Finally a new installment in my Resurfaced series. I haven’t been giving it much attention lately. Hope to remedy this soon. I honestly don’t remember where I shot this utility box. Possibly in Malmö. Maybe in Göteborg.

With the release of the United Nations pan-governmental climate report yesterday, one can either envision a forboding cataclysmic doomsday scenario or, see this as the beginning of the most exciting era to be a human. Either way, there’s no denying that planet Earth is in dire straits.

I prefer the latter position.

Why? Because the contents of said report, the urgency it proclaims, means we must now wholeheartedly embrace the climate crisis just to have a fighting chance at staving off the potentially devastating consequences of our neglect and ignorance – which means that a lot of really smart people will need to come up with some incredibly smart ideas very, very soon.

Then again, perhaps all everybody has to do is just sit down for a minute, take inventory of how we live our lives, and come to the reasonable conclusion and insight that we all actually have many of the required solutions within reach…

We went for a lovely long walk here in Vejbystrand yesterday evening. The day’s intense rainfall had finally ceased and a wonderful smell of fresh, robot-cut lawns permeated the air.

Not every house, but most of those we walked past had two rain-washed cars parked in driveways and under carports. All but a few of them were really fancy automobiles, some electric, others hybrid but most were fossil-fueled.

As we walked past the cavalcade of shiny vehicles, I thought to myself how difficult it’s going to be to legislate against leading a lifestyle that at least from a global warming perspective can’t be described as anything but excessive and collectively ruinous to the planet. The same goes for what we wear, what we drink and eat (contents and volume) as well with long-distance and regional travel.

The most optimistic scientists don’t think the problems at hand are unsurmountable. Demanding? Yes! Life-changing? Yes, for sure!

And this is what makes this era so exciting!

Being coerced verbally or legally into redefine so much of what we’ve taken for granted for so long is undoubtedly going to take a lot of effort. Especially for us lucky folk that live up here in northern Europe where we don’t much realize how rich we actually are.

I’ve said it before and now I’ll say it again. We’re going to need a lot of philosophers and psychologists to help us appreciate life with less.

I don’t have the faintest idea how we’re going to get where we need to be for the planet to cool down some. But I am looking forward to taking part in the master plan – however it rolls out.

I’ve been shifting gears, switching paths, and changing goals all my life. I wouldn’t have a hard time at all. You know what? The pandemic has been inadvertently helpful in getting me to appreciate more with less and feeling more content with what I have.

I don’t think many governments will take drastic action after this latest report. That would just lead to panic and more violent disruption. I mean, if so many people refuse to take a simple vaccine to help against Covid-19, just imagine the insanity if the EPA and other nation’s equivalent environmental agencies mandated against owning more than one car or shopping for H&M clothes more than once a quarter. Just conceptualize the havoc if you as a meat-lover could only eat steak, pork chop, or, fried chicken once a month? Weekend trip to Paris or London? Fuhgeddaboudit!

I do hope that countries like China and the US immediately close all operating and planned coal-fueled power plants. And more importantly, I sincerely hope that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page – along with their teams backed up by us minions – use their spectacular brain power and formidable money muscle to help Earth get through this crisis.