Extinction On My Mind /6:
Pre-extinction is personal

Even though recycling is not going to save us, it doesn’t hurt to continue doing it

By Randi Hacker

December 5, 2024

In my last column, I wrote “So I think we can stop recycling now,” and I’d like to amend that because I think it sounds cavalier and I don’t want to be cavalier. What I’d like to say instead is that even though recycling is not going to save us, it doesn’t hurt to continue doing it as long as it’s available to us here in the pre-extinction times.

And never have the pre-extinction times been so real, so touchable, so manifest as they have since 5 November 2024. Every post-election day that passes makes it ever clearer to me that the United States is poised to lead the world in the march toward extinction. It’s not just the drilling. It’s not just the fracking. It’s not just the revival of uranium mining in South Texas. It’s Project 2025. It’s the abortion ban. It’s the school shootings. It’s RFK Jr. and Elon Musk.

If I could draw, I would draw a political cartoon, or maybe it wouldn’t be a cartoon, maybe it would be more of a political image, of a foregrounded Donald Trump pointing toward a towering dollar sign on a stolid pedestal, oil rigs and drills and pipelines and billionaires surrounding him. The whole vibe would be very North Korean.

Every post-election day that passes makes it ever clearer to me that the United States is poised to lead the world in the march toward extinction.

But I can’t draw, and so, instead, I have been thinking about what might be the best way to live in these pre-extinction times: Should we pray? Should we continue to drive monster trucks over small cars and crush the hell out of them? Should we practice motherline medicine or attend climate cafés or learn to forage or finally visit Finland? Should we spend some time considering what we will tell our children when they ask what’s happening, which they will?

I’ve been thinking about all that, and here’s what I’ve come up with.

Pre-extinction is personal. We all have the right to choose our own path to extinction. It’s a human right. In fact, it’s the only human right I believe in.

And if (when) I feel judgmental when (if) someone chooses to jet off to Italy for a destination wedding or shoot wolves from helicopters or use Round-Up on those tree stumps in their backyard, I can simply remind myself that those are their pre-extinction-times choices, not mine; and I am not responsible for their choices nor is it incumbent upon me to persuade them to do otherwise.

For me, this realization comes as something of a relief. For thirty years, I thought I could save the world if only I found the right words, the right medium, the right message. (A bit grandiose? Sure. After all, you can’t spell grandiose without randi.) Not anymore. Our extinction has freed me from the tyranny of heroism and dropped squarely into the you-do-you zone.

‘If I could draw, I would draw a political cartoon of a foregrounded Donald Trump pointing toward a towering dollar sign on a stolid pedestal, oil rigs and drills and pipelines and billionaires surrounding him.’

With due respect to and the greatest admiration for Mary Oliver, here are some of the things I will do with my one wild and precious pre-extinction life:

• Bake sourdough bread. (I know, so Covid 19.)
• Read nothing but light fiction.
• Speak my mind. (Even more.)
• Walk. (Even more.)
• Establish a powerlifting record for my age group in Kansas. (Since there appear to be no records in this category at the moment, I’m practically assured of success, if I don’t hurt myself training.)
• Marvel at something terrestrial or extraterrestrial at least once every single day. (Did you see the silver slipper moon this morning?)
• Move to Portugal or stay here and work for the resistance. (Still thinking.)
• Use the dryer but only to dry my sheets.
• Listen to twenty-four-hour, no-news classical stations all day every day (air conducting when the spirit moves me).
• Improve my handwriting.
• Encourage my daughter to find a job abroad.
• Eat dark chocolate even if it has heavy metals in it.
• Invite an ex-friend to be friends again. (Alas, she declined.)
• Breathe deeply, close my eyes, and remind myself that the dismissal of the cases against Donald Trump doesn’t mean he isn’t guilty. (cf. Straws, grasping at)
• Rewatch Doc Martin (again).
• Keep a curious eye on that garlic I just planted because it has already sent green shoots out of the earth even though it is the end of November.
• Recycle. (Because why not?)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of WestmountMag.ca or its publishers.

Feature image: SHVETS production – Pexels

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Randi Hacker has been a writer and editor since the 20th century, and she’s been writing about the environment for more than thirty years, mostly to empower young people to take agency in their future. Satirical essays written with a partner appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Punch and Spy, among other publications. Her YA novel, Life As I Knew It, (Simon & Schuster) was named one of the Books for the Teen Age by the NY Public Library, and her TV show, Windy Acres, written with Jay Craven, was nominated for a New England Emmy for Writing. She just retired from her position as the resolutions copy editor for the State of Vermont, a job that has forever damaged her relationship with the comma. randihacker.com