Late afternoon. The sun – an angry red orb – peeks through a veil of smoke. The world beyond burns. The official start of the fire season is still months away and yet the land is already scorched. The lingering smell of burnt eucalpyt fills the air. The birds, having escaped the furnace, aren’t present to welcome the coming twilight.
In exercising our dominion over nature, we have forgotten that it’s only nature that’s eternal.
Walking the earth, consuming her resources, we have understated the role of the fossil fuels that power our livelihoods. Fuels created over millennia are consumed in the spark of a car’s ignition, the switch of a lamp.
Moreover, our world is reformed as that consumption leads to pollution.
Greenhouse effects, global warming. Bush fire seasons without end.
Yet, standing amid the blackened earth, I stand within the means of our own redemption!
Let us harness the rays of that angry red sun, have it power our future. Let the wind and the kinetic energy of the waves spin turbines to generate electricity. Let us no longer gouge the earth for coal and minerals but green areas that now stand bare. Let us embrace the might of the world itself with renewable sources of energy and allow for our scorched earth to heal itself.
That it may become a playground for the generations that follow.
Let our rallying cry begin with carbon offsetting and evolve beyond mere economics to harness a new science.
I shift the dark soil beneath my feet. My eyes catch a glimpse of color. From beneath the blackened earth, there springs a single blade of grass, green as if it were born of a new morning. That this world can be reborn without the interference of humankind is obvious. That we need to let it, essential. We need only give it a chance.
-Duane Shore