markdown, brooklyn, 9:51pm

She doesn’t need us on her and we’ve always had to fight her in order to live. In that way, environmentalism is not really about saving the planet from our wicked ways, but about preserving our own place on the planet. Humans are no strangers to decay prevention, of course. Clothing and A/C and tummy-tucks, in a way, are preservatives. Humans are artificial in the sense that reproduction requires a delicate manufacturing process with an aqueous assembly line. We are not, though, spontaneous like coral or impersonal like ants. We, Species #207.2, can make Yellowcake #4 by the ton, but we can’t seed ourselves or leave our eggs at the B71x bus stop for a passerby to knock up. We have a small window in which to live in this world, even without comforts and Housewives.

Eco is not antithetical to “me,” but it is an embrace of “us.” The earth knows – and exploits – our weakness of ego. Make them selfish enough, she thinks, and they’ll extinguish themselves…

A toxic earth, i.e. – one that cannot support us, still functions. Still goes on. So who really needs the save, Simon?

Is it worth more if oil is limited or limitless? Can you imagine if we find out that the earth itself is a cumbustion engine? Maybe the oil we need is the same oil that fuels the core? Maybe it’s the other way and oil is the by-product of the forge at the center of the planet? If energy never ran out, would there be no war? If we never wanted for power would we run out of fish and fresh water slower or faster?

At the same time, is anyone really upset that dinosaurs are extinct? They are really tough to zoo. And deer eating the tomatoes are one thing. But a T-rex eating your entire spinach crop as a side dish to your grilled thighs is quite another.

Then again, Brontosaurus fucking would have been pretty cool/hot to watch on Discovery HD… Cooler/hotter still, would have been feeling the ground shake under a jeep while parked on an amazonian bluff, as you filmed two 8000lb truckosaurs crashing hips and flattening trees in avian ecstasy.

In 200,000 years, New York City will either be under 2 miles of ice or 1000 feet of water – no matter what we do.

I hope it’s ice.

Then, in 300,000 years, as the glacier recedes (like it’s done a few times), a melting midtown ice sheet will reveal “Manhattan Man,” with his right thumb still frozen to his crackberry, wearing his perfectly preserved Cavalli leathers. Our highly advanced distant progeny will then put him on display in the Homo Erectuseum right next to Lucy with her stone tipped spear and that kid from Pompeii frozen in ash.

“It would have been pretty cool/hot,” they’ll think to each other, “to have seen those creatures seed each other in the wild.”