  But they don’t care.

Greedy corporatists are concerned only about short term profits.  They gleefully go about raping and pillaging the land and dumping toxic waste into our oceans.   They think nothing of destroying the earth’s beauty and delicate ecosystems for short term gain — at the expense of human life, animal life, and all our ecosystems that sustain and nourish all life on this world.

I remember back in the 1970s when the EPA was formed and finally, polluted rivers, lakes that used to catch on fire from the petroleum deposits on their surfaces, and dark,  sooty unbreathable air in the cities began to clean themselves up because of new regulations that kept further pollution at a minimum or even eliminated it completely.

After several decades passed, the differences really began to show and these formerly toxic places became clean and liveable again.  Lakes and rivers that had been poisoned with industrial waste became swimmable and even their water became drinkable in some cases. It became possible to see a clear view even in big cities instead of a miasma of lung clogging smog.

Now we have a group of wealthy sociopaths  running everything, corporatists who want to ditch all those regulations and take us back to the bad old days.  They don’t care about our children, about animals, about future generations, or the future of life in general on this planet, as they happily go about blowing up mountaintops for more coal deposits, fracking for more oil, clearcutting forests, digging in the Gulf of Mexico and in our oceans for yet more oil, and destroying our beloved national monuments that bring joy and wonder to so many people, to sell to the highest bidder.   They make fun of those of us who hate what they are doing.  They call us socialists and snowflakes because we care about endangered species and want to preserve the earth’s beauty and want laws to protect our home from human exploitation and greed.

“Corporations and far right capitalists who want to get rid of regulations say it’s because they prevent growth. They want unlimited growth, even if the loss of protective laws destroys life on this planet. Guess what else is characterized by uncontrolled growth that kills? Cancer.”

This is a beautiful, unusual planet that evolved in a way perfectly suited for all kinds of life. Maybe in some other solar system or galaxy there are other earthlike planets suited for our kind of life, but we are not that advanced yet and have no way to travel to those planets, if they exist.   In the meantime, this planet is the only one we have.  If it dies, we go with it.

The planet is being destroyed by these greedy corporatists who don’t care about it, or anything on it, and stubbornly refuse to consider sustainable technology that other countries are doing, and it makes me so angry and sad.  That’s why today I woke up almost in tears.

If we don’t change our ways soon, we are going to be responsible for the extinction of so many species and the destruction of so much beauty and unique plant and animal life, and that may even include ourselves. Some people even believe humanity is about to become extinct, because the earth will prevail somehow, and do what it needs to do to rid itself of us, if we don’t do the job ourselves.   Maybe that’s true, and if it is, maybe we deserve that fate for how we have treated the only home we have.

If you’re a religious person who believes God created the earth, what right do we have to treat it the way we do?   Even the Bible tells us God wants us to use the earth sustainably and be stewards of it, not destroy it.  Right wing Christians who insist that taking care of the environment is a sin because it shows a lack of faith that God will replenish what we use are talking out of their arses.   That’s like saying that teenagers who throw a party while their parents are out shouldn’t have to clean up their mess because that would show a lack of faith in their parents’ ability to do so.   Maybe it’s true God CAN clean up our mess and replenish what we destroyed, but really, why should he?   Why would we deserve anything but annihilation if we blithely destroy the home we were given?

It’s just so damn sad.   For whatever reason, human empathy seems to be disappearing and without it, only death and destruction awaits.  Even higher animals have empathy.  We need to work on getting it back, and we need to teach children how important it is to care about each other and about other species too.   The lack of empathy is what’s wrong with our country, and with the whole human species.  Our lack of it will ultimately spell the end of life as we know it.  We must stop our predatory, selfish ways and reverse them, and we need to do it immediately, before it’s too late.

I love this beautiful planet.   It’s a rare gem in the vastness of space and we are blessed to be able to call it home.   I deplore what selfish, arrogant people are doing to it in the name of greed.   They don’t ever stop to think that they aren’t invincible either.  When the planet dies at their hands, they will die too.