So, why the silence?

 Believe it or not, we owe our lives to these things:

 Which are found here (and in very few other places these days):

 This is Lake Clifton, and it’s just a short drive away from my house in a national park called Yalgorup.
 
We owe these guys, because they made the first oxygen 
needed for life on land.







 Here’s an article worth thinking about, from The Atlantic, Nov. 11th, 2013.

It’s inspired by the tragedy of the latest natural disaster, in the Philippines, but it was the final paragraphs that really got to me, about how countries “ought to spend less figuring out how to kill one another and
more trying to stop nature from prematurely killing us”…
and  “the high probability that advanced civilisations destroy
themselves.” 
 

Which is why
 we never hear any intelligent life out there speaking  us. 
The universe is silent.



“In other words, 
this silent universe is conveying 
not a
flattering lesson about our uniqueness 
but a tragic story about our
destiny. 
It is telling us that intelligence may be 
the most cursed
faculty in the entire universe—
an endowment not just ultimately fatal
but, 
on the scale of cosmic time, 
near instantly so.”



And we in Australia have blithely and selfishly elected a government which seems to believe that anything that makes the rich richer benefits all (in spite of all proof to the contrary) 
and that there’s no such thing as global warming and climate change (also in spite of massive evidence to the contrary.)

So this is a five minute verse from me:
without thrombolites and stromatolites 
we wouldn’t be here
life is fragile
this planet is just cotton candy 
in the universe
and greenies aren’t 
just tree-huggers
they are scientists too
trying to tell us
we need to take care
–of ourselves,
of our planet:

it’s all we’ve got,
mr abbott

Comments

So, why the silence? — 4 Comments

  1. Well said. Unfortunately I doubt that our current government has any grasp of the science given they've been busy dismantling as much of the existing scientific infrastructure as they can.

  2. I despair of the current government, they have their heads in the sand.
    I love the thrombolites. Thank you, I didn't know about them.
    I feel glad to live in Tasmania where we have a record of being Green, and I hope we maintain the rage!!

  3. How this government got elected I have no idea. They are obviously narrow-minded, greedy, idiots.

    We need more poets and fewer pollies.

  4. I like that Satima, more poets fewer pollies. Unfortunately it seems to be the same everywhere Glenda. They are all busy trying to deny the inevitable. In some ways I am kinda glad that I won't be here to see the end results.

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