One of my worst days

I usually read every night before falling asleep.

My preferred genre is fiction. But I'm all out of fiction (that I've read anyway-- in some cases multiple times-- it's clearly time for a trip to the library).

My husband's doom-and-gloom book pile, however, grows weekly.

Last night I picked up Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

I'd read most of his Guns Germs and Steel, a book that seems to have crossed over from doom-and-gloomers to the mainstream. (I saw my sister reading it last year.) So I thought, maybe this one will pull me in.

Like my niece with Heinberg's writing, I could not get through the first chapter.

I picked it up again this morning, and tried again. Couldn't do it.

The first chapter focuses mostly on what's happening to Montana-- about the impact on the environment and the economy of the failed mining and timber industries. (That's as far as I got, so if he wrote more about Montana, I didn't read it.)

Folks, this is a heavy book. Just shy of 600 pages. I don't think I got through 30. What he's describing in this chapter is just one state. This stuff is happening all over the place. This book, like so many others out there (as well as a good portion of what's on National Public Radio) only serves to convince me that we, the human species, are doomed. We've doomed ourselves. We've so badly exploited the earth that sustains us that she will simply stop sustaining us. She is the landlord; we are her tenants. She will boot us out. I have no doubt of it. Whether through famine, flood, bird flu, terrorism or whatever, we will be ousted from our tenancy.

And, as the rest of the title of Diamond's book makes clear, we will have CHOSEN to be evicted. Chosen by our actions, by our inactions, by our ignorance, by our utter arrogance.

This isn't fatalism. If it was, I'd throw in the towel. I'm not doing that. I will live my life, continue to do what I think is right. Continue to have discussions about living sustainably and in respect of nature, continue to work on my own habits that work against this. But I have absolutely no doubt that Mother Earth will survive, and we will not. We have broken our lease agreement time and time again. Will will be evicted.

For me the only question is "when?"