My Choice

The more I reflect on my recent experiences travelling through Spain, the more convinced I am that humankind will avoid what Elizabeth Kolbert and others have termed the sixth extinction.

I'm not naive. And I'm also not immune to being regularly discouraged by the disinformation campaign of climate change deniers and their mindless minions. But when I consider how endlessly inventive and ingenious people can be, I sincerely believe there's room for hope even if - as most scientists routinely tell us - we've passed the point of no return. 

If the Romans conceived and then built aqueducts that stand two thousand years later, if Antonio Gaudi envisioned Sagrada Familia - and disciples completed it over the next one hundred and fifty years - and if Guernica is still moving people to fight the good fight almost ninety years after Pablo Picasso created it, I submit that minds much greater than mine will find a way to help us mitigate our environmental misdeeds. 

In many ways, our natural world has already been irreversibly damaged. Succumbing to hopelessness is understandable. I choose to instead have faith in the limitless intelligence of humankind.