Hooray, hooray. After sinking tens of billions of dollars into giant underground “atom-smashers,” scientists think they’ve discovered the smallest thing in the universe, the so-called “God particle” (a more appropriate name would be the “humans-playing-god-particle”). But for the most part, scientists haven’t yet discovered how seven billion human beings can live sustainably on (i.e., in lasting harmony with) this, our home planet. 

With triple-digit temperatures arriving earlier than ever across the United States, it appears the specter of global warming is stepping out of the shadows and thumbing its nose at anyone who still doubts its existence. Not to be deterred by a few heat-related deaths, out of control fires raging across the Rockies or apocalyptic thunderstorms knocking out power to those dependent upon air conditioning, the unrelenting, singe-minded machine known (paradoxically) as “progress” (intent on burning the last stores of carbon over the shortest possible time period) continues to tear open vast wounds in the Canadian arctic in search of tar sands and slurp up the last pools of crude from the most fragile of onshore and offshore environments. 

Meanwhile, more people than ever are eating more animals than ever. By clearing off the life-giving, naturally carbon-sequestering rain forests that slow the pace of climate change and replacing them with over-crowded cattle feedlots, human’s taste for flesh foods now surpasses even their thirst for oil in increasing the earth’s average overall annual temperature. 

Ironically, when the dust settles on humankind’s reign of terror, those costly underground atom-smashers may serve an important function after all. They can be put to use in the search for what must be the real smallest particle in the universe: the minute speck of human concern for anything beyond short-term gratification.