The Interconnectedness Of everything

The linked article below (from Wired) suggests far reaching health effects that trees have; effects way beyond the usual suspects of carbon sequestration, shade, and calming canopies of quiet. Because of an invasive species, and continued warming, millions of trees are likely to die in the coming years; killing not only that species tree, but many others as well via similar combined effects. And you better believe that this type of subtle interconnecting is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is why, despite how removed a problem may seem from your immediate area of either concern, or supposed responsibility, still demands your involvement. Demands that you feel your own sense of responsibility for helping to fix it. Even if you know you weren't directly responsible for the specific cause of a particular problem, you are still on the hook because those other problems will affect you eventually.

And as long as we're talking about health in general anyway, let's be clear there as well. You think that other people's poor decisions about taking care of themselves shouldn't be your responsibility, without giving hardly a moment's thought as to how, not only hypocritical, that kind of thinking is (because you know you aren't perfect about all of the choices we face day to day on being healthy), but also because, whether you want to admit it or not, the general health of a community, if not addressed by the community as a whole, will come back to bite you in the ass whether you've been really healthy or not. Just the statistics on the ER visits to hospitals alone, that the sick know they can't pay, and the hospitals must pass on by other means, should provide ample proof of that (please note. The ACA hasn't seemed to have stopped reliance on ER visits, but the one thing it was trying to do remains: spreading the total costs out over as wide a base as possible so that, whatever it is is, it's covered, and it is not an extreme burden on anyone). But even beyond that sort of calculation, a generally sicker community makes for a community that is destined to become even more sick because they are then that much more susceptible to other diseases of opportunity. And now that the planet is warming more, you can be sure we'll be getting more of those to contend with.

This is why it is an amazement to me that it can be so easy for some folks to say I shouldn't have to pay for one solution or another. I didn't cause that. I'm not responsible. Saying these things, most of the time, in quite astounding ignorance of their quite real, if not obvious, indirect connections to everything that happens to this planet, and all of the living systems on it. Not to mention the obligation that all of us ought to feel for life in general because, and make no mistake here, the wondrous complexity that was allowed the miraculous chance to evolve here is more precious than any of us can ever hope to realize. That complexity. That amazing expression of loving structure is, along with our contribution of meaning, thought, and choice, what holds realities together. And if we don't see our connection to each other, and the shared responsibility we have for keeping life going at all, then we deserve exactly the miserable demise that awaits such folly. 

I don't care how big your bunker is. I don't care how much apocalypse food you have stored up, cutting yourself off from the shared responsibility of keeping life going will take you down whether you were responsible (in some ultimate, objective frame of reference) or not. That is just the way it is.

All the Trees Will Die, and Then So Will You