If we don't change, change will bury us. That will be because of the changes we ourselves inflict so causally upon this one and only Earth.
We act as if oblivious to how our way of life is undermining itself. We depend hugely on gasoline, but the tank is getting empty. The smoke from our exhaust has been insulating the planet enough to melt polar ice caps and disrupt climate patterns.
We are mining the coal, pumping the oil, depleting the soil, the forests, and the oceans. Glaciers crucial to fresh-water supplies for large parts of the world are disappearing. The ecosystems that allow and support biodiversity and sustainability are changing and even collapsing.
Yet we gulp along, hogging and consuming resources like there is no end, and as if there is no one else on the planet who needs anything. It is not sustainable.
These problems are so massive as to defy belief. Indeed some do not believe. The powers that be resist the truth, just like cigarette companies did trying to pretend their tobacco did not kill.
Some problems are the results of unintended consequences, but are also the result of turning blind eyes to what we do not want to see.
Our tradition for America has been pride in being forward-looking, creative, moral and successful. We have been a model for democracy and religious freedom. We cherish our record for ingenuity and bask in feeling like the envy of the world, the good guys, protecting peace far and wide.
But let's get real. Who are "we"? A teeny-tiny percentage of us are stinking rich or holding the levers of power. We are not the people who created NAFTA.
A few of us have gone into the military, or taken mortgages we cannot pay off. More than a few of us are drawing unemployment insurance benefits, or relying on food stamps. Most of us are not homeless, or ill, or even hungry. But what about those who are?
There is a tendency to blow the poor off as if they caused their own problems. They get called dependent, or irresponsible, avoidant of real work or effort. Be careful, though, because when it comes to caring for the Earth, we are them.
We are all dependent: Both upon the Earth, and on an economy that is beyond our control. Nevertheless, some would now undermine the social safety net built up during the last century, especially since the Depression.
Many choose to disbelieve established scientific warnings of changing climate patterns and rising sea levels. They say environmental work is unnecessarily costly; that the stability of the Earth is as evident as its obvious flatness once was. The link between dismissing the suffering of the miserable among us and disregarding the global environment around us is a lack of caring about others.
We dismiss change when it seems not to benefit us directly. It is selfishness. The Right takes evolution as a justification, even glorification, of selfishness a la Ayn Rand. We are built for competition, survival of the fittest, and ergo our progress.
But there are competing concepts to be considered. That we cooperate, care for, and learn from one another speaks of a non-genetic evolutionary process.
Now society is not only individuals, but is defined by teamwork. Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Stamford University, notes that the evolution of ethics was slow. He describes a paradox in our evolving dominance of the Earth: It's that we are actually undermining our own environmental support system.
He refers to the toxification of the planet a movement toward cataclysmic climate disruption, overpopulation and eating up nature's capital, reducing soil and aquifers. A root problem is over consumption.
Recently, Dr. David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University wrote about how not only selfishness can evolve, but selflessness too. His book, "The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve my City, One Block at a Time," describes a research project that brought subpar students up to state standards in one year.
We urgently need to change how we live on and affect the world today _ both the Earth and our fellow human beings. Our way is selfish, entrenched, and dysfunctional for our grandchildren. It is also immoral.
William Masters can be reached at wmasters@thedailystar.com.
William Masters
'We are all dependent: Both upon the Earth, and on an economy'
- William Masters
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William Masters: Nation stands divided between 'us' and 'them'
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Schreibman tops Chris Gibson on women's issues
