Thanks for Nothing

About 30 years ago, when I was in college, it was common knowledge that petroleum reserves were nonrenewable. People knew that, at some point, the oil would run out. We knew that the air and the water and the earth on which we live had limits as to the amount of abuse and misuse they could tolerate. The energy and environmental concerns that today are becoming immediate crises were not "maybe." They were known to be real. And many college-aged kids of the day spoke out loudly, calling on politicians and other leaders to take action to protect ourselves from ourselves.

The politicians didn't listen and an entire generation simply gave up trying to change the world. Now, I'm afraid, it's just too late. Even if the entire population of the earth woke up tomorrow with a commitment to turn things around, I'm confident it would be too little, too late. Instead of investing in the future, the population of the earth invested in the moment. And now, that moment has passed.

Fifty years from now, the people who still populate this miserable earth will be eeking out a dull existence from an injured planet that won't willingly support those remaining parasites. Life will be hard and the amenities and luxuries to which we have grown accustomed, and now are about to lose, will be distant memories.

My prophesy will have come to pass. The New Malthusian Imperative will have been thrust upon us unwillingly with our own hands. The population emergency that should have been addressed in the 1950s along with mankind's rape of the planet will have come and gone.

Except for a tiny glimmer of wishful thinking...I can't call it hope, because it's too weak and too implausable to be hope...I'd say we might as well enjoy what little we have left. Drive the Hummers, leave the water running, throw the acid down the sink, discard your trash by setting it ablaze in your yard. It's all pointless now.

Today's ten-year-old children have a miserable, bleak, depressing future to which they can look forward. And they can thank their parents and their parents' parents for giving up on the politicians and for indulging their own selfishness. They can thank those people for nothing!