A couple million years ago, God granted humanity a lease that may soon be running out.

This lease was a very unique one, for it allowed us as the human species to live on Planet Earth, a planet that, as far as we know, is the only celestial body capable of supporting life.

And yet, despite the refuge Earth gives us in the freezing vacuum of space, we have turned it into a ticking time bomb.

In the past century and a half, three Gods, which I call the “Economic Gods,” have seduced humanity into the destruction of its own planet: Growth, Capitalism, and Free Markets.

The Economic Gods have reconfigured our worldview to only see the world in a manner that conforms to Economic Growth: where wildlands are called “resources” and “resources” need to be supposedly “developed”

These three Gods, to whom we’ve all become unwitting servants, rule the world unquestioned, with hardly a murmur of dissent- it is broadly assumed that Global Capitalism is the only viable model for a sustainable world economy, and that if Capitalism as it stands (which has now entered its volatile and dangerous Late Stage) entails a new, genocidal era of mass extinction, that “we had better get over it” because “new jobs and a growing economy are more important anyways.” Continue reading →

The world is beautiful yet painfully precious

A few weeks ago I had an experience that I can’t seem to get out of my mind.

I was in Havana, Cuba, sitting on the seawall that lines the city, watching the rows of the mirrorlike waves as they rolled in from the emptiness of the ocean. The night had a strange beauty to it: an incandescent fan of sunlight had gathered over the western horizon, and the heavy swells of the Atlantic heaved up slowly, unfurling over the barnacle-encrusted rocks with an oil-like fluidity.

Contemplating this scene, I remember thinking what a beautiful, what a magnificent, what an utterly precious planet we live on. Though that thought inevitably led me to a horrible question, a question that’s haunted me for the majority of my life: what would it be like if our Earth were to die.

And then I grew sad, for I remembered, in that moment, that such a possibility is right on our doorstep.

Continue reading →