What does it take to awaken a world from the self-inflicted wound of arrogance and greed?

From earthquakes that shake our foundation, to the floods that Noah could only understand. From the new intensity hurricanes that bring ocean to land, land to ocean and displace an ever-growing population. These vicissitudes, are not warnings, they reflect the changes and torment our planet is undergoing presently. Humans, that have been gifted life by this planet, are choosing by their actions, to destroy its very soul, its life force. In so doing, we are damming generations to come with vitriol and without care.

Today, we are witness to a fool’s enterprise of capitalism. Our world today seeks enlightenment through materialism, and thus can never find the joy and understanding that nature reveals. We are mutating into societies that are lead not by leaders, but rather those corrupted by power, and driven by their own material gain. One that reflects an approach of get all you can, rather than one of community.

We live in a world that rewards those who allow oil to remain our energy source, and we fight block by block, to place solar power on equal footing, as the planet cries out in pain. When did we become this arrogant believer in man’s powers or religion to solve all our problems? When did we allow species to perish at the hands of our egocentric view of a world, one which seemingly only reflects only our image, how do we see that to be sustainable?

If we refuse to act, then we will be remembered as collaborators with genocide. When we turn our ears deaf to logic; grant our souls to corporate enterprise, while ignoring the message in our heart, we symbolize the clear disconnect that urban life and the loss of connection to wildness has fostered.

How could that be?

Because we are the children of a great and selfless generation, one that won a great war, and was given dams, clear-cuts, urban sprawl and microwaves, as the reward for saving the world free. Second homes, larger closets, bigger cars, cable TV and endless children, were part of our victory and led to the development of corporations that reached across the globe, to harness resources and find cheap labor, to feed our American dream.

We placed dictators in charge of countries that defied us and we used the atom bomb to keep the world in line. The world watched and took notice; we continued to hear in school and in church about our generosity and caring. We cut more timber to build great cities and we drilled our beautiful West for oil, we drilled our oceans for more and we drilled every part of the globe with less concern for our neighbors and their children, but we continued to believe in our generosity.

We bribed our elected officials at home and abroad, we allowed our rivers to be poisoned, our air fouled. When we began to clean it up, corporations went where that could foul it up, cheaper.

We elected a new generation of Republican leaders that ignored science and reason; they created false prophets that filled our airwaves to make us doubt reality. They supported foods and crops that made us fat and bees endangered. The impact made us less inclined to spend time in nature. The NRA and others helped push for more powerful guns and scopes to kill that which we refuse to see as equal-the bears, wolves and whales that define the sanity and grace in life on this earth.
Now the gospel they preach is to ignore the very signs that beg for our action. That we must acknowledge the reality of climate change and the role that man continues to play in this poisoning of life on earth.

No country has more skin in this than America; no country should act with more resolve than America. We cleared the world of their natural resources, wildlife, air and water to feed our addiction to a better life, to having more and more of everything. We honored and revered wealth, indulgence and glamor. We ignored the cost that such extravagance was having on our planet, and we did so with a blind arrogance.

Today, we have a President that has long ago sold his soul for money. We have an oil industry that fills our minds with commercials about technologies to better our future, while lobbying hard to have access to every acre to drill and frack so they can continue their dead man walking, get rich, approach to life on earth.
Climate change is real; pulling America out of the Paris accord is part of the ablation of our responsibility and reflects a new American ego, one that does not seek to be generous, but rather to take all that remains. Such boorish and misguided behavior will spark the wars of the future and distills the harsh truth about our self-centered view of our world.

The shame should be all consuming, but the void of emotion and brute ego remains palatable.

To restore our leadership in the world does not require investing in our military, it requires investing in clean energy alternatives and sharing any and all technology with the world. Yet, we are conceding such a mantle and the endless job creation that goes with it, to every other nation, rather than admit that climate change is real. So we bury our head in coal and drill our wildest lands, to kill the wildness that remains in our planets heart.

America, much like the issue of Slavery, must come to terms with our polluted past and the role we played across the globe. We must make true reparations to the world for our self-indulgence. We must go far beyond any nation in our efforts to end climate change and we must investment large sums of money and research into this issue-NOW! Our national labs must abandon their nuclear mission and become the backbone of our clean energy revolution. We must give companies ever more incentives and rewards for a clean future.

We must also protect far more lands, wildlife and water, using innovation for energy development, no matter how small the scale. We have no choice but to elect leaders that put the planet first and make decisions based on that principle.
We must return to a fundamental core value, which insured future generations have it better, not worse, than us.

It’s also crucial that we become real partners with wildlife and seeing them as part of our moral responsibility, not as simply expendable game. We must love more than ourselves. That may not solve climate change, but it is part of rediscovering our soul as a people.

Finally, it’s about reconnecting to nature, and pushing aside the lust for consumerism and giving real thought and encouragement to family planning.
All of this requires a maturing of America, as a people, as a society. We have failed the moral test for generations, and yet at times we have surprised and inspired. We do not have time now for failure; we must grow into the responsibility that our actions have warranted. We must fight climate change because it is a true moral and social imperative. The world, you see, is watching.

We must engage the process with humility; with true spirit and enlightenment.
If we do not, the tears of our planet will become the floods that remove man for the sake of a new beginning.

That is the message our planet is showing us. We must begin to listen.

Earth is life. Let’s respect the true life.
Let us fight for the mother, which gives us life.
Mother Earth, you are life.