The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down. You can’t let go and you can’t hold on. You can’t go back and you can’t stand still. If the thunder don’t get you, then the lightning will.
Jerry Garcia
It should be clear that too many humans – not a single man-made sin – are the root cause of coronavirus, global warming, and the demise of God’s other creations. Garcia’s The Wheel is an apt allegory, because man was obsessed with global warming (thunder) when COVID-19 (lightning) struck. I love the wheel, but it began man’s travels faster, further and in greater numbers – including from Wuhan to Seattle.
The coronavirus is Mother Nature’s way of reminding man he’s not all that. Man created the novel virus in either a careless laboratory or low-hygiene wet market. The leader-for-life in over-populated China chose not to alert his fellow man, allowing air travel to nursing homes in Seattle and crowded neighborhoods in Italy. The virus flew to ill-prepared New York before America knew what hit it. Mankind has none to blame but itself.
Mother Nature is performing an end-zone celebration of sorts: the modern world has been forced to shelter in place and die alone. Meanwhile, “wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park [and] the bear population has quadrupled” (source: LA Times). “Fish and swans have returned to the canals of Venice” (source: Classic FM). NASA satellite images of China show clear skies. Man has left the meadow (source: Bambi’s mom).
I believe the green movement means well, but the Paris Accord is a myopic thinking trap, because over-population is a root cause of earth’s demise. Even if we move on from combustible engines, serious man-made problems will exist:
- Algae blooms in North Carolina rivers (farming)
- Decreasing aquatic life (fishing)
- Rogue nuclear threats (ideology)
- COVID-19 (markets or labs)
- Diminishing fresh water in Florida (population growth)
- Lead poisoning in fish and water fowl (hunting)
- Trash in the land and sea (mass consumption)
- Warming rivers and bays (clear-cutting)
- Wild fires in California (development)
Carbon-based emissions will end the minute some Edison invents a cold-fusion reactor – not when Trump signs the Paris Accord – but many threats to man’s existence will remain, including a fifth dimension where genes and microbes dwell.
The Superstring Theory of natural science believes other worlds (genes and microbes) exist in a fifth dimension – and history proves this dimension kills in vast numbers (e.g. the Spanish Flu). Superstring Theory begs the big question: is there a reason Mother Nature holds human numbers in check with pandemics? Hard to say, but if it makes sense to study frogs changing sexes to reproduce, then it makes more sense to look outside the eco-silo at population and viral pandemics.
Conventional attacks by Imperial Japan and Al Qaeda did not devastate America’s viability like this viral attack. SARS, MERS and COVID-19 are mounting evidence the study of population and viruses is at least as important as global warming. I hope mankind is sustainable, but extinction by a super-virus pandemic (apart and alone) is just as final as melting in a super-hot sun. Consider COVID-19 a warning.