I decided to write a story none of you will want to read. There are some basic rules to getting readers in social media. You keep a piece short, usually around 600 words or so, something I continually run over, like a car racing over a cliff. You really want to involve readers, especially toward the end, with some kind of inclusive closing. It needs to be positive and hopeful, a challenge for me, especially considering this title and its unfolding subject matter. The imagery is important as well and should make you feel good inside, something a collapsing house of cards does not engender.

For those of you staying with me for this second paragraph, let me get started. I think life as we know it is not going survive the infinite variety of catastrophes hurtling our way as a result of the man made, climate crises, thousands of years in the making. Based on everything I’ve been reading, it requires an immediate, global ninety-degree turn, while we rocket toward this stone cold, black precipice at the speed of sound. Sadly, but realistically, no half assed, half global measures will do.

The challenge to our survival could not be any clearer. We need to immediately cease investing in and solely relying upon fossil fuels for our energy needs. We have to invest all our resources in developing and disseminating renewable energy as the engine that runs our entire planet. It is impossible for this idealized dream to work, as long as we have the infinitely grotesque disparity between rich and poor. Between countries that account for the majority of energy usage and pollution creation, on the broken shoulders of those so called third world countries that are still burning cow shit for cooking and heating, I’m not feeling it.

I was on my stationary bike this morning, my daily routine, with the exception of every Sunday, because even God took a break from creating the Universe on the Seventh Day. I had a corroding headset on, serenading my insides with the music i love so dearly. My legs were pumping away, as I hurriedly went nowhere at all and Luciano Pavoratti suddenly glided into my brain. Honestly, it never matters to me what he happens to be singing, because his is the voice of heaven. The sheer, brilliant light of his voice was harshly juxtaposed against my extinction thoughts. Accepting the truth of what is, need not detract from extracting joy out of the moment, at least for me. So, I write this story, because I can’t see another ending.

Imagine you are sitting on a beautiful mountaintop in an idyllic setting. You have a pair of impartial binoculars, allowing you to see the world around you. The biggest objects are the first to come into focus. Look at the United States and its leadership, offspring of the Siamese Twins of politics and economics. The system is geared to serve the needs of profit over compassion, by the billions. We are drilling for oil in our pristine national parks. We are punishing those with less, simply for having less. Our response to the climate crisis is a joke, a denial of what already is upon us. We are tragically divided, at a time when unity is our only salvation, something we have never achieved before, never before.

Our partners in crime, Russia and China, are even more of a joke. Putin makes our orange President look like an inane amateur, when it comes to seeing everything that occurs through the prism of what will personally benefit him the most, consequences be damned. China is a secretive society that would sooner kill the world with a runaway virus than show any sign of weakness. Modi, in India, is consumed with Hindu dominance, masking all his decision behind his veil of bigotry. Brazil, one of the resource, richest countries in the world, is burning its life saving rainforests at an incendiary pace. More than a hundred sovereign states that come into view are solely preoccupied with daily subsistence and their leaders are often solely concerned with filling their pockets.

Our species have been traveling the same path for millennia. Early tribes were more concerned with dominating each other than co-existing. The earth and every other sentient being has been at our disposal, from the moment we figured out how to stand up without falling down. Over time, we have managed to dramatically increase our numbers and our natural resource demands, never thinking about the consequences of our actions. We have slowly graduated from clubbing each other to death to far more efficient and often more subtle methods of vanquishing those we deem as a threat to getting what we want in the moment.

When I am riding with the Sons of Kauai on any Sunday, I throw my empty beer bottle into a recycling bin, feeling like the right thing to do. If I thought for one moment i was contributing to saving all of us and future generations, I would race to get another bottled brew. I love listening to Pavoratti. At nearly 75, I am not deluding myself about endless tomorrows. In spite of long ago needing reading glasses, my chronology has served to sharpen my view of things.

Honest to God, I don’t know how you can look around and somehow think everything is going to be fine. The ice is melting, species are dying and we are treating each other like shit. I am positive the end of us is somewhere out there and not beyond our ability to count. I love music. I love my children, regardless of where we find ourselves today. I love my grandson. I love Laura. I try to be a compassionate being with those I know and those I have yet to meet. I recycle whenever I think of it. However, I have no illusions.