I really don’t want to take cheap shots but constructively I must say that an over-reliance on vague bad-things-will-happen warnings is rarely as persuasive as any writer imagines.
‘Entire continents racing across the globe’ - Pangea began to separate 175 million years ago. If that’s racing it’s using a rather low gear ratio.
‘Infected’ is the wrong choice of word from a strict definitional sense as well as a contextual one. An infection is a disease or an invasion of a living organism by another living organism. The earth itself does not live but it is host to billions of living organisms, all of which belong here by dint of being here. These organisms INHABIT the earth because, well, they are supposed to. That includes man.
What is this ‘task’ to which you allude? It’s never defined beyond ‘stewardship.’
‘Our actions are going to determine the future of this planet’ - oh, really? We had nothing to do with its formation and we will have nothing to do with its demise when the sun expands. We may influence it but then so do bacteria and insects.
We are admonished for ‘childish ways of thinking’ but must endure the treacle of ‘toss aside the old ways of thinking and join hands in a collective search for the truth.’
I ask again - WHAT TRUTH? What are the ‘old ways of thinking?’ And if everything truly does depend on it, why aren’t we entitled to know what the antecedent of ‘it’ is?
Errors in logic and construction aside, this sounds suspiciously like elliptical Green Party/Sierra Club exhortation to - wait for it - stop driving, stop flying, turn the AC/heat down, recycle every drop of water and every egg carton, move into a smaller dwelling etc. etc.
And if ‘stewardship’ is NOT defined as Western cultures becoming less Western then please say so. And, while on the topic, let’s admonish the Third World for uninterrupted centuries of living in squalor that fosters all manner of pathogens and pollution.
“this sounds suspiciously like elliptical Green Party/Sierra Club exhortation to - wait for it - stop driving, stop flying, turn the AC/heat down, recycle every drop of water and every egg carton, move into a smaller dwelling etc. etc.”
Only for the little people. We will still see the spectacle of our leaders leave their immense compound houses in SUVs, jump in their bizjet, and then have hundreds of bizjets fly to Bali or some other exotic location for climate chance conferences. Then fly home and wag their fingers at us.
I read recently that 90% of all ocean pollution can be traced to just 8 rivers, and none of them are in North America.
So I say "Brown people, get your act together and stop pooping on my planet".