It felt like the human race had been far too successful. You don’t have your way with a wild-spirited planet as large as Earth without tenacity, cunning, and… opposable thumbs. So, no small feat, but they’d done it: champions of the world! Still, the truth had become painfully obvious as this story begins, a few years before the Covid19 pandemic hit: there were just too many humans on board – drilling, tilling, and spilling more resources than nature could restore.
Could things possibly end well? Fortunately, the strong ones were betting on it, knowing what a sweet victory it would be when the forests and seashores started bouncing back, and people started trusting each other again. Rather than wallowing in the muck of collapse, these bold ones had their sights set on an Age of ecological restoration and design. And they had the energy and imagination to create it.
One thing was certain: this was a turning point, like no other. Would this adolescent species – far less senior than crocodiles or ants – move quickly enough to avert apocalypse as humongous chunks of glacial ice continued to crack into the ocean? It wouldn’t be easy… Remember the heroic actions of Bedford Falls neighbors in the classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, delivering fistfuls of dollars just in time to save Bailey Building and Loan? That’s the kind of all-in teamwork it would take to rescue the planet’s natural systems and time-rich cultures: a spontaneous uprising of all the world’s people, focusing each person’s unique skills on saving the world’s oceans, families and communities.
Really, wasn’t this the most gripping drama since the disappearance of the dinosaurs? (The obvious difference being that there wasn’t a damn thing dinosaurs could have done to intercept and destroy an asteroid. Not a lot of cunning, no thumbs.)
Woven into this life-and-death tapestry were billions of daily vignettes: honest folks going to work; rethinking household budgets; sticking their necks out in the name of fairness… Sure, there were some bad eggs in power, but millions of others were grateful caretakers of the glittering blue marble that had birthed them.
Imagine a focused molecular biologist steadily on the trail of life’s timeless secrets; for him, the threat of collapse is an irrelevant distraction – a fly buzzing around the lab. He helps by being fully present, doing good and useful work. Or take a joyful flower gardener whose sunny thoughts are on her seedlings, not apocalypse. (No time for that!) With surpluses of vitality and passion, these were the kind of humans capable of meeting the Change head-on – even as huge as it was – by inventing less stressful, more enlightened ways of living. Let the jittery Joneses stampede ahead on their Black Fridays and superhighways; the new cultural pioneers wouldn’t honor that burned-out definition of success anymore! Instead, like brilliant jazz musicians, they’d improvise a moderate, experience-rich civilization with instinct as a pounding, energizing bass line. “Hang onto your hats,” they called to each other, “Here we go!”
