We Are All Connected

 

“No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms,” Wendell Berry once said. It is quite astounding to think that our individual well-being is dependent on the earth’s health and the good of all humanity. We are all connected so what affects the earth affects all created things.

That is why care of the earth is so important and climate change brings with it such destructive forces. Arid ground or flooded ground is unproductive and useless. Extreme heat or cold destroys all living things. So our very survival is dependent on a well-cared for earth.

We may think our modern discoveries and inventions can protect us from the devastation in other parts of the world. But people in areas that are no longer habitable will migrate to better places, maybe places where we live. If food can no longer be grown where the climate and earth is optimal, that eventually affects all of us.

Many of us live in a bubble and think we can protect ourselves from global warming. We continue to throw our plastic into the ocean, cut down more trees for paper and wood, blot out stories of starvation and malnutrition, fail to lessen our carbon footprint. As long as we personally are not affected, we forget about our dependence on the earth.

Leaders of the United Nations Climate Change Conference beginning Oct. 31 in Glasgow, Scotland, will be trying to emphasize the urgency of acting now before it is too late. Claude Attenborough, English historian, told BBC it would be "really catastrophic" if richer nations failed to support poorer ones, and time was running out.