Fiddling while we burn

I have some pretty dark thoughts about our earth's future.

But mostly, I keep them to myself.

They sound too apocalyptic -- and frankly, too paranoid.

I keep reminding myself, however, that I'm not generally regarded as a crazy person.

Nor am I prone to fantasy -- though I am bent to wasting time.

Precious time.

Time that might be usefully done manning the gates as the barbarians storm them.

I thought I was alone, or nearly alone, in my fantasies, until I heard the beginning of an interview with a nature writer, and novelist named Peter Heller.

Heller, who generally writes about real-world travel, decided to imagine a world in which most of the population had been wiped out by a pandemic.

He said that he thinks a lot about extinction -- and, in the process, alluded to the sixth great extinction.

Wow.  When it came to the first five, I'd missed the memo!

Was this a theory by a bunch of wackos?

Indeed not.

Some scientists argue that within 300 years, seventy-five percent of species could be gone -- because of human behavior. (Of course, they could also be saved, many of them, by changing the manner in which we live).

I'm not alone in my grim thoughts, my "Hunger Games" nightmares.

Some comfort.

Today, (thanks so much, NPR),  "Fresh Air" featured Michael Lemonick, a science writer from Climate Central, who basically says that we may have passed the point of no return.

But life goes on, doesn't it?

What I find incredible is how many of us have become seduced (myself included), by the pseudo-community of the Internet, focused not on action but on our tweets and our status updates.

Political debates become reduced to dueling pictures taken from some aggregator's Facebook page -- or harsh words exchanged in virtual time.

Cute animal pictures vie with news about the kids and the grands.

It's not that any of this is bad -- it's that it is all so stunningly irrelevant to the size of the threat we face.

Already the drought, for example, has raised prices for corn and soybeans -- how will that affect the food supply, not solely for the world's poor, but for those of us who live in relative comfort?

What are our moral obligations?

How does this speak to our faith -- or lack of faith?

I realize that this isn't a popular point of view -- so I rarely share it, except with people I know are similarly inclined.

And I also understand that many of us feel powerless, so we focus on what we can, or believe we can, affect.

Yet it seems to me that there is power in community, in shared goals, in aspirations that connect us to something greater.

In many ways, virtual communities in democratic countries seem to have made us less, not more free.

I am not so ignorant as to think myself more impassioned about the future of our planet, and our children, than you.

Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic.

Possibly I am too convinced, too self-righteous.

But I wrestle with whether I am, in some way, supporting a denial that may prove, frankly, harmful, or ultimately fatal to our species.

And I'm not sure, not at all sure, what to do to salve my conscience, if not make a true difference.

Perhaps these small decisions have an effect.

Those of us who are alarmists have an obligation, at the least, to find out.