Coffee days are intense.  My brain fires and moves at light speed like electrons through a circuit board.

Today,  thinking about the grand cultural myths and paradigms in my lifetime, especially Nuclear holocaust & Environmental holocaust.  Fifty-eight years of the world is going to end in a huge nuclear fireball or in a slow inexorable decline into depleted oxygen, intense heat, melting ice and starvation.  True: we did come very close to blowing up the world a few times:  but we didn’t.  The primary reason we didn’t is that nobody except Jack Ripper and Buck Turgison (Dr. Strangelove reference…coffee!) wanted it to happen.

I don’t think the world is going to burn up, though there is a lot of evidence that supports that it is changing rapidly and we better do something about it soon.  Saving the Planet is a ridiculous concept, as if the planet cares one wit about humans.  I read the Gaia Hypothesis.  That was science, not woo woo.

The planet will be fine even if humans perish.

Environmentalism (careful coffee boy, you are one) and the new Eco-religion is often wielded as a righteous club by those who are the worst contributors to the problem against those who are new to the world of burning fossil fuels.

I think it is ridiculous to walk around waiting for the world to end and promulgating the sentiment that we’re about to perish.  What an absurd path to walk.

Better to get involved in making a real change, and I don’t mean paper, plastic, or Prius.  Coal fired energy plants are what is heating up the Earth and releasing all the greenhouse gases, so how about doing something about that and quit walking around like Chicken Little saying, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” (Sorry, coffee can occasionally be disdainful and intolerant).

I love being alive.  I hope you do too.  Living fully is better than waiting for the planet to die.

When I go to the coast I keep my eyes open and scan routes to the high ground. Some of my family and friends find this amusing, maybe think it’s a little joke. It’s not. I grew up around water, have spent my life around water and have worked around and on the ocean. I love the ocean more than anything.

Part of that love comes from respect and knowing that waves can be powerful. I worked in the Bering Sea in harsh conditions including fifty foot waves that towered over ships on which I worked. I have experienced “sneaker” waves on the West side of Vancouver Island that can snatch you from the shore and take you for a swim that you don’t want. I have stood on a trail into the Kalalau Valley on Kauai and seen a sign indicating the high point of the largest wave to hit Kauai in recorded history, and looking down I thought, “Oh my God!”

Thanks to Nancy who dug this out from the internet, you can appreciate a look at an animation of the recent tidal wave triggered by an offshore earthquake in Chile.  And the next time you’re at the coast, scope out your evacuation routs before you start digging clams or harvesting mussels.

(They should be running in the other direction.  Fast!)