129 / Methane And Mother Earth

I mentioned "Mother Nature" yesterday, on Mother's Day. It seemed appropriate.

The idea that we are "mothered" by the planet is a nice conceit. Our mothers bring us into existence, and shelter and defend us against danger and the attacks of others. Our mothers, quite often, even protect us from ourselves, and our own bad judgment, and they love and support us even when we are in the wrong.

The so-called "Gaia Hypothesis" is an elaborated statement of how it happens that the Earth protects us. I accept it as an accurate presentation of the Natural World, a World that does exist independently of us, that we did not create, and upon which we, and everything we do create, is ultimately dependent.

But there are limits, we know, to a mother's ability to protect us from ourselves. The so-called "anthropogenic" warming of the earth, by human-created emissions of greenhouse gases, might upset the natural "mothering" order of the planet to such an extent that the planet will no longer be able to "mother" us, supporting and sustaining the worlds we build within Nature, our civilizations and their artifacts.

If you don't know about the catastrophic consequences of large scale methane releases to the atmosphere, triggered by human-caused global warming, click on the link to read about it.