“Pushing through the market square,
So many mothers sighing
News had just come over,
We had five years left to cry in

News guy wept and told us,
Earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet,
Then I knew he was not lying”
-David Bowie 1971

April 22 is Earth Day. I remember the first one. I was in High School. We formed an organization that sold books like Paul Ehrlich’s and Rachel Carson’s. I drew a poster with the grim reaper on it that we had printed and sold to raise additional funds. We got permits from the City Council to march on that first Earth Day and permission from the School Board to leave class in order to do it. Then I graduated and that was that…

Fast forward to 2016. It seems as though Bowie’s fantasy may have become a documentary. Worst-case climate change scenario (Guy Mcpherson) is 15 years before the species upon which human life depends for its existence all become extinct. Critics dispute Mcpherson and accuse him of monkey wrenching the environmental movement not unlike what the Koch funded climate change denial movement has done.

But even the slightly less sensationalist Naomi Klein (“This Changes Everything”) starts off stating that Earthlings are pretty much f**ked. She blames it on runaway neo-conservatism driven free market capitalism going off the rails.

But both Mcpherson (hippie) and Klein (activist) end with similar recommendations which make me realize that the wannabe hippie activist I was in 1970 wasn’t really so “far out.”

“How should we prepare for the extinction of all life on the planet?
By living with death in mind. By loving what is, not what should be. By identifying what we love, and pursuing it. By pursuing excellence in our lives. By doing what is right, without attachment to the outcome. All of which applies even if we live forever.” –Guy Mcpherson

So I guess in a way this is why I am addicted to soundShoppe. It is a weird sort of sonic sweat lodge, a chance to communicate on a deeper level and “chill” a bit on this overheated planet.