Cooperation is Key to Taking Care of the Earth

We can argue “’til the cows come home” about climate change, but the overwhelmingly growing stresses on our planet are undeniable, regardless. Coastal communities like Charleston, SC; Corpus Christi and Galveston, TX; and St. Petersburg, FL are all experiencing now over five times more sunny days (no winds or storm involved) with tides that nevertheless flood streets, compared to two decades ago. In the Pacific Northwest Coast, areas where air-conditioning was never needed are seeing more severe heat waves, and almost all new homes are being built with cooling systems now.

In Alaska, permafrost melt is already causing major issues (sudden sinkholes and surface subsidence) for the Dalton Highway, the critical supply line that connects the North Slope oil production depot to the rest of civilization. In Hawaii, the main effect has been increased seawater temperatures that are destroying coral reefs at a time of significant decline in average rainfall rates, threatening fresh water supplies also.

Here in Texas, where weather has always been reckoned as highly changeable from day to day, we seem to be experiencing more than ever the “severe drought punctuated by flood” descriptor of the climate used by some pontificators in decades back, but the drought-to-flood and back again pendulum seems to be swinging much faster now. The heat waves seem to last longer, and the rains pound down ever harder and faster. Does your weather radio also seem to go off with watches and warnings more often now? Mine surely does . . .

What does this mean for those of us who are ever-determined to live here in Central Texas, to muddle through all this and thrive as best we can? What are we to do with our lives and property and futures? I don’t have magic answers better than other opinionated folks you might care to listen to. Anyone who claims to have the certain remedy to all these changes that are upon us already and growing from year to year is most likely a charlatan or a fraudster, out only to get rich from those who are foolish enough to believe in such claims!

Here’s what I do believe, however, about our capacity to cope and to live, and even to thrive in the change that is ahead: we live on this fragile blue planet Earth, in a wilderness of stars and galaxies and cosmic dust that has been around for over 10 billion years. While we human beings have only roamed this much younger planet for about 2 million years, or just two hundredths of one percent of 10 billion years, we have existed through enormous change during that time; we have “weathered” ice ages of thousands of years, volcanic eruptions that blotted out our sun for a year or more at a time, and earthquakes with tsunamis that transformed landscapes.

As recently as 200 years ago, Northern Mexico (now known as Texas) was just seeing its first permanent Anglo settlement effort led by the Austins (father and son). La Grange then had a handful of settlers (most likely squatters, here without authorization) like Aylett Buckner and Peter Powell, and a bit later folks with names like Burnham, Rabb, and Cummins. Imagine what they went through to get here, perhaps pushing north from the coast, following the river bottom, through canebrakes, yaupon and oak thickets, through mud and floods, through malaria and other sickness along the way. Or maybe they came via the old Spanish trading road, but then they would have risked encountering Mexican officialdom, of course, and certain arrest.

While they faced challenges as individuals or as small groups who banded together for safety, now our whole society faces the climate challenge. Perhaps this time (the next decades or century) it’s our turn to show what stuff we are made of. Going it alone probably won’t “cut it.” If we don’t learn to cooperate (which will require compromise), we will perish, if not our entire Earth, or our species, then our civilization.

I do think we have survival in us, or we would not be here now. I think this Earth is resilient and may have its own ways of coping with human threats to its survival. In any case, be nice to one another, dear friends: our futures (and Earth’s) may depend on it! And God bless us, one and all, as we do our best to care for one another and the creation.