The Passive-Aggressive Environmentalist’s Book of Genesis
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was nothing but a dark rock floating through space. On the virgin earth there was no life, no Keystone Pipeline, and not even a single Whole Foods for humans to prove their financial commitment to organic sustainability.
God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. Not like light pollution from major cities, but beautiful and natural light that’s perfect for both sunrise yoga and harnessing solar energy, a renewable and sustainable source of energy that should be invested in, unlike petroleum, which should be divested from. Corporate pigs.
God called the light “Day,” which was a perfect time for holding peaceful protests against demonic corporations like Monsanto and called the dark “Night,” which was a perfect time for candlelight vigils to call attention to the social justice issues deeply intertwined with climate change.
God looked at the light and saw that it was good, like working on an organic farm for the first few years after graduating from college.
And then God made a dome over the earth, and He called this dome “sky.” At the moment of its creation, the sky and its ozone layer were untainted by harmful greenhouse gasses from wealthy, industrialized, and carbon-burning economies like the United States, a country with political leadership that recently told the rest of the world to go fuck itself. Like, what is even our role in the world anymore? I haven’t been this lost since I had to pick a major and somehow landed on geosciences.
God looked at the sky and saw that is was good, like Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine.
On the next day, God separated the waters and the dry land into what He called “sea” and “earth.” The sea was pure and blue, as it was not riddled with plastic continents yet. God also created freshwater lakes and rivers, which vile humans would later see as convenient places to drop toxic waste.
Then God said, “Let the Earth put forth bountiful vegetation and plant life of all kinds, and may anyone who practices deforestation be stabbed in the spleen by the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt, who so nobly created the U.S. Forestry Service. And may all those who leisurely hammock between trees on a beautiful day be blessed with a lifetime supply of fair-trade coffee.” On the third day, there wasn’t a strip mine in sight on earth, because the greedy and selfish corporate bastards hadn’t been born yet. Nor were there any landfills on Earth to fuel the illusion that there is such thing as “throwing something away.” There is no “away,” fools! There is only “somewhere else”!
God looked at the sea and the earth and saw that they were good, like kale and quinoa (and just about everything else the paleo diet got me into).
And then God made the sun and the stars. God said, “You all should really consider getting high and going stargazing in Minnesota with some of your college roommates over winter break after they all wrap up their sociology finals. Outer space is fucking crazy, man.”
God looked at the sun and the stars and saw that they were good, like biking to work.
On the fifth day, God brought living creatures into existence into the sea, the land, and the sky. The animals were happy, and they were free. There were exactly zero species extinct. In fact, there was only one species that hadn’t been created at this point — humans, who are responsible for the extinction of about 200 species per day.
God looked at the living things and saw that they were good, like Swizterland’s astounding environmental behavior.
And then God welcomed humankind to the wonderful, abundant, and unpolluted earth so that they could live in harmony with nature. But then God, like some fucking idiot, said to humankind that they should have dominion over the animals and the sea and the land. And humankind’s dominion over nature led to an absolutely disgusting overconsumption by the selfish humans (not you, Al Gore).
If humans had learned to share the earth like the Native Americans did, then we wouldn’t be in the middle of the anthropocene*.
(*not a clothing store, but the period of history where human activity began to have a noticeable impact on nature)
God looked at everything that he had made and saw that it was all very good, like Thoreau’s literature
Then God rested after creating the Earth in 6 days, which is the number of exactly half the amount of people in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. God’s work was indeed quick and impressive. However, He would make a pretty shitty environmentalist. We will not rest. We will not slow down. We will not stop the fight until our planet is saved!
