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Carl Sagan:

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Does not leave a lot to say…

There you go my subscribers all, that Picture should be a reward for your patience

I did not know you were there. I’ll try and do better, faster & longer.

Timbo.

Some one commented to blame all Americans both the “good” and the evil. I replied:

I did not mention Americans or the residents of any other country. It is us, the people of the (mostly “western”) world, that are doing this. Allowing it and encouraging it by continuing our consumerism.

I live in southern England about 15 miles from London Heathrow airport, it is a nice day, all the better for the lack 747s lumbering upwards and over us every 10 minutes. Thanks for the day of peace and quiet Iceland

Many think the world would stop turning if we did not have hundreds of thousands of air trips daily, and thousands of millions of car journeys.

Today proves them wrong

Inexorable natural processes, whether it be the weather, climate, soil degradation, beneficial species loss, or simply an exhaustion of supply, will eventually put a stop to all the waste and pollution. It will probably be a combination of them all because we just can’t continue taking, destroying and altering everything to suit our “lifestyles”. Which in case you had not noticed, for most of us, actually consists of being debt slaves to the banks and businesses that are rapidly accumulating all the worlds “money”. What they will do with it all after they have, I just don’t know. It won’t buy them a nice shiny new climate, or a new supply of oil, or a rain forest, or a fertile delta or a million other natural necessities that’s for sure.

They may have nice big numbers stored in their computers and written on bits of paper, but they have no real wealth. Turn off the computers, burn the paper and you would see how ephemeral this “money” and the quest for it, really is.

We, the worlds people, just need to decide if this is the way we as a species, want to die out or not, to have no greater purpose, to not go boldly forward but to sink back in to the mud and slink away.

Find a copy of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. Stick it on your wall. It may help your perspective there is a web picture here:

http://andygiefer.com/the-pale-blue-dot-a-view-of-earth-from-4-bill

Sorry I ramble but Mordor Mountains and blasted-land-forests have a depressing effect.

According to my associate in Iceland:

“Below is a nice picture I saw this morning, it’s shot by the farmer of this farm called Þorvaldseyri which is quite close to the volcano.  He is only allowed to go to his farm during the day to check his cows.”

I think it’s a fantastic picture if a little scary.

Every time I see a picture of mountains with their tops missing, my heart sinks.

Every time I see a picture of the tar sands project, my heart sinks.

There is something terribly wrong with both these “technologies” it is wrong at the heart level, the head level and any other level you care to add.

Surely, this is most people’s reaction to those same pictures?

How politicians dare to dress this up as essential or supportable I don’t know. They are closing their eyes and minds in exchange for the power and money bought by these big businesses.

If they opened their eyes, just for once, surely the world could use $60 Billion that is Sixty Thousand Million dollars (60,000,000,000) to start building something better.

I would rather see a sea of windmills from my windows than Tolkeinesque Mordor mountains and blasted-lands-forests.

These twin evils are a visible stain on our planet.

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