Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Five Small Ways To Ward Off The Apocalypse (Part 1)

‘If current trends continue, by the end of this century as many as half of earth’s species will be gone.’ —The New Yorker, 25 May, 2009. 

When I read a sentence like the one above, something strange comes over me. I know I’ve just taken in something terrible, but something about it is too awful, too momentous to even register.

So what usually happens is this: my torso locks up, my brain becomes filled with a kind of white noise, and then all of a sudden I am filled with an incredibly pressing desire to eat some cheese, go for a swim, or watch an action movie.

Recently, though, I’ve been trying to stay with this feeling. I’ve been trying to let it course through me to see what happens. Turns out there are two possibilities: I either completely go to water, or I start thinking about small things that might be done to remedy it.

Of course, I’m not really an expert in anything, and if I’ve learnt anything, it’s that the big questions facing mankind are usually the province of experts. Occasionally, when our collective terror reaches a high enough pitch, groups of these experts get together and talk a lot and write voluminous reports on what the problem is.

These then get filtered, via various means, into terrifying sound bites that make us want to eat cheese, go swimming, and watch action movies. And so it goes.

Photo: Steve Rhode

The guiding logic of this approach seems to be that the clusterfuck we’ve all made for ourselves is terribly complex now, and beyond the reach of ordinary people, or simple solutions. We’re screwed, and only a great genius, or a very advanced machine, can save us now.

But what if it wasn’t actually that hard? What if we could start pulling ourselves back from the precipice by throwing away a bunch of useless shit we don’t even need? What if consumer choice and comfort weren’t the supreme goals of civilisation? How much, then, would we really find we need?

A lot of the problems these questions bring up—the first world’s abuse of developing countries, our capacity to spoil our pets while at the same time supporting factory farming, the ineffable and shared sadness that makes us shop til we drop—can’t be readily simplified and remedied, at least not yet. Which is why we tend to forget about them, because it feels like there’s no place to start.

Certainly, there are many ways our chaos manifests that will take a lot of soul searching, sacrifice and compromise to come to terms with and do something about. Some things, however, are really easy, and could be done tomorrow. Here I offer five of them.

Step one: Convert All Golf Courses To Parklands

Nothing signifies humans’ gross misuse of our large brains and opposable thumbs than golf. Golf is what happens when a species spends too long at the top of the food chain and no longer fears getting eaten in the savannah.

Instead of cautiously foraging for food and water, white men in terrible polo shirts now stalk the fairways complaining about their wives and sealing large business deals. Clearly, this is an ideal point to begin in changing the world.

Effective immediately, golf courses all over the world would be returned to wilderness areas, either by community replanting initiatives or simple neglect. Within weeks, saplings will emerge from thickly grassed greens; lilies will bloom and cover water traps; hardy shrubs will sprout from bunkers.

Under the new arrangement, golfers would not be abandoned: they would all be given surfing lessons, unless, of course, they’re too far from the ocean, or too infirm to take to the water, in which case they would lead tour groups of the new parklands.

As nature hungrily devours every trace of the courses, so too will the Latin names of native perennials replace every piece of useless golf esoterica in golfers’ newly liberated brains. A new mode of leisure will take root.

Next time, in Part Two: Lights Out, Vending Machine

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