Yesterday I was taking a shower when I noticed a spider clinging to the side wall of the shower. My first instinct was to kill it. My second and much stronger instinct was to save it, to interrupt my shower, transport it outside and then resume the shower.
But then I thought, It's only a couple more minutes until my shower is ended and then I can take care of the spider. Though he was looking a little drenched, he seemed okay for the moment. So I deliberately shut my eyes for the next couple of minutes so I wouldn't be distracted by the spider.
When I shut off the water and opened my eyes again, the spider wasn't there. He had been flushed down the drain. I immediately felt a pang of pain and regret that I hadn't made him the top priority and then resumed my shower. I felt a pang of remorse that I hadn't seen what was most important, more important than the shower.
I had turned a blind eye, and my regret and the spider's death was the result. Because I knew, I experienced, that that spider was me and I was it. There weren't two separate creatures, there was only one, and yet I had turned a blind eye anyway.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it reminds me of what we—humanity as a whole—are doing with the environment of our planet.
In effect we've been turning a blind eye so far. We're pouring billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, and we're only a few decades away from an atmospheric carbon-density of 450 parts per million, a possible tipping point.
That is the point where scientists fear that we could get a runaway situation where the whole thing goes completely out of control and temperature accelerates upward. The possibility of that may be remote, but the point is, we don't know. It's definitely a possibility.
Now maybe we'll be luckier than I was and when we open our eyes the planet, or more accurately our presence on it, will still be savable. But on the other hand—like the spider—maybe not.
Which I guess is a long-winded way of saying that we'd be wise to open our eyes about this issue a lot sooner than later. Because, as the spider proved, there are no guarantees.
—jim sloman, 9.26.06
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