Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

the spirit of connection S 139
derelict stewards, and unworthy of the appellation Homo sapiens.
We are driving other species into oblivion and the Earth into a
period of great and tragic instability. In his opening statement
the fox states that: “Humans live beyond the limits and laws of
nature and believe this to be their right. For every St. Francis,
there are tens of thousands—no, hundreds of thousands—who are
destroyers and killers, believing themselves exempt from the laws
of community, decency, and courtesy, and millions more who give
no thought to such things whatsoever. In fact, they are no more
than rapacious and clever monkeys, but without the monkey’s
good judgment.” Laughter erupts in the jury box; when it subsides
the fox goes on. “Without the restraints of a small population, an
all-embracing religion, law informed by nature, an ecologically
grounded philosophy, technological incompetence, or even foresight,
said to be their chief glory, humans are doomed, as some of
their own have said, and deserve the death sentence before they
take most of us with them. We must banish them from the Earth
forever, and the sooner the better. I ask you, in the name of your
children and your children’s children, to sentence humankind to
death at dawn.” Members of the jury, excepting the cockroaches,
mosquitoes, bedbugs, and kudzu, seem to mumble their assent as
if in unison.
The defense has to contend with numerous complexities.
Perhaps humans, for all of their protestations to the contrary, are
haunted by a collective death wish, as Freud once thought. Perhaps
we really are not so much a rational species as we are exceedingly
clever rationalizers. Again, the evidence cannot be lightly
dismissed. The sources of irrationality are many, starting with the
still small voice of our genes that moves us to do their bidding
and extending through our ineptitude at seeing patterns and systems
and acting accordingly. Perhaps our evolutionary career has
hardwired us to myopic tribal loyalties. Maybe we are just sinful
and fallen, deserving of death excepting the redeemed, as fundamentalists
would have it. Having multiplied extravagantly and