FLUNG

Whoever you are reading this, you are unowned now. Your others are in Ireland, India, France, Egypt, Beijing, Vietnam, the Russian Federation, North Carolina, Vermont, Canada, California, to place a few. Distance is given its due.

A portion of this audience bounces off, having something better to do. But for awhile you're part of a far group being instantly involved, way past electromagnetic connections, with others who felt something similar. With minds untethered. The chaotic attractor forms an eddy for the moment.

The topic of the day is meltdown. Polar ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Leaders. It's a pretty big swath, bundling an African rainforest with a Christmas tree in DC, an ICBM on a mobile launcher, and napkins folded neatly for a concert in Marrakesh.

Nobody pays me for this stuff.

We're in deep trouble. Perhaps we can buy our way out of it? Where there's wealth, there's a way. A new camera to put under the tree. A tax cut.

What if the wealth melts away? The wealth of nations, according to Adam Smith, gets raked in by a croupier's invisible hand. So, but what happens if the corn fields flood and the wooded hills dry up so no one can go skiing? No taxes to collect. Or worse, it all burns to the ground.

The benefits of an open North Sea Route, access to the sea bed, are offset by a possible oil blowout. The oil companies would rather stick to fracking which, it has been noticed, leads to earthquakes. Coal miner's regrets.

Well then, have a nice day. No, seriously! There's better in a moment.

Not all this god stuff – do this, don't do that. God loves you, or she doesn't exist, or who knows? God?

The universe was done by who? It was started up. Like a nuclear reactor? It never started. It never ends. It's a promise. Doesn't care. I'm getting a headache.

There are people with robes and rules, scriptures, incense and whips, armies and mules, ICBMs and god knows what all. A nice day is forgetting all that stuff.

So, out in the backyard are birds that visit. Squirrels. A cat that probably belongs to the nextdoor neighbor. Sometimes there's a breeze in the trees. It's a scaredy cat, runs by quickly, probably remembering my lecture on not eating the birds in this backyard.

The breeze is just passing through. A nice day is just doing nothing.

And so is this universe. No big deal. In my experience there is no distance and no time. Although I do say that getting here is worth noting. Like all that's unowned, without a doubt it's just hanging out, and what are the odds?

It takes a planet to grow a village, to raise a child that appreciates our home. Doing nothing is just getting out of the way, letting it be. And not glossing the harsh reality of climate change. Or the poverty of taxation that pays for leaders and machines and armies that don't give a damn.

Emissions of carbon dioxide need to be eliminated entirely, with no foot dragging about some carbon budget to parse. Greenhouse gasses already absorbed will have consequences later, with delayed effects on average temperature due to absorption by the ocean now and ice melt. The advertised budget is bankrupt. When these heat sinks reach capacity, the full effects of accumulating emissions will suddenly be felt with a vengeance. Reckoning with this compound disaster requires removal of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, beginning today. Time is of the essence.

As the Arctic thaws frozen tundra melts, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. This is the start of a positive feedback cycle, growing upon itself, that may reach a tipping point beyond which it is unstoppable.

We would be wiser than we have been to learn from experience. California's drought and consequent fire disaster have prompted back fires. Attention is drawn to tinder. The accelerant for our burning planet comes from selfishness and grasping, an undergrowth that might be removed. We are sharing life, in this one place where we know it actually exists, with all creatures great and small riding a thermohaline pulse that supports consciousness.

Big, big universe. Far flung group. Unowned.