“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Saturday was Earth Day and I can’t help but wonder how many of us even knew.

All things considered, it could be argued that Earth Day is the most important day of the year yet few of us – including yours truly – even blinked as this momentous day passed us by while we attended to our trivial matters.

How sad!

After all it’s only the future of humankind we’re talking about here. And that future looks very bleak as this sad blue planet continues its wobbly spin on a deadly track that inevitably seems to have only one ending and I don’t need to tell you what it is because most of you already know it means the end of the line for homosapiens, who of course are us, the most dangerous species of them all.

But don’t fret. Millions of life species will survive on this sad planet that we’ve abused so willfully in a tragic melodrama that can’t go on forever.

OK, OK, quit reading now as I’m sure some of you will. But for the ones of you still capable of tearing yourselves away from your screens, I invite you to continue because what I’m going to point out affects every last one of you including those who just stopped reading.

You may have heard about the Doomsday Clock. It’s a symbolic timepiece created in late 1947 by a group of atomic scientists including Albert Einstein who were concerned that even though the Second World War was over we almost immediately entered a state of  “Cold War” with the US and Russia threatening each other with nuclear weapons and annihilation of the human race.

The clock was originally set at seven minutes to midnight and later moved back to 17 minutes before midnight in 1991 as the US and Soviet Russia signed an arms treaty and started to reduce their destructive atomic warheads. But on Jan. 24, 2023, the board of scientists that monitors the clock moved its hands to 90 seconds before midnight in light of apocalyptic nuclear threats issued by Vladimir Putin at the start of the Ukrainian War. The scientists, 13 of them Nobel Laureates, said political tensions caused by climate change, pandemic illness and new technologies like artificial intelligence were also to blame, according to a story filed by Reuters last week.

Ninety seconds! That’s the safety margin we’re living under today and if that doesn’t ruin your dinner, I don’t know what will.

So, what can an individual do? A rhetorical question if there ever was one and I certainly don’t know the answer, but I can make a few suggestions.

First of all, we’ve got to start turning down the heat on this deadly political polarization that has enveloped most of the world the past decade. We’ve got to learn how to disagree without demonizing those whom we disagree with. That, of course, applies most of all to the world’s politicians who collectively have their fingers on the nuclear trigger, but they also are the ones that have the collective power to do something significant about climate change instead of just arguing over what causes it.

But we can also act as individuals. Let me give but one example.

Masks! If anything ever proved conclusively how stupid and intolerant the human race is it’s the endless argument over Covid masking that has been a toxic point of disagreement between friends, families and even scientists. I admit I wore a mask intermittently when the infernal filters were first ordered. But I also admit I felt it quite possible that masks did little or nothing to curb covid. As a result, I didn’t condemn those who refused to mask up including friends I’ve lost over this divisive issue.

The reason I wore a mask – even though I didn’t really want to – is I thought mask wearing might be for the good of humanity and don’t we all want to do things for the good of  humanity? And can’t we apply this thinking in all of our doings with our fellow humans including politics and everything else? Call me naïve if you will but I honestly believe if we all applied this simple principle to our affairs the world would be in a far better place than it is now and maybe the hands of the Doomsday Clock could be moved back for at least a day.

Maybe forever.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who tries to be optimistic about the future of our beautiful planet.

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