Easter, Meet Earth Day
This year, Easter and Earth Day arrived back to back. It made me think back on the arc of the 21st century, wondering what happened to the optimism and collective energy we had for a minute about “saving the environment,” before the language shifted to “combating climate change.” The shift from ‘saving’ to ‘combating’ is telling.
New forms of energy and simpler living seemed not only possible but inevitable. We shared real momentum, until 9/11 happened, and a bomb went off in the global psyche.
Before that, a global shift toward sustainability was taking root. Overnight, the focus veered to security, war, and “good versus evil.” The energy around environmental action was derailed. All caused by a few brown men wielding box cutters, it seemed. The enemy is everywhere! They look like those people! Fear terror!
Some will argue the facts, causes, or players involved. Regardless, the consequences are clear. Whether you believe in a conspiracy or not, 9/11 was a textbook case of disaster capitalism. A crisis erupted, and opportunists swooped in to reshape policies and priorities to their benefit. Canada was swept into war “to help our ally,” and we swallowed the rhetoric: “If you’re not with us, you’re against us!”
A shift happened. Before that, things felt, not calm, but cyclical. Crises came and went, and there was space to reflect and regroup. We were starting to deal with pollution, a practical thing to work with, tangible. ‘Climate change’ is so vast and abstract it paralyzes even the well-intentioned. Maybe that’s the point. Daunt, dishearten, dispirit people, so many will cling to those who deny there’s a problem as saviors. Nothing to worry about! Everything to fear!
Since 9/11, global tensions have escalated. Today, the world feels closer to all-out war than it has since the 1940s. We now have a “trade war” and the temperature keeps rising.
How does this benefit capitalists? Why would they fuel chaos and conflict? It’s obvious. War is good for business. When you toss religious fundamentalism into the mix, whether as the main course or a side dish, it’s even better. Now, they’re helping God with His master plan for Armageddon. In that context, why bother caring about the environment or the future? If the goal is the end of the world, stewardship is irrelevant.
Yes, things are that weird. The world is being run by people who want to end the world. Blow it all up and bring the Rapture! But just to be safe, the billionaire atheists who fund it have built secure bunkers to ride it out until they can emerge to become kings of what may be cockroaches and dust. Disaster capitalism’s ultimate win!
What does Easter have to do with all this? I watched Jesus Christ Superstar yesterday; that’s my Easter tradition. From a certain viewpoint, Judas wasn’t the bad guy, but the hero or the victim. In the film, he accuses Jesus of ‘using him’ to bring about his end, prescribed by God, where the Saviour dies to redeem the world…somehow. Never understood how that works. The point is: the bad guy was secretly the good guy. Just like Armageddon is their sort-of-secret goal now.
Now, disaster capitalists are facilitating, or taking advantage of, opportunities provided by mass disasters to advance their agenda of profit at all costs. If it results in apocalypse, so much the better! Bring on the Rapture. Christians who truly believe in a God of love are being betrayed right alongside the rest of us.
What can we do, here and now, on the ground? We have to live where we are, clean up our own yards and work within our communities to create the world we want. Fighting against bad guys, no matter who we think they are, only fuels the furnaces of war. War is a state of mind, a stance of ‘us against them.’ There is always a place in the middle, a point of possibility. A balance. A win-win. A way to hear everyone and include all the realities, to reconnect as humans, to reweave the web of interdependence we need to survive.
Apocalypse is not my idea of a solution, except in the most final sense. I want life on Earth to continue, to regenerate, to thrive. I believe that’s still possible, if we drop the accusations, threats, and othering to see the real human hearts and feelings on the other side. Everybody is fighting for what they think is good. Maybe if we can really hear each other we can start to work together.
As for the billionaires, warmongers and disaster capitalists, they too are people. People driven by forces inimical to life, who want things they have no right to, who need real-life lessons and karmic correction. If we stop feeding the chaos and start focusing our energy where it truly matters, on the land, the air, the water, the interconnected life that sustains us, they’ll either wake up or die off.
Oh, and also, vote!
Vote for the person who’s shown up for our community and for the planet all along, for years. Vote for the only one who actually has a chance to beat the party most aligned with disaster capitalism and religious extremism. Everybody knows who I mean. We need him speaking for us in Parliament.
That’s what I think. What do you think? email me at phoenixonhornby@gmail.com
