CHOOSING THE LIGHTNESS
OF PLANETARY CHILDHOOD

We are the binge generation – the ones who wanted it all.

We are the last of the innocents who believed that this tiny Earth, floating in the vastness of space, could provide for all our wants, however wild or stupid.

We wanted the fish – so we took them. At the current rate, almost all of the world’s commercial fish stocks will be gone by 2050.

We wanted the energy – so we took it. Now we are waking up to the appalling impacts that global climate change will bring.

We wanted the land – so we cut down the Earth’s forests from the Amazon to Bear Mountain, and turned them into farms and subdivisions, driving out eagles, frogs and plants.

All over the Earth, the things we have used and discarded lie scattered in landfills.

We are like two-year olds who have known nothing but the generosity of our parents’ love, whose parents are now saying "Enough."

Will we respond with foot-stamping and tantrums, demanding the right go on being the centre of attention, regardless of the distress we are causing to others on the planet?

Or will we come to our senses, as most two-year olds do, and learn that there is another way of living, beyond shouting and selfishness, where cooperation and respect create a harmony in which all may flourish?

Our Universe is filled with many planets, more than the grains of sand on Earth’s beaches. Surely, there will be life on some.

Given the nature of the molecules that were created at the birth of the Universe, it is likely that many will have evolved life based on carbon. As life evolved, they too will have discovered fossil fuels made from ancient sunlight, and undergone a carbon crisis.

The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Diego, Me, and Senor Xolotl,
by Frida Kahlo

What lies on the other side of this rite of passage, as we leave behind seven million years of planetary babyhood, and step into global childhood? When we learn to live within the limits of family life, no longer luxuriating as the centre of all attention?

There is well-researched evidence that when we choose to live within Earth’s limits, accepting the greater good of family discipline over the chaos that selfishness brings, there will be ample sufficiency for all.

There is well-researched evidence that when we choose to farm organically, within the limits of Earth’s bounty, we will receive more nutritional goodness than we do with our current poisonous methods of treating the soil.

There is evidence that when we choose to manage our forests ecologically, instead of the "grab and get rich" methods the two-year-old likes to indulge, we will harvest more resources, while sustaining the old-growth character of the forest, which is the only character there should be.

There is evidence that we can obtain all the energy we need from the Sun, Earth and gravity, leaving the remaining fossil fuels in the ground for the next Ice Age, when it might be useful to counter Earth’s cooling.

To sustain our present level of binge-living, we would need three or four additional planets – and this while a billion of our fellow humans still manage to live – or fail to live - on less than a dollar a day.

To live in the harmony of a healthy planetary childhood we will need to reduce our footprint on the planet by tenfold over the next 100 years.

That need not mean any loss of the things that matter. We can design zero net energy homes that are ten times lovelier than many of the boxes we call home today.

We can design things that are constantly recycled and reused, as nature has done for eternity.

We can fill our cities with urban gardens, rooftop greenery, and boulevard fruit and nut trees.

Life in a post-industrial, sustainable world can contain all the things that make life wonderful – friendly neighbours, fulfilling work, cooperative families, peaceful green spaces, beautiful architecture, locally brewed beer, music, art, protected wilderness, protected wildlife, inspiration, and love.

We need not fear the change that is coming. The Berlin Wall that blocked the way to environmental acceptance is coming down; the path to planetary childhood is opening before us.

One day, we will know what it means to enter planetary adulthood. But first, we have work to do.

-Guy Dauncey