This horror has no conclusion. It will not end in my daughter's lifetime or even the lifetime of any decedent she can hope to love. She will know no other future outside this claustrophobic emergency, this coffin we are all now pounding on the lid of. She will know death and pain with unthinkable intimacy and likely become inured to the suffering pouring forth from every region of the world in order to keep going. No matter what ideologies arise, what myths we embrace, what technologies we invent, what dreams we offer, this crisis is effectively our eternity.
When I look at her fragile, beautiful face, when I watch her hold a pinch of dirt from our garden and go soft and quiet with mystery, I agonize over it. What will she think of us? What will she think of the expanding deserts, lost soil, acid seas, poisoned land, baking heat, horrific diseases, and a horizon black with storms? I imagine her asking me someday with the hot fury of a teenager's clarity, Was it worth it? Was a raped and murdered world worth it for a few decades of excess? How did you let this happen? You all knew. Everyone knew. She will gaze up into this haunting vortex, the consequences of what was done in just a single human lifetime, with nowhere to run or hid or escape this uncharted and endless future.
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