Stephen Kessler | Maybe this is what the planet needed - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Bigger and more powerful than a political revolution and a green new deal combined, the pandemonic reality of the dystopian-science-fiction-docu-psycho-historical-tragedy we’re experiencing is what big, structural change really feels like—a social cataclysm, a political catastrophe, an existential apocalypse. Words fail to approximate the magnitude of the emerg

ency from which there is no shelter no matter how obediently we shelter in place.

But if we engage our historical imaginations and zoom out far enough from the human sufferings surrounding us in all directions and dimensions, as if we were looking at the earth from space, we might catch an optimistic glimpse of a future in which this planet could make a comeback.

But first allow me to indulge my inner Stephen King, master imaginer of worst-case horrors, which could easily include millions of people infected, millions dying, millions unemployed, fortunes lost in a massive economic collapse greater than the Great Depression, civil chaos as whole populations scramble for survival, giving governments reason to declare martial law and giving ours an excuse to call off the presidential election, leaving the incumbent in charge indefinitely to tell us what an incredible job he’s doing as illness, death and mayhem rage through what’s left of civilization, America First among equals on a plague-leveled playing field.

I recently saw a picture on the front page of The New York Times, a satellite image of carbon levels in virus-plagued parts of the globe that have closed down, before and after (during) the pandemic. The disease-devastated regions were noticeably less polluted; seen from space, they appear to be on a path toward restoration of pre-industrial atmospheric hygiene.

What no Green New Deal could do through legislation, nature has done through what might be called the Wet Market Effect: one slaughtered animal on a chopping block on the other side of the world spraying a few microbes on nearby food and butchers and shoppers and vendors in that central urban institution the food market, sending waves of infection in larger and larger circles through the globalized and interconnected world until those germs have insinuated themselves everywhere on every continent, more awesome in reach than the butterfly in Brazil whose flapping wings set off a typhoon in the Philippines.

In a perverse twist on mystical oneness, we are all caught in a web of universal life and, as the saying goes, we are all in this together. But once the dust settles and the smoke clears and the dead are carted away—including us, with any luck—and populations have been radically reduced and industrial pollution has been blown away by years of inactivity and humanity resumes Paleolithic relations with its habitat, a new day dawns and creatures recently on the brink of extinction make a miraculous recovery and a global springtime brings forth gorgeous blossoms and birds can be heard singing again, not in despair at what humans have done to themselves and their environs but in joy that there’s more room for other creatures in creation to take deep breaths of hope and inspiration.

I’m a humanist, but up to a point. Human culture and human behavior are endless sources of wonder and fascination, but human harm to the planet is inescapable. Consider the plastic poisoning the oceans, carbon poisoning the sky, toxic sludge poisoning the land, etc. So I can’t help but envision a happy ending for all this, long after current miseries are forgotten and we as victims and witnesses have left the scene. It’s even sort of comforting to imagine this crisis as the work of a God who has seen enough and is wiping the slate clean: humanity as a failed experiment.

I thought about this as I walked in my quiet neighborhood after the rain, admiring the beauty of some of the front yards where blossoms are blowing their horns, and the air smells good, and I’m gratefully accepting these gifts of spring as if for the last time.

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.

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https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2020/03/28/stephen-kessler-maybe-this-is-what-the-planet-needed/

2020-03-28 17:36:50Z
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