Space ships and Aquariums.

Space ships and Aquariums.

I was paying in a restaurant and my little grandchild was closely looking at the fish in the aquarium beside the till. The cashier sprinkled a little Fish Food on top of the water and all the fish rushed to get a bite, to the delight of the little guy. He watched and signaled me to get closer, and whispered. Where do they go poo, Grandpa? In the water I said and the preschooler made a disgusted face. They eat in it and sleep in it, he said. The cashier told him that every month they change some of the water but it didn’t reduce his concern.

I remember years ago when I was little, and a teacher in grade school told us that the world existed for millions of years but never got a drop of water or air from outside. This was before we sent a man to the moon or even to space. Now I am listening to David Saint-Jacques, the Canadian astronaut on the Space Station, telling on a live interview about his experience. He talked about the coffee and mentioned that the water on Space Station is recycled. Yesterday’s coffee, he said is today's coffee. In his opinion, the experiment of people in space is most important because people are learning how to live together and how we depend on each other. David went on describing the fact that our atmosphere is a very thin layer above the planet and we are learning that we have to take care of it. The atmosphere over the earth is the aquarium in which all species which provide what we call reality or life exists and there is no other alternative. Nothing in, nothing out. The earth is us and it receives energy from the sun. Very little else comes in as cosmic dust.

I went with my grandchildren to the Zoo and came to the big mammal's enclosure. The rhinoceros was close to the barrier so the kids flocked to see it. I don’t know if the big animal wasn’t trained well at tourist hospitality workshop, but it lifted its tail, and….you know, nature played its role and all the kids made a face and went, peooouh. I tried not to pay attention but the smell couldn’t be avoided. I couldn’t hold my breath long enough to walk out of the building into the open air.

Some molecules of the stink entered my lungs, oxygenated my blood, traveled to my brain, became electricity and formed a thought. The thought made my body get the energy to my muscles and made me run for open air. Open air contained all of the used material from the whole world but was scrubbed by natural process and plants to give me life. All of that in the thin layer we call atmosphere that exists on our planet and possibly on others, but we don’t know for sure.

We live in a huge closed system that we didn’t design. Even my own body is more dependent on what my brain does subconsciously than on what I control. It is easy to destroy the natural defenses of the body or of the whole world. A body or a world may quit working.

Last week we watched in horror as a modern airplane took control away from the pilot and plunged everyone on board to their death. When we take over from nature and neglect to compensate we are plunging space ship earth towards death. We may do it by abusing the environment beyond its capacity to self-repair, or by abusing other people. A crazed White Supremacist kills and injures a hundred Muslims and an equally crazed Muslim fanatic does something worse.

David Saint-Jacques thinks that the most important aspect of being in space is the Psycho-Social experiment of having people from many nations isolated on a space ship. I agree with him full heartedly. When I was young we looked at the world from our own national perspective and we based our observations upon our limited education. We can no longer do that now when the whole world is communicating so quick and easy.

Last Friday, March 15^th, about a million teenage kids all around the world skipped school and went on demonstrations telling adults to take action against activities that cause climate change. In Australia, hundreds of thousands, in Europe even more, demand that we will quit destroying the world they must live in. Even in Edmonton, around a hundred students protested. The North American news hardly touched upon it.

My generation called for: drugs, sex, and Rock and Roll, and now the young are fighting for LIFE. We owe them something. We brought freedom for women, an end to harsh discrimination, and economic prosperity, but we didn’t know when to stop. When we gave up the fight, it was replaced by greed.

Now the youth are fighting for their future and many of us will not abandon them, for as long as we can move. My grandchildren are in the aquarium but they are not going to sleep in poop under dirty water breathing poisoned air if I can help it.

National school students' climate strike in pictures ...

www.counterfire.org

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