The Red, White, and Green

I think it’s time to reposition the environmental argument. Is our planet indeed in peril? Yes, at least as we know it. Temperatures are rising, polar ice caps are melting, and wildlife extinction rates are surging. But the fact remains that regardless of what we do — burn every last bit of fossil fuel on earth, bury trash in every square inch of land, raze what little rainforest is left — and whatever catastrophic events we may set into motion by those actions, our planet will continue to exist. The human race, however, may not. After all, the earth has seen cataclysmic events before; one need only point to the now widely accepted theory that an asteroid collision with the earth 65 million years ago caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and up to 70 percent of all plants and animals living at the time. The planet, however, survived.

Q: So what’s really at stake in our quest to stop global warming and “save” the planet?

A: The existence of the human race.

After all, if we all really cared about stopping pollution and global warming and saving the planet, the quickest way to do that would be to eliminate all human life on earth. Not something I’m proposing, of course (although others are; for a real buzz-kill topic at your next cocktail party, check out the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement). But I think if more people took a moment to absorb the brutal reality that this is, in fact, a fight to save our life on earth as we know it, including the lives — nay, the mere existence – of our children and grandchildren, more people would jump on the environmental bandwagon.

It sounds scary, but maybe that’s because it is scary. How much more effective would it be if we rephrased the question, “What are you doing to help save the environment?” to “What are you doing to help save the human race?”

–Jennifer Grayson

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