Eaarth Chapter Two

        The second chapter of Eaarth was just as striking as the first but in different ways. The first chapter spoke in large distant numbers while the second focused on small problems all over the world that are even harder to combat because of their multitude. When sewage and roads were brought up I had a hard time continuing the reading. Forget about the pollution in the air, what are we to do without a sanitary way to get rid of human waste or roads to commute on. Yes there are alternatives to these matters but they obviously can not take on a scale large enough to allow us to keep living the way we do.
        The infrastructure is failing around us and we are still impervious to it. The question, "what will it take to get us to realize?" comes to mind but then I think, this is what it should take, this is the damnation we have brought upon ourselves. When the Earth is full of ruins and chaos, will there still be those who don't realize that everything has changed, that everything can not be "fixed" or patched up to the way it used to be? I feel as though we are there, in a dystopian novel that only a few are aware of the forces that make the pages turn, that eventually come to an end.
         Progress aims at a goal, tells us everything happens for a reason, everything has a purpose, basically everything is guided. All of these share an end. Our end is nearing and no one sees it. As I write this, I look around and see people working tiredlessly to do well in their classes, to get into a good grad school, to get a successful job, to provide for their family/travel, to then to do what? Like the book says, we do not live on the same Earth we originated on so these structured thinking patterns are going to have to be broken at one point or another.
        The Club of Rome wrote the Limits of Growth 1792, which essentially predicted the future though, of course, no one heeded their warnings. During this time we could have fixed everything if we had listened. Instead, all we did was fix some minute issues like smog and some pollution but that didn't touch what we needed to do. We must get away from our obsession with Growth and "gracefully decline" as the McKibben tells us to do, where we know that life is not as it has been and there will be dire changes in the coming present.
       I personally suggest we look for some kind of zen within ourselves/nature, protest, do as much as possible, find a safe place to live with necessary supplies that will stop your house from being ravenged by climate change and intruders and just go out and research for your own sake because I wholeheartedly believe that we will fall and it's not going to be graceful.