An Earth Day Unlike Any Other by Eric Francis

Love from Upstate N.Y.: 46 minutes and 46 seconds of solitude by the Coxing

Anyone who is concerned about global warming or who despises fracking should be in love with the novel coronavirus.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Tonight at 10:25 pm EST is the Taurus New Moon. This is a big day for Taurus Sun and rising people, and potentially a day of radical awakening for everyone. It’s available, if anyone is interested.

Astrologically, what makes this New Moon so interesting is that it’s aligned with a cosmic vortex of Earth awareness: the discovery degree of Chiron, at 4 Taurus: the “rainbow bridge” degree for which Barbara Hand Clow named her book about Chiron. This is the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” degree from the Sabian symbols. (Chiron, the first centaur planet, was discovered in 1977 — a watershed moment for both astronomy and astrology.)

Four degrees Taurus is like a standing wave of Chiron’s consciousness, connecting anyone who is interested to the living Earth.

This unusual New Moon happens on Earth Day — this year, right now — not every year. At this very unusual time, when we are being compelled to consider the world we live in.

Whatever one may think of the “novel” coronavirus, today is the one Earth Day when there will be less pollution than any other. Less littering. Less noise. Less paper used. Less fuel burned. Less carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere and the oceans.

I’ve read that normally, 37,000 barrels of jet fuel are burned per day. Today, that’s not happening. Most airplanes are sitting on the ground.

We are experiencing what it feels like to live on a planet that has finally slowed down. We now have proof that it’s possible to do so. We have proof that it’s possible to drive less and fly less and use less of everything.

The sub-zero oil crash happened on the 10th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill — to the day. I’ve seen some stunning synchronicities over the years of doing news astrology, but this one wins the grand prize.

The 10th Anniversary of Deepwater Horizon: Oil Goes Negative

This week, demand for petroleum fell so low that storage ran out, and the price dropped below zero, to minus $30 dollars a barrel. Now, all that extra oil has to stay in the ground — where it belongs — rather than being refined and burned.

Anyone who is concerned about global warming should be in love with the novel coronavirus. Anyone who despises fracking should be in love with the virus.

The sub-zero oil crash happened on the 10th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill — to the day. I’ve seen some stunning synchronicities over the years of doing news astrology, but this one wins the grand prize.

That was another Chiron event: the day that Chiron entered Pisces, calling attention to the oceans. Over the following 120 days, more than 5 million barrels of oil exploded into the Gulf of Mexico. [Read Planet Waves coverage here.]

We all watched in agony by way of a live camera at the sea bottom as a plume of oil jetted into the Gulf. They could not stop the oil, so they showed it to us instead.

This was accompanied by 1.8 million gallons of Corexit oil dispersant, a “probable” carcinogen that you’re now eating with your Gulf of Mexico shrimp at the local Chinese take-out place. (According to the government, there are no actual carcinogens, only “probable” ones. What kills mice and rats will probably kill a person.)

We have fought war after war for oil, including Vietnam (which has major reserves, which you never hear about) and Gulf Wars I and II. Every time it happens, most people are thrilled that we’ll control the oil and keep those wells going, so what if we have to kill a bunch of people.

From Hostage Situation to Worthless Commodity

April 20, 2010, was the day we began looking right at the extent to which the human race and American society were held hostage by the oil industry. April 20, 2020 was the day that the bottom fell out, and that same crude became a worthless commodity.

Decade after decade, it’s seemed like the corporate agenda — driven more than anything by the petrochemical industry — would not let up, and that there was no way to get out of it. Our whole lives are propelled by oil, whether we’re talking about transportation or agriculture or plastics. Oil is behind massive global problems such as PCBs and dioxin. Burning oil is what is driving global warming more than anything.

We have fought war after war for oil, including Vietnam (which has major reserves, which you never hear about) and Gulf Wars I and II. Every time it happens, most people are thrilled that we’ll control the oil and keep those wells going, so what if we have to kill a bunch of people.

Then the petrochemical industry dumps its waste products into the air and the ocean, and onto the land. Were this industry to clean up its toxic mess, it would eat all the profits of the industry. Therefore, the profits made by the oil industry are all at the cost of our environment and our health. When you breathe in petrochemical toxins, which you do every time you inhale, that is the cost of profits for companies like Exxon and Shell. And when someone’s immune system is ravaged, you can be sure that much of that came from toxins associated with petrochemicals.

These companies knew about global warming as early as 1977. (The warning first goes back to the 19th century, by the way, when coal burning was the issue.)

Now everyone is getting fantastic mileage, with their car sitting in the driveway. There is so much oil they don’t know where to put it. It’s a perishable product. They should just leave it in the ground, where it belongs.

Outrage at Reducing Consumption

It’s assumed not only that we can live no other way, but that we could not even reduce enough to have an impact. Even the mere note of reducing oil consumption is met with indignation, here in the United States.

I remember when Sen. John McCain as a presidential candidate in 2008 suggested that making sure your tires were properly filled would give you better gas mileage. He was brutally ridiculed, as some kind of un-American commie, going against our lifestyle of gratuitous waste for its own sake. Better gas mileage? Who could possibly have an issue with that?

I’m old enough to remember Jimmy Carter being ridiculed for calling on Americans to make sacrifices during the energy crisis. He was made fun of for wearing a sweater, his message by example that we could do something other than turn up the furnace.

“Our program will emphasize conservation,” Pres. Carter said on Feb. 2, 1977, just two weeks after taking office. “The amount of energy being wasted, which could be saved, is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries.” Nobody cared. The SUV replaced the economy car. The Hummer became the symbol of “proud to get 14 miles per gallon.”

Well, now everyone is getting fantastic mileage, with their car sitting in the driveway. There is so much oil they don’t know where to put it. And it’s a perishable product. They should just leave it in the ground, where it belongs.

I have a friend who is a former actual bigwig in commodities trading. He said to me recently, “No congressman was ever elected on a platform of raising taxes and calling for people to act responsibly.”

Right — politicians get elected on promising endless growth and prosperity. And until now, that notion of endless growth has been an obsession. This goes along with wanting everything for free, and not thinking about the consequences of our actions, whether individual or collective.

The Earth will survive. But WE cannot survive on a planet that we’re poisoning. Nor can millions of other species who came here to have their experience of being a spiritual entity in physical form. We need the diversity of life to have good quality of life.

And Now We Know for Sure

Anyone with a shred of awareness has known that the economy is what has been strangling our ability to have a planet that can sustain us.

The Earth itself will be fine; it’s taken a lot worse than us. The Gulf of Mexico was the scene of the meteor strike that ended the age of the dinosaur 65 million years ago. This will inevitably happen again.

The Earth will survive. But WE cannot survive on a planet that we’re poisoning. Nor can millions of other species who came here to have their experience of being a spiritual entity in physical form. We need the diversity of life to have good quality of life.

When the economy begins to come back online, we may go back to our old ways, of drill baby drill, and burn baby burn. The difference is that nobody can claim we can’t cut back. Nobody can say it’s impossible. We now know for certain that it’s a matter of choice, and a matter of priorities.

The drop in consumption and collapse in the value of petroleum is the result of a reduction in demand — not some motion passed by a corporate board.

We did this from the ground up. And we can keep doing it.

Happy Earth Day 2020.

With love,