There is an ocean of plastic strangling our sea beasts. In
remote terrain the rainfall is poisoned and the rivers polluted even when there
is nothing upstream to explain the sickly deluge. Animal species are
increasingly becoming extinct. Gone forever. The human encroachment is even
threatening the honeybees which carry the seeds.
The wealth-addicted have presumed the authority to continue
their devastation of our natural resources on a global scale and the ordinary
person is feeling overwhelmed and defeated by the unchecked onslaught. The
faceless corporations have been given person status thus legitimizing their
psychopathic conduct and they are behind
the wheel of the bulldozers uprooting
our lives and creating a wild imbalance.
This planetary plundering contributes to a state of
paralyzing fear. Moral sense is succumbing to the shadows which will outreach
now across generations.
Welcome to the dark side of the Doomsday Clock and the
results of our collective inertia.
We did not entitle the wealth-addicted to take such
unmitigated liberties with our home. Their industrial activity brutalizes our delicately balanced earth and its visually stunning creatures; pollutes our uproarious seas and thrashing rivers; even our mountain streams and the skies are in their stranglehold. How many more
whales will beach themselves and how many more bumblebees will perish before we
demand that the obscenely rich pay their dues back to the soil, back to the air
we breathe and back to the extremely impoverished who are the victims of this
hysteria?
The obsessed bean-counters need to be taken to task. The few
people among us who have not misplaced their moral compass need to speak up, to
agitate, to arouse the populace of what’s left of the civilized world to raise
a banner and a sword if need be to arrest their criminal activity,
to take the keys away from the maniacs and drive our ecology back some
semblance of balance.
Or is it too late? Is the damage done irreversible? Some
scientists would, despairing, say, Yes. Yes it is too late. But what choice do
we have? We have to act. Gathering to “occupy” is like attempting to swat one
fly in a furious black cloud. Meandering on city streets en masse amounts to no more than a day off work.
We need an agenda. And it will not be scripted by a
politician nor a lawyer, all too busy with their convoluted gabfests.
Start at your bank. The first item on the agenda which would
have an impact, at least to awaken the establishment to our power. Withdraw
your money. You can count. Disengage from these institutions which extract your
cash at the expense of your time and your peace of mind. To hell with their
management of your capital, their creepy fees and their penalties. Then
withdraw your consumer support of those products which are superfluous in your
life. Assure that you do not buy products from any corporation which pays its
CEO’s and directors any more than two million dollars a year. Identify the
parent companies of all those household products which they pitch us repeatedly.
Stop buying these poisons. Interfere with this ghastly, death-delivering cycle.
And until the production of plastic shopping bags is outlawed, bring your own
bag to carry home your goods. can have an impact. And these are a few simple
tips that could have a real impact. No more excuses.
And then insist that the few super-rich who manage the bulk
of the capital of the world they don’t wait until they’re dead to bequeath
their money to charity but to use it now to buy the land required to protect
the endangered species around the globe. The clock is ticking. Buy in Africa, India, and
those countries which host the last of the remaining numbers of our tigers,
rhinos, elephants et al; and soon to be added to this grim list the elegant,
iconic giraffe.
In the last 50 years we have lost 60% of all of our species.
Extinct. Never to return. The bell is ringing. It’s time, now, to launch the
rescue mission. Keep sounding that alarm in your every conversation. Interrupt
the digi-dolts on their texting toys to communicate to them the urgency of this
message.
People without hope, despair and become users of drugs.
Punishing them for their despair is hardly an answer. Support the creation of
rehab farms to take the place of sadistic jails to help people to rediscover
their personhood, their integrity, their morals and their blossoming health. We
will need all that renewed citizenry to chip in to this revolution. Maybe then.
Maybe. Maybe we’ll raise our banner high enough that hope will return.
Empty houses dot our neighbouring landscapes like warts. The
children don’t go to school from that house. The mother doesn’t go shopping.
The father doesn’t buy tools at Home Hardware for his latest project. The
grandparents don’t visit. No one from that house will encounter a neighbour and
join them for coffee at their favourite restaurant. No one there will order
pizza or subscribe to a newspaper. No barbeques or conversations across the
fence. No gardening or music playing. No dancing or laughter. These houses are
black moral holes owned by some shell company hiding the criminal money flowing
in from a communist country or a deposed dictator’s account.
Now count the increasing number of homeless people shivering
on church stairs facing a locked door.
Meanwhile, the criminal gangs are buying land and houses and
businesses with their ill gotten proceeds; the proceeds derived from poisoning
our children with their dope; while the RCMP gang squad set up a sting
operation at a cost of millions to entrap two morons who thought it might be
cool to be called terrorists – a thought the RCMP undercover guy planted. The
case gets tossed. Go figure.
Greed is an infection, a virus, but insidious and highly contagious.
Its corrupting force brings itself to bear even upon the juvenile mind… and
from what I can observe of what is popular on television or in the movie-making
business, the mass of men lead lives of salacious juvenile anxiety. That greed is of a
spiritual well-spring, its visibility is found manifest in the dearth of lively
curiosity; and physically in the humdrum, boxy architecture of modern
condominiums and the gawdy, self-absorbed abstractions that pass as art. Whining
and public displays of grief are taken to heart as being somehow meaningful
while the only ones left laughing all the way to the bank are the bankers. The
insidious virus that is greed may be winning the day for the obscenely rich but
their deathbed throes will tell the tale of the emptiness and ultimate fear
that has ruled their roost in private, unseen ways.
But the impoverished may take heart in the knowing that the gobbledygook
of lawyers will not impact the thunder. The sly strategies of the politician
will not amuse the universal lawgiver. The wealth addicted will not stay the
hand of Nature. In that, we, the downtrodden, may enjoy some old-fashioned, hand-rubbing
glee.
Nature
will have its way.
We need leaders and we won’t find them among the politicians
or in that system where those elected to represent our concerns are more
concerned about being re-elected.
Partisan voting at the expense of our environment is immoral. Republicans
crushed Obama’s efforts to make real change. Their constant partisan voting
delivered to the world the election of a
man whose egomania is now behind the controls of a super-power.
The leaders we desperately need won’t be found among the black-robed
men and women enjoying another round of
court cases obfuscating the issues bearing down upon the health of the earth
and its inhabitants. Enormous amounts of the peoples’ capital is being wasted
on nuisance trials and appeals. When it is obvious what needs to be done to
rescue a people or a species, these word-twisters throw roadblocks in the way
assuming the guise of championing individual rights. They are causing havoc and people are dying,
i.e. waiting for organ transplants from
the reduced list of donors thanks to some fussy lawyer preventing donor status
from appearing on driver’s licenses. Decisions for the public good can’t be
made and acted upon because exorbitantly expensive bafflegabbers are jamming up
the system with their endless arguments.
The decisions required are of a global scale. A global
Council of Elders, educated men and women, needs to be established to contend
with the global issues which are demanding action today. They must be empowered, apolitical and with
only one clear cut objective: the rescuing of our earth and its inhabitants;
and then in that effort they may well discover the need to include in the
rescue plan a new distribution of wealth, ending the hoarding and extreme
accumulation of funds which have tilted the world toward this gloomy forecast.
The Council members may also take note that the surest way
to prevent the environmental calamity is by leaving Nature alone. Stop all
industrial harvesting, let the earth breathe and rehabilitate itself. Let us
all abide by a hands-off policy for a year and witness then the remarkable
regenerative power of earth and its oceans to bring about its own healing.
Either way: Nature will have its way.
It seemed obvious to me
that Walt was just trying to bring more joy into our world – a world full of
colour and children’s laughter; play-rides; Donald Ducks; and Goofies; Mickey
Mouse and the rest of his playful gang. and such. Even while dying from lung
cancer from an excess of smoking and riding along too many Malboro Men, his
last words to his employees: “Keep up the good work, fellas.” Well, Walt, that works for me. So does your
optimism. And that’s what you and your vision was all about: Optimism. 
