by Ibon » Fri 02 Oct 2015, 08:08:22
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'H')aving said that I need to relate that two nights ago we experienced one of the most beautiful evenings ever. The moon was full and reflecting on the waters surface, the water had ripples where the fish broached or simply nosed the air. Crickets, katydids, and frogs murmured from the shore. The air temperature was just perfect.
All was peaceful and right with the world.
At times such as those I find it impossible to contemplate the end of it all, the beauty and completeness of this little bit of the world overwhelmed me.
It is all surreal, we are at the limits of our ability to comprehend. The feelings, if you give into to them and let them wash over you, are too much, crushing, heart rendering. It's more than this mere mortal can contain.
Newfie, your sentiments are so important to share. Regardless on how analytical some of us approach this topic, at the end of the day all of us here are compelled to put peak oil and human overshoot under the microscope because the problem is existential in nature. Also Pops once rightly mentioned that this site serves primarily as a social networking site where we come together to share facts BUT also come together to understand a topic that is overwhelming when you are alone and consider it. We are in a way a big cyber AAA club and support group for confronting our species consumption addiction. And just like an alcoholic whose addiction destroys families and relationships so does our species consumption addiction threaten the community of life around us, our biosphere. The similarities are quite profound actually. Except for the fact that nature does not wound easily.
For Onlooker also who I sense is at the moment feeling acutely the despair of upcoming consequences its so important to take a reference point away from the data, the threads, the reminders constantly when you are looking around in your urban or suburban environment and seeing all the dysfunction, and to sit in a boat under a full moon or go into the mountains or even a small meadow or field at the edge of suburbia. There is a constant hum in natural areas, a resilience and biodiversity that is still very much intact.
You can despair for our species who currently walks the knifes edge. You can despair for some keystone predators that will perish as we move through overshoot. You can despair the biodiversity loss of certain bioregions that are at the wrong place at the wrong time (SE Asia for example) but all and all there is no reason to despair. Our biosphere will go through a minor hiccup with what humans are doing right now. I will repeat this a thousand times; natural ecosystems are far more resilient than human ecosystems in bouncing back and adapting to changes we are causing. This will all be something between a minor and moderate extinction event but the glass will still be very much full on the other side.
There are still vast areas of nature, some whole, some fragmented, but even those fragmented areas are refuges out of which nature will recolonize human landscapes that go into decline in the century ahead.
I have shared this already before but it was such a poignant moment in my understanding I will share it again. One day stuck in traffic in South Florida years ago, I was in the left hand turn lane waiting for the green light. 5 lanes each direction, a vast sea of concrete and metal moving cars, and there, in the thin medium strip only 5 feet from my drivers door window, I saw a snowy egret spear a cuban tree frog and swallow it. It was one of those moments that gave me a profound lesson. In this vast altered displaced landscape of drained everglades that created this suburban temporary landscape, there in the thinnest of remaining "natural" habitat, right in the middle of a crowded road, nature was still there, holding on, tenacious, humming in its timeless rhythms.
Do not worry about our natural world. It is so much more tenacious and resilient than the fragile human landscapes. Behind all this hubris and altered landscapes is a very fragile and unstable situation for our species.
If you cannot extend your compassion toward the stupid Kudzu Apes that will one day suffer their hubris then at least you can feel at peace inside yourself that nature will persevere and quickly regain its full glory once this chapter of human overshoot has passed.
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
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