Our globe is under new dramatic environmental pressure: our globe

When Richard Lamm declared, “Our globe is under new dramatic environmental pressure: our globe is warming, our ice caps melting, our glaciers receding, our coral is dying, our soils are eroding, our water tables falling, our fisheries are being depleted, our remaining rainforests shrinking. Something is very, very wrong with our eco-system,” he was not speaking only as a politician — he was speaking as a witness to the unraveling of creation itself. His words carry the grief of a world elder who has watched the balance of nature fracture before his eyes, and they echo like a lament from the ancients, warning us that the harmony between humankind and the Earth has been betrayed.

The origin of Lamm’s cry comes from decades of foresight and observation. As governor of Colorado and a lifelong advocate for sustainability, he saw how the pursuit of progress without restraint leads to ruin. His list — warming, melting, dying, eroding, falling, depleting, shrinking — reads like the tolling of a funeral bell. Each phrase marks not a single disaster, but a symptom of the same illness: humanity’s disconnection from its source. The Earth, once revered as sacred, has been reduced to a warehouse for our desires. And now, as Lamm foretold, that desecration has come full circle. The mother we have wounded begins to weep through drought and storm.

Throughout the ages, the ancients revered the Earth not merely as soil and stone, but as spirit and sustenance. The Greeks spoke of Gaia, the living mother; the Hindus of Prithvi, the nurturing ground of all life; the Native peoples of the Americas saw every mountain, every river, as kin. To them, Lamm’s warning would not be political but spiritual — a sign that the covenant between the human and the divine has been broken. When coral turns white and forests turn to dust, it is not only an ecological loss — it is a moral one, a sign that the soul of civilization has grown sick with greed.

History, too, has seen the cost of ignoring the balance of nature. When the once-fertile plains of Mesopotamia were drained and over-farmed, salt claimed the soil and the cradle of civilization turned to desert. When the Maya felled too many trees to build their temples, the rains ceased and famine came. When the Easter Islanders cut down their last palm, their society fell into chaos. These stories are not distant tragedies; they are mirrors held before us. As Lamm spoke, glaciers melted faster than memory, and the world’s lungs — the rainforests — burned to feed the appetite of modern empires. The pattern repeats, but this time, it is the entire Earth at stake.

Yet in his voice, though heavy with sorrow, there is also a call — a summons to awakening. To say “something is very, very wrong with our ecosystem” is to implore humanity to open its eyes and reclaim its role as steward, not conqueror. The crisis is not merely scientific; it is spiritual. The same heart that can destroy the world can also heal it. We must become students again — of the wind, the soil, the sea. We must learn the ancient language of coexistence before silence swallows it forever.

The lesson in Lamm’s words is both simple and profound: to live, we must learn to respect limits. The Earth is generous, but not infinite. Every drop of oil, every tree, every fish carries a cost. We must measure prosperity not by consumption, but by preservation. Let the leaders remember that progress divorced from ecology is regression in disguise. Let the citizens remember that every choice — what we eat, what we waste, what we protect — writes the future of our descendants.

So, let this be spoken as a teaching to the generations: the Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth. We are not its masters, but its caretakers, entrusted with a fragile and sacred inheritance. If the forests shrink, let us plant. If the seas are poisoned, let us cleanse. If the skies darken, let us rekindle the light of stewardship. Lamm’s lament is not meant to end in despair but in renewal — for when humankind remembers its place in the great web of life, even the dying world can breathe again.

And thus, as the ancients would say, the warning is also the prophecy: that those who heed the Earth’s cry will rebuild what has been broken. But those who ignore it will vanish with the dust of their own empires. The choice remains in our hands — the same hands that have wounded can yet heal. The same species that caused the harm can become the guardian of rebirth. For though something is very, very wrong with our ecosystem, something can also be very right — if only we remember that to love the Earth is to love ourselves.