Wider circles

Something I appreciated last month that wasn't climate change-related but I think relates to the larger question of human attention (which climate change is a part of) was how focused so many people in the United States were on the path of the total solar eclipse on April 8th. It was impressive to me that so many people realized this rare opportunity to see a temporary but immense effect in a short window of time as the moon seemed to blot out the sun and just leave a halo of light around its curves.

I think the regional variability of climate change can make the scale of it sometimes seem far or other, here but not here- and I think that makes us lose our 'place' in relation to it. Though this is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, a phenomenon like a total solar eclipse causing twilight and temperatures to drop in the path of darkness for hundreds of miles as it passes overhead was a kind of experiential reminder: we're just drops in an immense natural world but we are in it and affected by it, even at a vast distance.

I do like to imagine what it would be like if more of our species had retained a kind of 'ancient' sense of humility and even awe at human smallness amidst the scale of the universe. Would we even be facing such levels of climate instability set in motion by changes in human lifestyles one hundred plus years ago?