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| A depiction of an all-consuming red giant star (stock photo). |
When I was six years old, I saw a film about the stages of the sun, how this star of ours would 'one day' become a Red Giant, and would incinerate the planet Earth. (Yes, the filmmakers thought just saying 'one day' rather than a projected timeline was somehow alright.) This catalyzed something close to a year of very quiet and tortured suffering on my part. I had nightmares of our home and our world ablaze. In my nightmares, I struggled, attempted to get my family and loved ones, and everyone I encountered along the way --humans, animals, trees-- to safety.
During my waking days and nights, I tried to scheme and problem solve. I'm not certain why I didn't directly communicate to my parents about the film and my fears. I asked my parents if we could fireproof the house. They applied 'Tot Finder' stickers to all the windows of the children's rooms and had a family meeting about 'what to do in case of fire.' I wanted more. I wanted to know how we could get out of our rooms if the fire was in the hallway. We could not jump down from the 2nd floor. I had many scenarios in my head working out how to climb down, but inevitably there was a jump involving many broken bones--not helpful. My parents bought fire ladders for each of our bedrooms and taught us how to set them up; we practiced setting them up and climbing down them to the ground below.
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| In Upstate New York, these stickers on household windows were meant to guide firefighters first to children's bedrooms. (Stock photo) |
This wasn't enough. The nightmares were constant. If, in this dreamscape, I'd corralled my family and gotten us all out of the house (yes, I had a bizarre and inappropriate sense of responsibility for a six year old), the fire didn't stop in the house. It was everywhere, all around. We couldn't drive away from it, we couldn't boat away from it, we couldn't fly away from it. And I didn't want anyone else to be hurt, so in my nightmare apocalypse, we were gathering quite a group of humans, deer, birds, dogs, frogs as we tried to outrun fire. Yet I knew fire spreads quickly and I realized, desperately, we had no way out.
At one point I started doing bizarre things that l knew made little sense, but I felt desperate and needed to take action somehow. I wanted to 'kill fire.' I started collecting all the matchbooks I could find in the house with the intention to soak them in water and bury them. My grandmother found me with them. I'm sure she thought I was 'playing with matches,' and this frightened her. I received a spanking. I felt very, very misunderstood.
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Smokey the Bear was a childhood friend in the the 1970's and '80's in the U.S. "Don't play with matches."
(Source: www.state.sc.us ) |
Every scenario I worked through, every emergency simulation of my mind, I could not find a solution or a way to save us, to save all the beautiful beings on this amazing planet. Perhaps with too much of the imagination captured by the science fiction books I encountered, I recall going so far in my problem-solving scenarios, as to play with the idea of somehow knocking the Earth off its orbit, spinning away from the sun. This was something I could not implement on my own, now at seven years old--I would need help.
Finally, I worked up the courage one Sunday afternoon to break the bad news to my napping father. We are doomed. One day, any day it could be, the sun is going to turn into a Red Giant and consume the planet Earth in flames. He laughed. How could he be laughing? 'Emilie, that won't happen for billions of years. You don't have to worry about that now.' Oh. In that short response, the burden of the planet cascaded off my shoulders. The relief I experienced was ground-shifting. I could go back to being a kid, climbing trees, whispering to the birds, holding congress with the bullfrogs.
Children today don't have the luxury of that 'out,' that release from worry about the immediate fate and wellbeing of our planet and everyone they love. I can't chuckle to my nephews and nieces and say, 'Climate change? Oh, don't worry about that now! That won't be happening for billions of years. Go outside and play!'
This August, the wildfires are billowing up across the globe, from Spain to California and Oregon and Washington, Alaska, across Canada, in Asia-- and earlier this year in South Africa and Australia. The world is on fire-- and it is due to climate change induced by human activities. The more the world burns, the more greenhouse gases are released, the deeper we fall into our cyclically destructive, anthropogenically generated environmental emergency-- environmental collapse.
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| The World is On Fire: This August 2015, from Alaska through Canada, across the states of Washington, Oregon and California, in Spain and Indonesia, the world has been ravaged by the hungry, all-consuming flames of unusual and out of control wildfires. (Photo sources clockwise: Canada, The Globe and Mail; the Pacific Rim, San Francisco Chronicle; Spain, Associated Press (AP); California, Los Angeles Times; Australia, AP; Alaska, Bloomberg) |
What are we doing to our children? Is this the life we wish for them? What are we doing to our friends, the beautiful trees and congresses of bullfrogs, our weeping willows and gliding dragonflies? What are we doing to our Sacred Earth? Do we lay this burden and suffering upon this emerging generation, or do we join with young people, old people, middle people, all people, to stop this mad structural violence, this suicidal gutting of our very homes which sustain us? We all can act now, in behavioral changes great and small, and build a movement to counter a ravaging of our Earth.
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| (source: answersafrica.com) |
It is true, I can't tell the next generation there is nothing to be concerned about now. I can, however, encourage them to go outside and play-for all of us to go outside and play! (When safe from forest fires and other PM's of course.)
If we are to change our relationship with this planet and our own fate within it, we must reconnect to this living Earth, forge relationships with each other and all other beings who move us to care for and protect this amazing gift of LIFE.
