There is no Planet B and we are leaving Planet A in ruins, but there is a Planet C and it looks like this....

The Madonna of Global Warming (photo by Yann Quero)

So there is no Planet B and we are leaving Planet A in ruins. But there is a Planet C and it looks like this:


No humans left (the last of their species died out in 2801 A.D.); but plenty of the nonhuman all over the place. For this we evolved from the Great Apes? The Cosmos certainly has a sense of humour, it seems. Or did. When there was a Planet A.


''I don't want to doom you out,'' as a friend of mine in Sweden puts it in a recent essay on Medium titled HOW CLIMATE CHANGE COMES, but in fact we need to be doomed out, repeatedly, often, until it sinks in. Most of us are still in denial. Oh yes, there will be a technological fix and we can all go back to watching baseball and football and soccer and the Oscars ceremony and the MTV Video Awards and get as distracted as we want to be, and take exotic vacations to Third World countries where we can feel superior to everyone else. But hey, there won't be any fixes. We really are doomed, doomed. Let that sink in. I don't want to doom you out, but maybe this needs to be said


On a future Planet A, or maybe it's Planet C, there are no humans left but there is grass, ferns, pine cones, baby tomatoes. Highland gorillas, lowland rivers, rainbows, moonrises, sunsets.


And lots of trees, rainforest, lakes, streams, trout ponds, earthworms, chickens, sharks, whales, cows, deer, horses, snakes.


There is no Planet B and now that we are ruining Planet A, there is only one more place: Planet C.


This is the future. Let it sink in.