All that Matters Now Continued from page 24.


directly over wherever you live is actually beyond a once-in- a-lifetime experience. Once every three hundred years or so is the worldwide average for the moon’s full shadow—called the umbra—to darken any given spot on this planet. So having two total solar eclipses pass directly over my house in just seven years is a stunningly rare astronomical freak show. Physicists at nearby Southern Illinois University and eclipse


geeks worldwide have named the spot behind my house America’s Eclipse Crossroads. It’s a thing. Even at NASA, scientists marvel at my impossible good fortune. Astronomers and astrophysicists from around the world have visited me. As the lucky guy who lives uphill from the spot, I’ve joined these eclipse experts at their scientific conferences and we’re actually friends now. During one meeting, just to show off my personal claim to this rare spot, I served them all mushrooms I picked on the precise hillside where the two eclipse paths will intersect. Craterellus fallax—my favorite mushroom—was served with much fanfare to NASA scientists and others from around the world. Crackers topped with cream cheese and a touch of Gorgonzola made the rounds. “Trompette de la mort!” a contingent of excited French physicists gasped. Tey knew. Te one-of-a-kind, mycology-meets-astronomy offering was devoured with absolute trust by these former strangers. Tey trust my science. I trust theirs. Having in my backyard the one spot in America—the entire


world, for that matter—where the exact center of the moon’s shadow will have passed overhead twice in these seven years truly is a rarity beyond comprehension. But it’s a tragedy as well. Te deeper reality is that my own, unbelievable good


fortune in having the world’s attention drawn to my backyard mushroom patch foreshadows a greater doom we all must face. I might very well lose forever that lucky privilege of foraging alone for mushrooms in my backyard once the 2024 eclipse arrives. Once the world’s media spotlight falls upon this unbelievably lucky mushroom picker, my personal sanctuary of Craterellus fallax and the rest of the Kingdom Fungi will cease to be my own. Te fact is, none of this matters. Nothing I’ve described up


to this moment has the slightest significance beyond whatever petty self-interests and obsessions we mushroom pickers share. I speak now of the scientific elephant in the room everywhere on Earth. It’s climate change, and it’s the most urgent, global crisis humanity has ever faced—far above anything anyone who’s ever lived has ever confronted. Nothing on Earth matters more at this moment because nothing on Earth will matter if we fail to acknowledge today the Earth is on fire. We are all responsible for climate change. Not eventually,


now. It’s the critical, life-or-death catastrophe we absolutely must prevent. Our climate is reaching a point of no return—as certainly as the approaching shadow of the moon will cover my personal mushroom patch—yet what, really, are we all doing about it? Seriously. Climate change is upon us. Tis self- inflicted, all-consuming, uncontained wildfire is a predictable, global annihilation every single one of us must actually do something about. Now. All of us share this moment. Slashing global carbon dioxide emissions is the one, mandatory duty we all have on this planet. Not in five years, or ten, or in some


28 FUNGI Volume 14:4 Fall 2021


not-too-distant but convenient decade ahead when it’s more agreeable to discard whatever outdated technology we’re using now. Not in those imagined years ahead when we all expect to, you know, finally make some really good, back-slapping progress on this climate thing, we hope. Ten will be too late. Yet we are all dawdling still at this


critical last chance, flipping channels or switching to agreeable media, scrolling ahead to amuse ourselves with meaningless insignificance. We are in charge. Tis horrific, global crisis of climate change is ours to control, every one of us. Te window of opportunity to do anything truly effective about it narrows and closes daily. It’s becoming the noose we cannot escape, yet still we remain stupidly indifferent, unwilling to save human lives and even our own. Irrevocable limits to global carbon dioxide emissions


must be the universal demand, right now, at this moment. Not in a few years when we might, you know, finally get off the couch and really get serious about this thing—when everybody suddenly leaps into action, buckles down and totally gets this job done. And not when some future scientist,


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