A New Year is coming: let it be better than this one.

Birding allows me to enjoy the beauty of the natural world.
Yet anyone who appreciates the natural world has a lot to worry about.
This bird, the kingfisher, has long been a symbol of calm weather, peace, and love.

The Planet is in Trouble!

What is important to me this year? Global human and natural welfare are fragile. The future looks uncertain. My focus leans towards the US because that’s where I live, and I see many causes for concern, serious concern. Many of the issues that I worry about are closely linked to one another. And there are so many of them!

• Climate change as an existential threat to humanity: arriving rapidly and causing a number of types of deprivation, desperation, natural disasters, and dysfunction in societies, especially causing food scarcity and famine or near-famine in the global south.
• The war in Israel and the dreadful consequences if Hamas is not defeated.
• Antisemitism in American life and on US university campuses — brought out by the war in Israel, but obviously evoked, not caused by the war.
• Increasing inequality (both socio-economic and racial) throughout the US with a variety of bad consequences, combined with right wing repression of women’s rights and minority rights.
• The war in Ukraine and the looming dominance of Russia as a consequence of a bad end to the war. 
• Food shortages in many third world countries (much of it due to climate change) forcing large numbers of people to crowd into already overburdened cities and often to attempt migration to the global north.
• Political success by the extreme right wing in many places. The large numbers of desperate people wanting to enter North American and European countries is one factor in growing right-wing strength in the global north.
• Degradation of educational institutions in the US: a complex and multi-faceted issue.
• The threat to world peace implicit in almost every one of the above issues.
• In the US, we are also threatened with the end of democracy and the completion of a right-wing takeover of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the Federal government.

Notice that I don’t have any mention of AI or of any type of rampant and out-of-human-control technology on the list. I’m not very worked up about AI — maybe that will prove to be all wrong. And although I’m very interested in how our food choices and consumer choices collectively impact human life, my concerns for the future are expressed in a more general way. Similarly, fears that treasured creatures such as some species of birds, bats, frogs, polar bears, rhinos, fish, monarch butterflies, and many more may go extinct (or lose their natural habitat and exist only in captivity) is intrinsic in the concern about climate change. As the New Year approaches, all these thoughts perplex me.

Sunrise on one of the shortest days of the year. We hope things will start to look better.

I've also reread a mystical novel based on Jewish traditions and folklore:
The World to Come by Dara Horn. Reading good books: another cosolation.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz 

and with Eileen's Saturday Critters