Seeing our world as a single pixel in the immense darkness is in itself a statement about our true circumstances in the cosmos, and one that every single human can grasp instantly. We have gotten clever enough to dispatch a spacecraft four billion miles away and command it to send us back an image of Earth. It exemplifies just the kind of breakthrough that I think of as a fulfillment of Einstein’s hope for science. “The “pale blue dot” image and Carl’s prose meditation on it have been beloved the world over ever since. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. Just another closed-end biological mistake.
Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet.
People trying to make the world safe for Volvos.
I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet.
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