Even if we all become Cassandras will it be enough? I hope so.
Very large forces are now in train and what took decades to start rolling may take decades to slow back down and reverse. It's going to be a gigantic multi-pronged ensemble effort- the greatest sustained and planned effort our species has ever attempted. But we can do it. the question is will we?
"Will it be enough?" is the tough question, because "enough" will be defined differently and because things will get far more difficult before they get better. But yes, like you I think it will take an all-hands-on-deck approach, and I'm not yet that we're on the same ocean much less the same boat...
Jason, I am a musician and composer who, like you, has grave concern for this planet. I have composed a piece - 7 Parables On The Sixth Extinction - for chamber orchestra and narrator. I am including the text here - and if you wish I can send along the full piece.
Complete Seven Parables Text
The African elephant - Loxodonta africana
I am Loxodonta Africana, the African Elephant.
My gift is keen smell,
Detecting water miles away,
Distinguishing which tribes Homo sapiens belong to, Avoiding tribes hostile to me.
,
My race communicates by infrasonic vibration. I will speak so you may hear.
We are like you in many ways.
Like you, we form strong family bonds. Like you, we express emotion, feel empathy. Like you, we grieve our dead.
In many ways we are different. We honor our elders.
Our families are matriarchal. The oldest female leads.
We take only what we need.
You say an elephant never forgets.
True, I will never forget how you have cut off my tusks, Watching me bleed to death.
My extinction only increasing
The value of the ivory you hoard.
We are in the Sixth Extinction.
The Channel Catfish - Silurus punctatus
I am Silurus punctatus, the Channel Catfish. My gift is a keen sense of taste.
Covered with 100,000 taste buds,
I find prey in the murkiest waters.
You treat these waters like a cesspool,
Discharging all manner of foul waste,
Degrading the very oceans that absorb the heat from global warming, These same waters turning acidic,
As they take in ever more carbon dioxide.
The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets head toward collapse. Tidal seawater being forced inland,
Polluting coastal aquifers.
Rising temperatures bringing
Stronger storm surges, intense hurricanes,
More frequent tornadoes, torrential rain, massive snowstorms. Flooding and extreme weather events on the one hand, Unrelenting drought on the other,
This same drought, causing famine, raging fires, heat, smoke, More carbon dioxide.
Rising waters compelling
Forced migration inland.
Conflict, economic collapse, the planet ungovernable. The very fabric of your civilization rent asunder.
Act before it is too late.
The Golden Eagle - Aquila chrysaetos
I am Aquila chrysaetos, the Golden Eagle. My gift is keen sight.
Spotting my prey, I dive,
The muscles in my eyes
Focus and refocus,
Maintain sharp perception,
Swift approach, deadly attack.
Homo sapiens, you have enhanced vision, Creating technology
To satisfy your curiosity.
Looking out to Pluto and beyond,
To the deepest ocean floor, Inside the human brain.
Sad you cannot see what is in front of you, Blinded by fear, indifference, hatred, greed, The fouling of the waters, the air,
Your very souls.
Turn to the mirror.
Eyes open wide,
Look not without, but within. Which species will you be?
Will this be the age of the Anthropocene?
The Saltwater Crocodile - Crocodylus porosus
I am Crocodylus porosus, the Saltwater Crocodile.
My gift is a keen sense of touch.
Despite thick skin,
I detect the slightest changes in pressure, the minutest vibration.
Homo sapiens, many members of my species survived the fifth extinction. You think you are invincible. You are not.
You think your intelligence; your technology will save you.
Perhaps, but not so long as you are in denial
About the problems you are creating.
Your desire to monetize the Earth’s treasures Beyond what is needed to sustain life Benefits shareholders not stake holders.
The denial of climate change:
To lessen, not strengthen environmental laws, To remove governmental controls,
When all is said and done,
We will survive, not you.
There is no Ark.
No one is coming to rescue you. Sustainable life on Earth is in your hands.
Act before it is too late.
We are in the Sixth Extinction.
The Honeycomb Moth - Galleria mellonella
I am Galleria mellonella, the Honeycomb Moth,
My gift is keen hearing.
Detecting the high-frequency echolocation of bats
I avoid becoming prey.
Homo sapiens, what will you do
When honeybees become extinct?
They pollinate your crops.
Imagine a world with no fruits,
No vegetables, no grains.
What will you eat?
Is it so difficult to control some, and ban others,
Of the fungicides and pesticides that get into pollen,
Tom, thank you for sharing your work, and for doing the work. I hope you find a wide audience for this message. If the work is available online, I might be able to include a link to it for my readers when I have the right moment. Let me know. Again, thank you for using your music to inform people about the worlds we've made and unmade.
Some problems are so large, so difficult to apprehend, and so seemingly intractable if not outright insoluble, that it becomes almost impossible at times to adequately engage a large-enough slice of humanity (or whatever large population subset thereof) in what might be adequate attempts to truly, meaningfully, ameliorate the problem at hand. I won’t dare imagine or say “solving” it, because I don’t think that card is in the deck.
When such as this is the case, it’s also very difficult, and rare, for leaders themselves to adequately comprehend, apprehend, and commit fully to addressing the problem—especially when the return on their investment, so to speak, is large, vague, general, and not specifically monetizable. Oh, and decades to centuries down the road. Imagine being at a great party: music blaring, great (free!) beer and liquor, all the beautiful people in attendance, in some gorgeous beach-front mega-mansion. Then some knowledgeable, reliable folks—but also people known to be, you know, kinda the downer sort, sometimes, always pointing out “the responsible thing to do” right in the middle of a good time—start muttering, then whispering, finally talking aloud about how it’s common knowledge that the very land on which the house is built is being eroded, and some day, don’t know when, but some day, unless some really big, expensive measures are undertaken, at great cost of time, effort, money, inconvenience, and more, the house is going to just slide down the cliff into the sea.
We know that the party will continue with no more than an embarrassed pause while the DJ cues up the next song, that the property owners and the powerful people, the beautiful people, the people with deals in the works—right here, right now!—will do little more than glare at the petty little miscreants causing trouble. There will condescending pats on the head, assurances that, “Yes, yes, don’t you worry, we’ll schedule a fundraiser next week, or maybe the week after, ‘cause next week is the show for that new artist everyone’s talking about, you know, the new Basquiat? But don’t worry, we understand that this is a Big Problem, and we’ll arrange for everyone to get together and look gravely concerned and—oh, excuse, me I see Ingrid and Amanda over there, and I just have to congratulate them on their new film . . . .”
It’s this truth about human nature that makes the Cassandra story both so easily grasped, at least in part, and so damning. The thread stretches from Aeschylus to the quiet core of the movie Wall-E, and is woven into a seemingly permanent, fixed feature of our kind.
I suspect Cassandra was familiar with Prozac, Lexapro, Trintellix, and ketamine.
Your party analogy is excellent, Perry. Thanks for that. I wish I'd had it while writing the piece. I definitely feel like the guy in the corner of the party saying "Well, this is a mess" and trying to explain what a Wicked Problem is while everyone else is on the dance floor. Thanks also for connecting Wall-E to Aeschylus. That makes my day.
Very glad you liked it; I just re-read it, and, as with pretty much any work in a craft one is serious about, I of course just saw the innumerable ways it could be better. But the broad strokes hold up, I believe. As for the Aeschylus-WALL-E connection, I’ll admit it isn’t obvious or without flaws, but it’s there. Thanks, for both the kind remark and another wonderful essay.
Thanks, Jason, for this beautifully written essay. As someone who shares much of this pathway to this moment: an MFA in poetry, the switch to lyrical essay about my experience of the crisis we are facing writing after watching the sun rise weirdly scarlet over the ocean due to the fires out West, and the journey to Substack to wake people to the reality of this moment, I feel very accompanied by your writing and very interested in one of the questions you raise here about why the people who understand and believe in the climate crisis are still not putting it at the top of their list for things that need to change, or for things they can do anything about. After almost almost 3 years of writing I see that things have changed: more people believe this is real and happening now and a threat to their children's future. And still they act as if it isn't happening, go on about their lives, consuming, maybe doing a little more composting or recycling, taking plane trips, and essentially dissociating themselves from any agency. It's the corporations we have to blame they say, what can I do? I think this is a form of dissociation...of distancing one's self from the deep work and grief and change needed.
This is I think the central question for me? What is getting in the way of people making the real mind and life-shift needed to make significant change happen? Laziness? No. Reluctance to admit that the way they have been living is all wrong: that priorities around success and individuality were the wrong goals, the wrong story? Lack of story for a new self and how that self would be seen as valuable if it radically shifted priorities?
It feels different now...people believe my Cassandra warnings but they are still not onboard for significant changes in their lives. I find this very difficult and enervating. I had believed that once they started to believe me and the other Cassandras things would change. But they haven't. What to focus on now. It's almost worse to be believed but not to be able to mobilize for change. Maybe I am just impatient because we have sooo little time left and I am old and don't have much time left myself.
This is so well said, Kathleen. Thank you. There's so much inertia in our lives, including mine. As you know far better than I do, this is human nature. The story we're in (the one we're telling ourselves) is a magnet, regardless of its downsides, and alternatives seem too far away and requiring too much work. So often we need (or feel we need) large forces to separate from the magnet. The information you're providing with Code Red is a force, like my scribbling here, but I guess folks need time to rewrite their stories. And we have a thousand little stories every day that try to keep the bigger story intact. It's like a tree trying to walk, pulling all those roots out.
That's my mixed metaphor extravaganza for the day...
Good piece, Jason. Your experience in Maine is telling. The forces of Capitalism are the chief obstacle to a sensible climate policy. Not only in America, but everywhere they prevail. It is good that a majority of Americans and Canadians (I am in Toronto) take our climate crisis serious enough.
Even so, these monetary forces will keep on exploiting our Earth. In short-sighted thinking. These people have not read any Greek mythology, any poetry, any literature, any books on climate change, and even if they did, they would ignore it in pursuit of fortune.
So, my solution as a person with no power other than personal choice and conviction, is to consume less. Of Everything that I can. There is some satisfaction in doing so. And, like you, I write about it incessantly. So, yes, thank you for this piece.
Thank you, Perry. Reducing consumption and modeling that for others is vital. These next several years will be wild, I think, as we try to find leverage and positive tipping points to make systemic changes. Much of the leverage will have to be monetary, certainly, which means setting new policy and regulations. They may not read poetry, but they'll read (and fight) those.
Even if we all become Cassandras will it be enough? I hope so.
Very large forces are now in train and what took decades to start rolling may take decades to slow back down and reverse. It's going to be a gigantic multi-pronged ensemble effort- the greatest sustained and planned effort our species has ever attempted. But we can do it. the question is will we?
"Will it be enough?" is the tough question, because "enough" will be defined differently and because things will get far more difficult before they get better. But yes, like you I think it will take an all-hands-on-deck approach, and I'm not yet that we're on the same ocean much less the same boat...
I identify with Cassandra so I greatly appreciated this informative and inspiring read.
Thank you, Nessa.
Heartbreaking, but necessary. Positive thinking is not going to do the trick. We need awakening. Thanks for the alarm.
And thank you for joining the conversation, Diane.
Jason, I am a musician and composer who, like you, has grave concern for this planet. I have composed a piece - 7 Parables On The Sixth Extinction - for chamber orchestra and narrator. I am including the text here - and if you wish I can send along the full piece.
Complete Seven Parables Text
The African elephant - Loxodonta africana
I am Loxodonta Africana, the African Elephant.
My gift is keen smell,
Detecting water miles away,
Distinguishing which tribes Homo sapiens belong to, Avoiding tribes hostile to me.
,
My race communicates by infrasonic vibration. I will speak so you may hear.
We are like you in many ways.
Like you, we form strong family bonds. Like you, we express emotion, feel empathy. Like you, we grieve our dead.
In many ways we are different. We honor our elders.
Our families are matriarchal. The oldest female leads.
We take only what we need.
You say an elephant never forgets.
True, I will never forget how you have cut off my tusks, Watching me bleed to death.
My extinction only increasing
The value of the ivory you hoard.
We are in the Sixth Extinction.
The Channel Catfish - Silurus punctatus
I am Silurus punctatus, the Channel Catfish. My gift is a keen sense of taste.
Covered with 100,000 taste buds,
I find prey in the murkiest waters.
You treat these waters like a cesspool,
Discharging all manner of foul waste,
Degrading the very oceans that absorb the heat from global warming, These same waters turning acidic,
As they take in ever more carbon dioxide.
The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets head toward collapse. Tidal seawater being forced inland,
Polluting coastal aquifers.
Rising temperatures bringing
Stronger storm surges, intense hurricanes,
More frequent tornadoes, torrential rain, massive snowstorms. Flooding and extreme weather events on the one hand, Unrelenting drought on the other,
This same drought, causing famine, raging fires, heat, smoke, More carbon dioxide.
Rising waters compelling
Forced migration inland.
Conflict, economic collapse, the planet ungovernable. The very fabric of your civilization rent asunder.
Act before it is too late.
The Golden Eagle - Aquila chrysaetos
I am Aquila chrysaetos, the Golden Eagle. My gift is keen sight.
Spotting my prey, I dive,
The muscles in my eyes
Focus and refocus,
Maintain sharp perception,
Swift approach, deadly attack.
Homo sapiens, you have enhanced vision, Creating technology
To satisfy your curiosity.
Looking out to Pluto and beyond,
To the deepest ocean floor, Inside the human brain.
Sad you cannot see what is in front of you, Blinded by fear, indifference, hatred, greed, The fouling of the waters, the air,
Your very souls.
Turn to the mirror.
Eyes open wide,
Look not without, but within. Which species will you be?
Will this be the age of the Anthropocene?
The Saltwater Crocodile - Crocodylus porosus
I am Crocodylus porosus, the Saltwater Crocodile.
My gift is a keen sense of touch.
Despite thick skin,
I detect the slightest changes in pressure, the minutest vibration.
Homo sapiens, many members of my species survived the fifth extinction. You think you are invincible. You are not.
You think your intelligence; your technology will save you.
Perhaps, but not so long as you are in denial
About the problems you are creating.
Your desire to monetize the Earth’s treasures Beyond what is needed to sustain life Benefits shareholders not stake holders.
The denial of climate change:
To lessen, not strengthen environmental laws, To remove governmental controls,
When all is said and done,
We will survive, not you.
There is no Ark.
No one is coming to rescue you. Sustainable life on Earth is in your hands.
Act before it is too late.
We are in the Sixth Extinction.
The Honeycomb Moth - Galleria mellonella
I am Galleria mellonella, the Honeycomb Moth,
My gift is keen hearing.
Detecting the high-frequency echolocation of bats
I avoid becoming prey.
Homo sapiens, what will you do
When honeybees become extinct?
They pollinate your crops.
Imagine a world with no fruits,
No vegetables, no grains.
What will you eat?
Is it so difficult to control some, and ban others,
Of the fungicides and pesticides that get into pollen,
Causing colony collapse disorder?
Bayer, Syngenta, Montsanto, Glyphospate, Phosmet, Neonicotinoids,
Only you can and must stop this madness.
Profit trumps reason.
The honeybee, be damned.
Our lives and yours depend on it.
We are in the Sixth Extinction.
The Quinine Bark Tree - Cinchona pubecens
I am Cinchona pubecens, the Quinine Bark Tree.
The alkaloids in my bark have treated malaria for centuries. I speak for the trees of the rain forest.
We communicate through interconnected roots, And filaments provided by fungi.
We live communally, exchanging water, carbon, and other nutrients; Taking when needed, and giving when others are in need.
We protect our young.
Taking up carbon dioxide and giving back oxygen, We are the Earth’s lungs.
We provide thousands of medicinal compounds.
We feed and shelter you.
Yet, 85,000 acres of rainforest are lost every day,
And 50,000 species of plants, animals, and insects are lost each year.
Slowly, inextricably, we move up the mountainside, To escape the effects of global warming.
What will happen when we reach the top?
Your indifference to loss of habitat and loss of species, Is the driving force behind the Sixth Extinction.
Act before it is too late.
Gaia’s Song
I am the mother, mother of all.
Call me ‘Gaia’, Homo sapiens, call me Earth.
Lying on your back in darkness, on soft summer grass, Ponder the magnitude, the wonder, the unfathomable.
Through the lens of the telescope, Observe the celestial highway, Our path through the Universe.
Homo sapiens, we are related. Each atom, from stardust.
The Great Bang.
Vibrating the same harmonies, The Harmony of Spheres.
Sometimes, concordant, more and more frequently, discordant, In discord, shaken to our very foundation.
Know that I am in pain.
The gifts given to you, the air you breathe, the water you drink,
The sunlight that warms and feeds you, the treasure trove of minerals, The Flora, the Fauna, the very Earth itself,
These, are not accepted by you as gifts, but as
God given right.
Take what you need, no more.
Be present at the giving. Be thankful. Take nothing for granted,
For the gifts given are finite.
Vibrating, out of synch,
Creating powerful destructive waves of immense magnitude, Suffering great discontent, confusion, fear, suspicion, hatred.
You are the only species to willfully, consciously murder your own,
You are also the only species conscious of your actions and capable of change. Homo sapiens, you are on the Ark. The flood is within.
Act before it is too late.
You did not inherit this Earth from your ancestors,
You borrowed it from your children.
We are nothing but vibration, after all.
Come back to beautiful harmonies. Let us sing.
Tom, thank you for sharing your work, and for doing the work. I hope you find a wide audience for this message. If the work is available online, I might be able to include a link to it for my readers when I have the right moment. Let me know. Again, thank you for using your music to inform people about the worlds we've made and unmade.
As usual, I enjoy reading such well written prose, on such an important topic. Thank you.
Thank you for the kind comment, Sylvia. Really appreciate it.
Some problems are so large, so difficult to apprehend, and so seemingly intractable if not outright insoluble, that it becomes almost impossible at times to adequately engage a large-enough slice of humanity (or whatever large population subset thereof) in what might be adequate attempts to truly, meaningfully, ameliorate the problem at hand. I won’t dare imagine or say “solving” it, because I don’t think that card is in the deck.
When such as this is the case, it’s also very difficult, and rare, for leaders themselves to adequately comprehend, apprehend, and commit fully to addressing the problem—especially when the return on their investment, so to speak, is large, vague, general, and not specifically monetizable. Oh, and decades to centuries down the road. Imagine being at a great party: music blaring, great (free!) beer and liquor, all the beautiful people in attendance, in some gorgeous beach-front mega-mansion. Then some knowledgeable, reliable folks—but also people known to be, you know, kinda the downer sort, sometimes, always pointing out “the responsible thing to do” right in the middle of a good time—start muttering, then whispering, finally talking aloud about how it’s common knowledge that the very land on which the house is built is being eroded, and some day, don’t know when, but some day, unless some really big, expensive measures are undertaken, at great cost of time, effort, money, inconvenience, and more, the house is going to just slide down the cliff into the sea.
We know that the party will continue with no more than an embarrassed pause while the DJ cues up the next song, that the property owners and the powerful people, the beautiful people, the people with deals in the works—right here, right now!—will do little more than glare at the petty little miscreants causing trouble. There will condescending pats on the head, assurances that, “Yes, yes, don’t you worry, we’ll schedule a fundraiser next week, or maybe the week after, ‘cause next week is the show for that new artist everyone’s talking about, you know, the new Basquiat? But don’t worry, we understand that this is a Big Problem, and we’ll arrange for everyone to get together and look gravely concerned and—oh, excuse, me I see Ingrid and Amanda over there, and I just have to congratulate them on their new film . . . .”
It’s this truth about human nature that makes the Cassandra story both so easily grasped, at least in part, and so damning. The thread stretches from Aeschylus to the quiet core of the movie Wall-E, and is woven into a seemingly permanent, fixed feature of our kind.
I suspect Cassandra was familiar with Prozac, Lexapro, Trintellix, and ketamine.
Your party analogy is excellent, Perry. Thanks for that. I wish I'd had it while writing the piece. I definitely feel like the guy in the corner of the party saying "Well, this is a mess" and trying to explain what a Wicked Problem is while everyone else is on the dance floor. Thanks also for connecting Wall-E to Aeschylus. That makes my day.
Very glad you liked it; I just re-read it, and, as with pretty much any work in a craft one is serious about, I of course just saw the innumerable ways it could be better. But the broad strokes hold up, I believe. As for the Aeschylus-WALL-E connection, I’ll admit it isn’t obvious or without flaws, but it’s there. Thanks, for both the kind remark and another wonderful essay.
I'm a fan of Wall-E, and I liked that you gave it a noble ancestor. And yes, writing always seems unfinished, but letting it go is part of the job.
Thanks, Jason, for this beautifully written essay. As someone who shares much of this pathway to this moment: an MFA in poetry, the switch to lyrical essay about my experience of the crisis we are facing writing after watching the sun rise weirdly scarlet over the ocean due to the fires out West, and the journey to Substack to wake people to the reality of this moment, I feel very accompanied by your writing and very interested in one of the questions you raise here about why the people who understand and believe in the climate crisis are still not putting it at the top of their list for things that need to change, or for things they can do anything about. After almost almost 3 years of writing I see that things have changed: more people believe this is real and happening now and a threat to their children's future. And still they act as if it isn't happening, go on about their lives, consuming, maybe doing a little more composting or recycling, taking plane trips, and essentially dissociating themselves from any agency. It's the corporations we have to blame they say, what can I do? I think this is a form of dissociation...of distancing one's self from the deep work and grief and change needed.
This is I think the central question for me? What is getting in the way of people making the real mind and life-shift needed to make significant change happen? Laziness? No. Reluctance to admit that the way they have been living is all wrong: that priorities around success and individuality were the wrong goals, the wrong story? Lack of story for a new self and how that self would be seen as valuable if it radically shifted priorities?
It feels different now...people believe my Cassandra warnings but they are still not onboard for significant changes in their lives. I find this very difficult and enervating. I had believed that once they started to believe me and the other Cassandras things would change. But they haven't. What to focus on now. It's almost worse to be believed but not to be able to mobilize for change. Maybe I am just impatient because we have sooo little time left and I am old and don't have much time left myself.
This is so well said, Kathleen. Thank you. There's so much inertia in our lives, including mine. As you know far better than I do, this is human nature. The story we're in (the one we're telling ourselves) is a magnet, regardless of its downsides, and alternatives seem too far away and requiring too much work. So often we need (or feel we need) large forces to separate from the magnet. The information you're providing with Code Red is a force, like my scribbling here, but I guess folks need time to rewrite their stories. And we have a thousand little stories every day that try to keep the bigger story intact. It's like a tree trying to walk, pulling all those roots out.
That's my mixed metaphor extravaganza for the day...
Good piece, Jason. Your experience in Maine is telling. The forces of Capitalism are the chief obstacle to a sensible climate policy. Not only in America, but everywhere they prevail. It is good that a majority of Americans and Canadians (I am in Toronto) take our climate crisis serious enough.
Even so, these monetary forces will keep on exploiting our Earth. In short-sighted thinking. These people have not read any Greek mythology, any poetry, any literature, any books on climate change, and even if they did, they would ignore it in pursuit of fortune.
So, my solution as a person with no power other than personal choice and conviction, is to consume less. Of Everything that I can. There is some satisfaction in doing so. And, like you, I write about it incessantly. So, yes, thank you for this piece.
Thank you, Perry. Reducing consumption and modeling that for others is vital. These next several years will be wild, I think, as we try to find leverage and positive tipping points to make systemic changes. Much of the leverage will have to be monetary, certainly, which means setting new policy and regulations. They may not read poetry, but they'll read (and fight) those.