OXYMORONS

Living on a marginal planet, near a peripheral star, in just one of billions of galaxies, we are not the centre of the universe but we may be the only ones breathing oxygen.

Oxygen is the life in the blood on which so much of life depends. We can’t begin to describe a world without oxygen, we can’t really imagine it not being around. However, we all need to walk down that imaginative path.

Everything on earth starts with the simple notion that we are natural creatures on a natural world. You and I are simply oxygen breathing bi-peds, after all. The Great Oxygenation Event about three billion years ago saw the introduction of free oxygen into our atmosphere for the first time and now it’s starting to deplete.

The earth is limited in size and form but we act like it isn’t. Stable oxygen levels should be a primary concern. An essence which we depend on and can’t be separated from. So, what is the state of our oxygen today?

There is no mystery to oxygen and it’s easily measured. A natural phenomenon in its own right. Oxygen is here to remind us of our impermanence because life simply wouldn’t exist without it.

Bottom line? We do not realise the extent of damage being done to us from all directions. We think of damage to the ‘world’ but not to ‘us’. If you know there is a bomb buried beneath your feet, do you leave it there because you think: ‘it might not explode?’ We can no longer shy away from the reality of earth’s depleting oxygen levels and in that sense, we are all ‘Oxy-Morons’ because…