Chris Jepson: Can we talk?

When did it occur to you that maybe, perhaps, humans weren’t so good for the planet? This is not a particularly popular subject in Republican circles for two primary reasons. One is religion, the other is money. But both, however, are based on exploitation.

In Genesis 1:28 it is noted that God instructed Adam and Eve to, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

In the 1960s and 1970s a certain religious system developed out of that biblical command called Dominion Theology. Regardless of your specific fundamentalist beliefs, the earth is an orchard to be plucked. Some mix in (of course) that diabolical Satan. In the mean time, if earth is left a plundered, barren desert, well, it’ll all get worked out after the Rapture.

A much more time-honored justification for raping the planet is based strictly on the economic behavior of greed and profits. Exploiting the environment is hardly a new human phenomenon. Whenever or wherever humans have concentrated, the environment has suffered. There have been countless historical extinctions (or near extinctions) tied to overpopulation, land exploitation and inclement weather. From the Tigris-Euphrates River valley civilizations, to China, to Easter Island, to the Ancient Mesoamerican cultures, humans have come and gone predicated on ill-informed behavior and poor decisions.

We might cut our ancestors a little slack because they did not have our extensive knowledge, based on science, of exactly how inter-connected human behavior and the environment truly is. That cannot be said of 21st century mankind, however.

It dawned on me when I was in my 30s of exactly how lethal humans are to our planet. We are the first generation of human beings to fully comprehend that we are unequivocally murdering our mother. We are causing the extinction of countless species. It was recently announced that within my daughter’s lifetime, all of the coral in all our seas will be dead. Go ahead, shed a tear. Gone. I am confident much of the world’s rain forest will be logged. Every month it is said China brings online yet another coal-powered electrical plant with the resulting environmental degradation.

The question becomes, “What should we do about it?” Actually, a more honest question is, “Is there anything we can do about it?”

This is where I differ with my more optimistic friends. Oh, humanity will survive, of that I am confident.

This is the problem. Every attempt at a realistic planet-wide environmental solution to limit climate change and species extinction(s) will essentially be met with one word: jobs. We’ve billions of human beings here, and billions more on the way, all requiring housing, food and clean water (that’s at a minimum). Add any modern amenities (A/C, color TVs, cellphones, cheeseburgers, a Prius or toilet paper) and for every human added, the planet incrementally suffers. It’s a fact, Jack.

One of the best scenes in the movie “The Matrix” is when the villain, Agent Smith (ironically, a software program), compares humanity to a virus, a disease organism that would replicate uncontrollably until our environment (Earth) was destroyed. Which, if art imitates nature, pretty much sums up our future.

Is that, indeed, Earth’s prospects? With the two types of Republicans in control, any different outcome is, well, doubtful.