Jeremiad

In honor of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s dire predictions, I found the following in Peter Matthiessen’s End of the Earth, published in 2003:

I seek to understand phenomena that might help our self-destroying species to appreciate the shimmering web of biodiversity in the Earth process, the common miracles, fleeting as ocean birds, which present themselves endlessly to all our senses, to be tasted, experienced, and fiercely defended for our innocent inheritors against the rape and dreadful wasting of this beautiful and fragile biosphere and its resources. In the forgetting that we, too, are animals, a part of nature, as dependent on its health and balance as any other mammal, we foolishly permit the unrestrained industrial erosion and poisoning of our Earth habitat that promises to leave mankind as desolate and bereft of hope as a turtle stripped live from its shell.

Ah, if I could only write like that! But his sentiments are mine. May humanity see the error of its ways before it is too late. And, in honor of Good Friday: I can’t imagine that God will look kindly on our hubris.