You know the feeling; you’re driving along on a wet slippery road and you wonder just how much pressure on the gas peddle you can get away with before you skid and crash. Now, if you add in other factors – autumn leaves, darkening light, that kid horsing around behind you, perhaps your spouse offering advice on where to turn, which car to pass, what’s that idiot doing in the fast lane? – all these factors play into your decision on how much you can depress that peddle, slower or faster, or when emergency braking might be needed. Driving is a matter of calculating thousands of factors, weighing up pros and cons, trying to make damn sure you get where you are going safely. And, let’s face it, over half of these second-to-second decisions you make them on every journey! Your computational skills, while driving, are demanding and you’re damn good at it, year after year.
The environmental worries are exactly the same. It is all complicated. It seriously requires computational skill just to begin to understand the factors.
Just how much foot on the gas for national growth can we get away with before we skid and crash? Are those environmental whiners like your spouse telling you different directions? Should you listen to them or just assume you know best? And what about the kids, should you be worried about their future? And that other country like China burning all that cheap coal (much of which comes from Australia), they’re going faster than you, should you keep up or drive safely? Do they know something you don’t? Or will they be that irresponsible car that endangers you all on the highway causing a pile-up? And those leaves on the wet road, they are like the warning signs of plastic islands on the oceans, the smog in Beijing, polluted rivers, chemical toxic dumps, and scientific study of CO2 levels across the planet.
Individually, each of those items seems like something we can fix, but there are now an awful lot of wet slippery leaves on our sustainable highway, the road is packed with polluting bad drivers, your car sanctuary cannot escape the constant verbal warnings issued in the media, and the kids are increasingly seriously aware they want out. And when you look around, the sky is getting darker, and take a careful look, that wet surface of the road is sending signals of danger.
Look, just like driving your car – something you are expert at! – you need to take steps to save the planet – ease your foot off the gas. Slow down, assess the real driving conditions, employ those considerable brain cells’ abilities to see what the real conditions are. It is not too late. The planet can be saved, just ease your foot off the gas, see what is not safe for driving safely, what needs to be fixed before it kills you and yours. After all, the object of living is exactly the same as driving: you want to get from here to there safely. Stop assuming your path to life on this planet is guaranteed or, worse, beyond your control. Your safety is, just like driving, up to you.
Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.
