The Agricultural Revolution was the defining turning point in human history. It produced food surpluses that enabled the development of leisure, technology, cities, armies, and, ultimately, empires. Unknown at the time, humans began actively transforming the planet as they transformed how they lived. Earth’s delicate balance was tipped. Global temperatures leveled and the Earth entered a period of stasis. Humanity reigned.

Carbon. Water. Nitrogen.
Life as we know it depends on these three building blocks. Carbon is the central element in all organic compounds. Nitrogen is essential to plant growth and facilitates numerous biological processes. Water is the core of all life as we know it, the currency life uses to connect with everything around us. We must understand their role in life as we know to eventually understand how our actions have disrupted their natural flow.

The Industrial Revolution marked the second major technological shift in human history. Unlike agriculture, this era of advancement was driven by the West’s desire to exert absolute control over nature. The discovery of oil enabled the West’s greatest desires. Oil is a condensed carbon from lifeforms hundreds of millions of years ago. There is no other resource as energy dense and readily transportable as oil. That bargain had a price and it was disrupting a carbon cycle eons in the making. We traded life for convenience.

The Climate Crisis is the ultimate manifestation of humans attempting to play God and learning we don’t know the first thing about the universe we live in. Humans cannot naturally get from Tokyo to LA in a day. There is a price to do that which we were not enabled to do. That price was the delicate climate that made the last 10,000 years of human history possible. If we are to avoid the worst of what's to come, we must recommit ourselves to the Earth that birthed us.

Heatwaves. Red Tides. Hundred year storms every summer. The consequences we face are the result of Earth being pumped full of carbon it had sequestered nearly 250 million years ago. Dammed rivers. Paved Earth. Liquidated aquifers. All the processes that Earth has established have been stonewalled by human convenience. We cannot mitigate our way out of this. Earth will continue to stress its climate until the cycle disruptors are destroyed and a new balance is achieved. That end is certain. Whether humans will survive is not.

The West, especially the United States, is driven by consumerism. A constant rotation of gadgets and gizmos that last less and less forcing you to buy more and more. There is no such thing as endless consumption. There is a limit. Even worse, every nonorganic thing you’ve ever consumed, whether a t-shirt, toothpaste tube, tires, straw, is still somewhere in the world today. Our footprints are in places we have never been. Humans were never meant to live like this.

Rising seas. Collapsing currents. Longer droughts. Wetter storms. Extinctions. Methane bombs. Vanishing ice. Crumbling infrastructure. These are only some of the ways Earth’s climate, as we know it, is changing. The last time atmospheric carbon was this high the Arctic was covered in forests. Earth operates on Geologic time. The rapid rise in atmospheric carbon will take time to show its full effect and won’t know all the consequences till they happen.

As the planet changes, we will be forced to change with it. Major cities will be rendered unusable. Changing weather patterns will make food surpluses harder to sustain. Most of all, plastics run through our veins wreaking havoc on our biology. Soaring chronic illness. Rising cancer rates. Pandemic causing pathogens evolving with rising temperatures to pierce our warm blooded shield. The Climate Crisis isn't about our abstract impact on the planet, it's about what the fibers of our being will ultimately become.

If the Green New Deal passed we would still be in the exact same position we were. The bill was a Congressional directive to the Executive that carried the force of law. Take this money and achieve this goal, Department of Transportation. That is not a plan. As we have seen with the current administration, any president and their cabinet could have put a pause on the policy because Congress has forgotten how to wield its power appropriately. This is Climate’s connection to Democracy. Only with robust, particularized, and unequivocal legislation can the rapid climate developments necessary be made in time.

Confronting the Climate Crisis requires us to acknowledge the cost required to use fossil fuels and the delicate balance we have disrupted. Are path to rebalance the climate is not through continuous extraction, exploitation, or the idea of trash. Many call this a circular economy, but it's more. The balance we need is us taking direction from the Earth and moving with it, not against it.

The propaganda of endless economic growth has poisoned us. We always want more, especially in the West. Until we confront the fact that we don’t need the shiny thing being sold to us through manipulative marketing, we will not be able to chart sustainability. We were already given everything we needed and what the Earth didn’t provide we stole. It’s time we make due with what we were given.

Suburbs are one of the worst city designs since the Agricultural Revolution. Zoning different areas for living, commerce, school, and work has fomented numerous problems like traffic congestion, food insecurity, erroneous carbon emissions, disconnected communities, and rising housing costs. If most people see their yard as chores, why do we keep giving people yards. Its time our cities aided our growth rather than inhibit it.

We must build a star on the Earth's surface. Fusion power. We must build natural batteries. Gravity batteries. We must put greenhouses on top of every big box store. Eliminate transportation emissions. We must harness human ingenuity to trim the fat on our civilization's infrastructure. Everyday our leaders squander untapped potential. No more.