The Reality Is…

“The reality is…”

I woke up at 3:40 AM thinking about that common phrase and how it relates to the contrast between how we live our lives and the reality of what is happening on the Earth we share.

“The reality is”: My daughter is looking at colleges. She wants to be an English major at a nice small liberal arts college like the one I attended. She expects to be sheltered for four years as she explores ideas. The reality is my study of the ecological data tells me we will soon be in the throes of a massive chaotic collapse of global civilization — certainly during her adult life and maybe even before she can finish that university.

“The reality is”: Most people I know continue their careers within this gigantic system we have created, as artists or crypto speculators, architects or web developers, yogis or financial planners. The reality is there is no longer any reason to believe this system can continue for long. In fact, it cannot.

The reality is we drive 200 species extinct every day and pump one million of tons of CO2 into the air every hour. The reality is there are an estimated 8.2 million species on Earth, which means we are losing 10% of the remaining biodiversity every 10–15 years.

The reality is we have lost 75% of flying insect biomass in the last 30 years, and nobody knows why. The reality is we are living amidst a massive die-off of the natural world that is silent and invisible, and more significant than anything we can imagine. The reality is we are complicit with this destruction, which will bring about our own extinction soon — I suspect within the lifespans of people in their 20s today — if we don’t confront it.

The reality is the most knowledgable climate scientists now say the Earth could be 3, 4, or even 5 degrees Celsius warmer by 2050 if we continue with our present rate of emissions. The reality is at just 2 degrees warmer we lose over 40% of the Amazon which produces 20% of the Oxygen we breathe, so we lose more than 8% of our Oxygen from Amazonian deforestation alone. The reality is the forests are burning all over the Earth at just one degree Celsius warmer, releasing carbon and eliminating carbon sinks.

The reality is that most of the people I know who have the greatest wealth and influence and the power to accelerate change and catalyze a mass awakening seem to be trapped by some kind of strange distorting spell. There is some part of them which refuses to believe a system that benefits them so copiously could be leading to the destruction of the world. These people no longer believe that technology will save us — now they believe technology will replace us. Even as they bring children into this world, they believe this, because it means there is no reason to change their current path.

The reality is that almost everyone else I know is in some form of denial, because to fully and completely accept that the expectations we were given since childhood no longer matter is too uncomfortable. The reality is our culture offers us so many distractions, immediate comforts, and placebos that we find ourselves unable to focus on the only thing that truly matters, which is the health of the Earth.

The reality is that the only hope for our children’s long-term survival is a massive global transition to a new civilizational paradigm that requires annual reductions of 5–10% in CO2 emissions while we shift from industrial farming to regenerative agriculture, from fossil fuels to renewable energy, undertake mass reforestation and restoration of ecosystems, and so on. The reality is we lack the political will and the collective awareness to make such a shift.

The reality is that during the Permian Mass Extinction, 95% of all life on Earth went extinct in a short period of time, as methane erupted from underneath the Arctic. The reality is that methane is starting to release in large quantities. Methane is more than 20 times more potent than CO2 as a heat-trapping gas, but it only lasts for ten years in the atmosphere, while carbon circulates for a century. This explains the sudden spikes we see during mass extinctions, like the one we are causing now.

The reality is we are approaching the end of a short period of relative calm and peace, before we enter the buzz saw of this ecological apocalypse. The reality is if you try to speak the truth about it, you find yourself ostracized, cut off from funding sources, poor and marginalized, sometime ridiculed.

The reality is that our lives are inherently miraculous and extremely improbable, and we possess resources as well as psychic capacities beyond what anyone yet understands.

The reality is we need a mass awakening and unification of humanity behind a campaign to transform our relationship to the biosphere. The reality is the people running our world are, for the most part, self-serving, corrupt, detached, sociopathic, stupid, and manipulative.

The reality is that people are asleep, detached, and distracted at a time when we need an essentially immediate revolution / revelation / evolution. I believe we are a few years away from a collective realization and freakout that we are on the edge of driving ourselves to extinction. The reality is when that wake up happens, it may already be too late.