Out of the way – we’re saving the planet!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Bombarded by big news about bombs, elections and Brexit, we’ve almost forgotten Trump’s pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Although Climate Change poses a massive threat to us all, the way everyone talks about killing the planet makes me laugh.

Our human arrogance knows no bounds. Pumped up with ridiculous levels of self-importance, we imagine ourselves civilised, walking around as if we own the planet.

We talk of saving the planet, as if we were the guardians of this celestial wanderer. We indulge ourselves with grandiose notions about how we might be destroying the planet, and with delusional hubris we imagine we might be able to cure the planet.

Wisdom still eludes us. Ever since life evolved on Earth mass extinctions have come and gone. We are extinguishing species and creating famines, filling the oceans with plastic and surely will bring about our own downfall, but we don’t need to save the planet.

The planet will be fine.

We might be able to invent safe fuels, or build carbon scrubbing machines to remove the greenhouse gases. We might build huge mirrors to reflect the sun’s rays back into space.

And a shaft of pure white light might shine out of my backside singing the Hallelujah Chorus.

This planet that we are so concerned with saving was born somewhere around 4,700,000,000 years ago, while our bunch have only been on the scene for the last 160,000 years.

If the history of this planet was a mountain, we would barely be a pebble upon it.

Every day this living breathing pulsating lump, pumped by an internal engine of swirling molten rock and trapped gases (think Uncle Mikey after Sunday dinner), hurtles through space being pummelled by all manner of other lumps of rock.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.