Saving the Planet – or – saving the People on the Planet.
This was my first thought this morning.
Facing the possibility of the planet reclaiming the earth back from the people sounds like a fine plan to me. Almost comforting.
Not a popular thought obviously!
But would it be such a dreadful thing if the people on the planet went extinct too?
Left to himself I am fairly sure Jude and Free Bee will lean on the fences till they fall down then the hogs will wander off, and as long as there are no men with guns, Jude will be just fine. Out here anyway.
The cows will be fine. The electricity will have gone off so all the electric fences will be down and they can roam and graze and find water in the creeks. The water will slowly clear up. The fields will grow long.
The chickens will even do ok as long as the wheat is left in the fields to go wild and they are able to find shelter. We know they are fertile!
Mr Flowers will be more than fine.
Even the cats will do ok. Though I hope they don’t because they kill so many birds.
The coyotes will keep the deer on the move.
The beavers will take over the waterways. The trees will grow wild.
The sea will do what the sea does when people are not using it as a garbage dump.
I actually quite like the idea of the planet rumbling along without us.
It will be better off. Different from what we expect I am sure. But reclamation would commence immediately.
So is it just me, BooBoo and Nelson who will not be able to sustain ourselves? (Well, I won’t be here – no people remember). And Boo is pretty good hunter. I have a feeling the planet will just do the renovations and after a couple of thousand years all our ugly buildings and horrible mass produced weapons and misery and ambition and buzzwords and emojis and wars and bikinis and computers and bitching about the internet will be gone.
And not in a dark armageddon + machines taking over the planet kind of way. The moment the batteries need maintenance they will stop in their tracks. I think the earths recovery would be in a green over-grown, natural, weedy, algae, insecty, stinky composty survival of the fittest kind of way.
Time would erase us.
That’s what I was thinking about when I woke up this morning – preparing to do battle with the world again.
Just do it right, today.
No more saying – just this once. Or just one more.
Do the best you can.
Forgive your-self for the stuff you just can’t get right (like milk containers and plastic wrapping around cheese) and get on with the clean up.
So, when the earth finally does begin to take its power back there is less trash for it to absorb.
That sounds fair. Right?
Is that too heavy for a Monday?
Celi
48 Comments on “Saving the Planet – or – saving the People on the Planet.”
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Too dark?
I like this post and your sentiments….My question is do we humans deserve to continue?…..not sure about that!
I just like the idea of the trees and bushes and weeds reclaiming all our silliness.
I feel the same way:)
Not too dark. Actually hopeful! Maybe our species doesn’t have to survive and maybe that’s not a bad thing for every other species. In the meantime, we can drastically lessen our negative impact on earth.
Yes! The noise is to Save the Planet but what we are really saying is save US on the planet. A totally different narratve. We can do a lot by focusing directly on the earth herself. Thank you Gayle!
I am sometimes hugely over-whelmed at the number of people everywhere—so, maybe you are on to something.
There are a lot of people – and a LOT of trash!!
I know. And not enough forests, or beaches or
I have thought of this many times as I age.
The world is overpopulated and will only get worse.
Climate change will strengthen making our lives and those of all other creatures eventually unsustainable.
Too much poverty, severe illness and so many wars.
I think planet earth would be far better without humans.
I think the planet would be better off without humans, but I’d be worried about nucear waste and power stations. Perhaps the pigs have a plan 😉
Nuclear power plants are really something right? They can’t be turned off and where is all that nuclear waste really going! And how many trains racing through the night carry nuclear waste as cargo – more than we like to think! .
Yes, it takes thousands of years to degrade to a safe state. If only we’d died out of Spanish Flu in the 1920s, the world and animals would have been safe. I get cross about SiFi movies, where humans abandon a decimated Earth for another planet, which no doubt they will similarly pollute.
I love this train of thought C! What a wonderful image- a lush green vibrant sphere with clean water, clean land, healthy species of all sorts minus the humans for as long as necessary. Sometimes I think the best place for all of us is on a dark, dense planet full of toxic stuff so that we must live underground with minimal resources. Cave dwellers of a very specific and regulated world. I wonder if we would learn anything about stewardship of the land above us and see ourselves in a different light? Maybe for awhile but I don’t think man is designed to be tolerant of that type of lifestyle for long. We WANT too much, no matter the cost.
Has a bit of hope here
Firstly, the bloody mink will return in droves and kill off all your chooks. But fingers crossed, they’ll choke on a chicken bone, and sweet Boo might too because he does know chook bones will kill him. And maybe you and I should never again board an aeroplane to see our children and grandchildren, or visit family on a different continent because all this off-set carbon footprint is just a way to make us feel good about long haul flights. And, yes, too dark, c, because I’m going to see my grandchildren and my children this Christmas, and I’ll do so until my fragile bones and joints can’t take it anymore. Nope, I’m not ready to pop my clogs, and let Earth re-wild itself yet. 😂 Oy!
That bloody bastard mink. You are right about the planes. I know. I do my best with my personal carbon co-pays but like you – nothing is going to keep me form my kids again – that pandemic almost did me in. I love my re-wilding fields though – I must show you those soon – one more meeting to go then I am coming over to your blog! Merciful heaven what a long day!!
Are you following the no-till method for your kitchen garden? No tilling, no digging so no carbon is released from the soil. We’ve been doing this for about 3-years now. A lot of organic farms are going this route, although seeding/sowing does require special machinery for large holdings. And I’m with you about family. I lost 3-years of my grandchildren’s life. It hurts. Still hurts. Covid is like those bastard mink, c.
The no-tilling method is what we use here in the Ozark Mountains in our raised beds. We had to create our own soil as it is rare here. Just a thin, delicate layer of topping over rocks, lots of them. The no-till works great and we can utilize and build our soil.
Absolutely!! 👍🏻
It is great for small gardens. All my old gardens are no till now. We will be breaking new ground this summer so there will be tilling to begin.
The early months of the pandemic seem to restore our waterways, the air and fields. Alas that didn’t last too long .
The waterways are so important. It just makes me weep knowing what is leaching into the water. And being dumped in to the rivers.
It is actually a ray of hope. I loved all the reclamation stories during Covid, elk wandering down main streets and empty freeways. The earth would be better off.
I sometimes think of our planet as a single organism and we are the cancer.
I loved how the wild animals lifted their heads and began to take back the streets! And being able to see the stars! But very soon that all finished. It does show what we can do though – except a lot of people/countries were plunged into poverty because of it.
Wow! Good image. We ARE the cancer. I’m in total agreement with you Cecilia. Humans don’t deserve to be here. Period.
Well – if we work with the earth instead of just on it – I think we could get along a lot better.
We would do well to listen and listen closely to our Indigenous peoples. Their wisdom and knowledge has been overlooked for far too long.
Absolutely true. Thank you so much for the reminder!
Michael Crichton expressed the same perspective in his novel Jurassic Park in 1990, along the lines of ‘when we say we want to save the planet, we’re really saying we want to save us humans. The Earth will be just fine if we disappear, in fact, better than before.’
Yes! So true though – once we shift our perspective to really doing no more harm to the planet it becomes very serious. It is even clearer at that point that we are the problem!
Indeed. I’ve worked on these issues for 30 years, collaborating with all the major environmental agencies and teaching university courses on sustainability. I was one of the authors of the UN’s Global Environmental Outlook published in 2002 and it’s only when I look back that I see many positive changes but still so much to be done. It takes serious political will, serious financing and a lot of individual effort (aka behaviour change) – I always told my students, ‘No one expects you to do everything but everyone can do something!’ I decided about 20 years ago to get plastic out of my life and my house – it’s an ongoing battle.
It is an ongoing battle. I take workshops for people who are just beginning and don’t know where to start. It can be quite daunting when in actual fact most of it is common sense.
It sounds like you were on the world stage with sustainable living. I am so glad to have you here with us.
Reclamation of the planet by the planet for the planet and its inhabitants, of which only the human species is the problem. It’s not only population but also consumption facilitated by an imbalance of affluence. Not too dark at all… lightworkers manifest by various forms and means.
“Reclamation of the planet by the planet for the planet and its inhabitants” – there you have it in a nutshell Dale!
You know I was inspired by another famous proclamation… takes it a step further.
I do like this thought you wrote Celi, “Do the best you can.’ If each and every one of us does just that we should be able to move in the right direction toward sustainability.
Yes! I think so. It feels huge but only when we look at it as one single person. Once we realize that if many people can do as much as they are able there will be a huge change – then it feels more positive.
In fact that is the thrust of The Sustainable Home workshops. I can’t wait to get that landing page live and linked to thekitchensgarden- then it will be official!
Look at all those lovely eggs! I would sell my grandmother for some – your grandmother anyway
I have often wondered and asked other people of what use are we to the planet – could it get along fine without us – are we part of the balance or not. No one told me of a necessity for us being here.
Not dark… I would actually like to have all trace of my presence on this planet erased by green. I’d like to become food, and soil, and water. I’d like to drift off the surface and become oxygen, or space dust. I would like to become something Other, as part of the planet’s evolution, not being too greatly attached to my own humanity. Perhaps I could learn to Tree, or maybe Stream, or Bee…
A growing number of people share your thoughts. Not too dark for a Monday. It will happen sooner or later.
Hi Michael- I hear people all the time (me included) banging on about saving the planet when what we really worry about is saving the people and the animals on the planet. It is an interesting flip of the narrative, don’t you think?
Oddly, ultimately I suspect they are the same thing. Or rather, if we speak about saving future generations we must think about dramatically reducing consumption and most likely population.
Which was a discussion I remember having back in the 70’s.
It is ongoing, sadly……
Yes. We just keep doing as much as we can.
That is all we can do.