6 million humans say “no” to climate crisis and “yes” to life
As a writer and human being this one continues to reflect upon what all lies behind the climate crisis protests of the past and what all will be involved in the future if the intent is to truly tackle “the forces crushing the planet.” Especially when it comes down to just how hopelessly out-of-touch many of the politicians of the world still are today, in 2019, about the climate crisis and the expressed will of the millions of youth and adults today, as there were back in 2003 when this writer, and millions more like him, also protested the then threatened war in Iraq. But all to no avail.
In the long run, will the minions marching now to “Save The World” also have so little avail upon the politicians as those of us in our day when we protested so vociferously, with all the passion, strength and might we could muster, against yet another senseless war and against WOW, GUESS WHAT? THE SAME THINGS: OIL PIPELINES, HUMAN GREED AND MALE AGGRESSION! It’s like that old saying, “What goes around keeps coming around until things finally change!”
Reflecting upon the similarities of 2003 and 2019 one image in particular, like a flashback to some long ago distant time, reminds this one of what motivated him back then to become both an activist and lifelong teacher of youth that, to this day, still possesses the same intensity and poignancy that ever since has been his raison d’etre.
The flashback is that of a wandering, itinerant king: with a weather-beaten yet kindly beaming, wrinkled face; his tussled white hair supporting a tarnished gold crown; his once luxurious raiments now threadbare, holey and patched like his also, once regal, now time-worn bejewelled slippers. Slung over his shoulder, he carries his bedding and all his worldly possessions in a bundle, tied to the end of a stick, like some old Aussie swagman. Standing innocently before the old king on the rough road he trod, wondrously looking up at him with a beaming face, full of so much hope and expectancy, is one tiny, girl around age two, with curly blond hair, wearing a delicate white lace dress. The king is bent over, to the point where their faces are almost touching, as he stares intently at her so his failing eyes and ears can see and hear her with greater clarity. The caption of the image reads “The Philosopher-King is Beholden to Ask the Child Which Way Next to Go!”
So when one compares which road the world has taken since 2003, and what the choice of roads still are in 2019, one wonders if there exists, in the real world, anything like that philosopher-king who, in the end, will intuitively know from the youth standing before him which road ultimately to take? Will it be “the high road, or the low road,” as in the lyrics of that old Scottish song The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomand? Will the road chosen again be the high road of the rich and mighty or the low road of the common people? Only time will tell!
Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American activist-writer who, for decades, has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by excessive mega-development and the host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey”, a spiritual sojurn among the native peoples of North America, and has produced numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel and U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine and Siege of Gaza, as well as; innumerable accounts of the violations constantly waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul.
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Phil Pryor
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Return to home pageMorrison, Abbott, Frydenberg, B Joyce, the biggest stinking turds get all the paper, a Murdoch one, for certain.
“Straws are a distraction”
40 years of Reaganomic sociopathy has managed to convince hundreds of millions of otherwise sensible people that big, social problems are caused by their personal choices, and not (say) by rapacious corporations that corrupt the regulatory process in order to get away with literal and figurative murder. The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner made a short doc on the subject, showing how the inevitable pollution from single-use plastics was rebranded as a matter of individual carelessness, starting with the “Crying Indian” ads, and how that continues to this day, with the plastics industry successfully lobbying states to ban cities from limiting plastic bags, even as those cities have to pay to landfill and clear them away.