Posted by Loulou on Apr 25, 2014 | 2 comments

Once a very respected advocate for the almost insurmountable challenge to save our planet, now a man with a changed position that encourages small pockets of sustainable community and a high quality of life. Read on…

I was listening to papa this morning at breakfast, and mama was talking about the environmentalist and global activist, Paul Kingsnorth, who was on the front page of The New York Times recently, and mama was saying what a sorry state we were in that we have let our planet get so out of hand (we’re only 1 degree Celsius warmer right now on our earth and look at all the changes that small rise has precipitated—the rise in sea level, climate changes, carbon emissions’ effects —I’m warmer than usual every day in my short fur—imagine those Persian kitties and how they must feel!), and in his inimitable way, papa says yes but that same article mentioned that we have had five extinction events since life began, and each time, another form of life appeared as we mammals came after the dinosaurs disappeared, which suggests that if there were to be another extinction, something else might well take our place, and who can imagine what form that might take? Papa said that we are essentially insignificant in the universe, a tiny speck, since there have been 2800 planets discovered over a relatively short period of time. Who knows what goes on out there?

And mama said, you always offer such unusual and thought-provoking aspects of a problem that most are looking at from the same angle. It’s actually fascinating to think of what might be here when we have managed to obliterate our own species through carelessness. Not that that is a pleasant thought, but it is a thought worth pondering—perhaps at that 3am time when anthros (and kitties, because I do it, too) are suddenly awake but not awake and all of the unsettled thoughts of a life seem to require attention. You know that time, right?

And then you go back to ninna nanna land with perhaps one or two of those annoying problems almost solved or at least put to rest until the next 3am session. I do that. I wonder about what it would be like if no one were there for me in the morning to put something in my breakfast bowl, or what if I hadn’t wandered into mama and papa’s garden in that serendipitous moment?

But pondering another creature who might inhabit what is left of our planet after we are gone can be fascinating.

Still, what I would really like to see is papa’s grandkids and their kids (and their kitties, of course…okay, doggies, too) not having to come up against more unsolvable living—let’s call it survival—problems that have only escalated because of the inattention of those in control of such things, now, in this era. Mama showed me graphs of what the 1 degree Celsius has changed in our climate, and it’s not a prettysight.

We’ll ponder these things over and over at 3am.

But papa surely will come up with a whole new twist.

When papa speaks, I listen! (Sometimes.)