Can we bring each other back to life?

When the skies turn green, grey, brown,
When our lungs choke in foul smoke,
And trees can no longer breathe.
When the sun is blamed for our baking plains,
And rain turns into a capricious foe,
What will we, human species do? Whom will we turn to?

To whom will the masses turn, human and other?
To the Man, who says all our problems will be solved by his intelligent artificiality?
But first, we must burn away the remains of our ancestors,
To power his hungry disembodied brainless machine[1],
That regurgitates our typed words and churns out half-cooked truths to comfort us.

To the White Man[2] who will arrive in his electric chariot armed with cannons to blast the sunshine[3] away?
To form pink clouds that block the sun,
He doesn’t believe in prophets, he says technology is our only hope,
Without his machines and trinkets, we cannot cope,
Nature needs to be controlled before she gets more vile,
It’s only thanks to him, that we’ve had a such a comfortable life!

Or will the hoards tune out his vile siren song?
Will the human critters come together in a forceful throng?
Will we turn our noses to the ground?
To smell the earth, cast down the crown,
Finally step off the great pedestal[4] and stand shoulder to shoulder with all the critters,
All of us who on this one beautiful sacred fertile planet are born.

Can we turn to face truths we have forgotten since long?
That the Earth has been there long before us and will continue after us.
Mother Earth never needed our saving,
She can spin a few degrees hotter, but can we ride along?
That we are not above, and not alone,
African elders remind us of Ubuntu[5]– “I am because you are”,
And we need many-a-you, diverse others.

So, can we once again live in a world where many worlds exist[6]?
Those of bees and butterflies, fungi and worms, of bats and birds?
For we will only survive if they thrive,
There is no wilderness, no Eden, no heaven we can escape to,
We only have the Earth, here and now,
With us, flawed humans, who have forgotten our response-ability[7] to our more-than-human kin.
Can we yet bring each other back to life[8]?

[1] For a primer on the environmental impact of AI, see Reitmeier, L. & Lutz, S. What direct risks does AI pose to the climate and environment? (2025)

[2] Di Chiro, G. Welcome to the white (M)anthropocene? A feminist-environmentalist critique. in Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment (ed. Macgregor, S.) (Routledge Handbooks Online, 2017). doi:10.4324/9781315886572.ch33

[3] While some researchers (See https://www.uu.nl/en/news/geoengineering-can-we-hack-our-way-out-of-climate-change)  strongly advocate Geoengineering technique of minimizing solar radiation as a way to cope with climate change, Naomi Klein warms about the consequences of Geoengineering in Chapter 8 of her book, This Changes Everything.

[4] In her book, Death of Nature, Carolyn Merchant writes about how shift from viewing Nature as a living organic system to inert, passive and mechanical has its origins in the Great Chain of Being. Merchant, C. The death of nature : women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. (Harper & Row, 1983).

[5] Mugumbate, J. R. et al. Understanding Ubuntu and its contribution to social work education in Africa and other regions of the world. Soc. Work Educ. 43, 1123–1139 (2024).

[6] The Zapatistas write about ‘living in a world where many worlds exist’. See Dávila, P., Langlois, G., Leitão, R. & Leitão, R. Introduction: Making Worlds in the Pluriverse. Public 34, 5–6 (2024) and Escobar, A. Sentipensar with the Earth: Pluriversal Polit. 67–83 (2021). doi:10.2307/j.ctv11315v0.10

[7] Karen Barad explains response-ability as the ability to respond and be accountable for the relationalities of which we are all a part. See Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.

[8] Joanna Macy shares how to deal with climate anxiety and eco-grief and reconnect with our own emotions, each other and Earth in her book Coming back to Life. Macy, J. & Brown, M. Coming back to life. (2014).