Your Legacy

I had a dream of the future. It was not good. I am going to share it with you here. I hope it will cause you to change some of what you are doing. This could give us a better future.

There is a city in the desert that looks like stacks of sugar cubes. It almost hurts your eyes to look at it in the bright light. It is full of people who live in very small cubicles inside that city. The people in there do not do much except eat, watch electronic entertainment and sleep. Some of them come out of their cubicles and walk around a little. Many, perhaps most of them, do not ever come out. Some do not even eat on their own, but have tubes that feed them and remove their wastes. These do not even quite wake up until they die.

The sugar cube city is a sort of mausoleum. It is a little bit alive, waiting until it is a completely dead mausoleum, with no mourners to come to it.

There is a quiet place with deep soft carpets and velvet ropes hung from black metal. The ropes direct lines of people. They are waiting for their turn. There are long lines of the people waiting. 

There is a stone sarcophagus at the head of the line. The stone sarcophagus represents people who are alive now and who have been alive in the last generation. Those people represented are those responsible for climate change and the other problems that will come with it. They are people who know that what they have done and are still doing, to cause climate change could be stopped. They keep on doing the things that make climate change worse, even after they know about it.

The person at the head of the line walks forward between velvet ropes near the stone sarcophagus and spits on the sarcophagus. Only one spit per person is allowed. There are many more people who want their turn.

The people who are close to the head of the line do not talk. Their mouths are all full of spit.

There is a channel in the floor to drain off the spit so that it will not overflow onto the carpets and people can still walk safely. 

There are guards standing close to the head of the line and at the corners of the sarcophagus. They are there to keep people from destroying the stone sarcophagus. It must be replaced once in a while in spite of the guards. 

It is not that hard to find another body to put in another stone sarcophagus. There are lots more bodies available. It just takes some time to do it. 

They have started keeping a few ready for replacements. They even have them in replacement stone sarcophagi. It makes people very angry not to get their turn. Everyone is afraid of what people will do if they do not get their turn.

This dream is not frightening like a movie. It is more frightening in a way. Some of that is because it is about the people who are alive today and people who will come after us, and how they think about us.

When I think about it, I often look for lights to turn off. I do not have a car, mostly because of thinking about this dream. 

I hope that you will remember this dream and turn off lights and drive your car less. Maybe you will even get a car that uses less gas. 

Those people in line may be your grandchildren.