A post-climate disaster world will need some new rules
Raise your hand if you conclude that the world's current state of disarray will get worse as climate disasters multiply.
Keep it up if you've assessed and understood the threats from carbon dioxide pollution and its two sister killers, methane and nitrous oxide.
Stand up now, roar, and shout if you see clearly that the culture of big money and brutal exploitation of resources, both large and small, is too entrenched to avoid its own demise – no matter how frequently nature warns.
We can enumerate all the causes of this preventable disaster, name them all, and point our fingers until our hands hurt. But as we plant, compost, recycle, volunteer, and donate, regardless of the ridiculous odds, it's time to jump above the gloom and imagine what a post-climate disaster world might need in order to rebuild and reorganize itself into a healthy new world. A system that learns from and discards our perilous past.
In my article where Western civilization has taken a wrong turn
https://jeffmiller-50455.medium.com/where-western-civilization-took-a-wrong-turn-eb6330c5e94d?sk=f5d191ee472d6c41b9d2fbd462deed85
I tracked How the concept of an extraplanetary paradise, coupled with the belief in terrestrial sovereignty, helped justify an economic system in which global resources became an all-you-can-eat diversified industry. At some point, the greedy feast had to end, and it seems that day is now near.
With this in mind, I present my six demands for a better world next time. These rules cannot guarantee that we will not repeat our mistakes, but they at least acknowledge where I believe we have stumbled and how we can rise and shine again.
Request 1: Organized religion reconsidered.
Organized religions that ignore the supreme value of the natural world, while seeking power and fame in the physical world, can lose sight of their deeper purpose. They must be replaced by a spiritual feeling, a feeling free of rules and bishops and curses and empty rituals, a feeling that recognizes that the immense beauty, mystery and awe of the universe – and all that inhabits it – is more than enough…