MODERN PARABLE: ROUNDUP FOR HUMANS

There was a time where Roundup was ubiquitous, between wholesale use in agriculture and wide application by landscapers and homeowners. The driving popular feature of this product was its fiercely rapid lethality and equally rapid transition to inertness. Being a systemic meant that that the poison would get into the plants "lymph" system so to speak and kill from leaf to root in a matter of hours. The poison lingered for only 3 days so the exposed area could be safely replanted almost immediately. Monsanto had produced a gold mine for it's shareholders and senior management.

For the majority of the population, there was widespread indifference to the overuse of Roundup. It was not like Agent Orange, a nasty herbicide and defoliant used during the Vietnam war. It's main ingredient Dioxin, caused lasting environmental damage and generations of genetic defects in the millions who were exposed. "Spray, kill, forget" could have been the tagline for Roundup. And so it was for decades.

 

Finally, in response to the climate change crisis on the planet, all non-human species joined together to eliminate the threat to all life: humans. In a joint venture between viruses and mycelium, plants who had evolved to survive exposure to Roundup, began producing a poison of their own having the chemical nature of Roundup as a base. Trees, for example, had this substance in their sap and the oxygen that each tree released was laced as well. Grasses and weeds exuded the substance through their roots and contaminated the nearby soil. Nature is patient and many generations passed before the build-up contamination began to impact on the humans. Reports of mysterious deaths began to crop up: toxic fireplace wood killed hundreds one holiday season; there was widespread famine as food crops died in the fields, air became unbreathable in some parts of the world resulting in massive migrations to still safe areas. Chaos reigned as scientists and governments struggled not only to figure out what was the cause but how to fix this global malady. A secret draft report by the UN leaked and freaked out the public: the cause had been found and dubbed Roundup for Humans. Once established in the blood system, it killed very quickly and like Roundup, dissapated within a couple of days making it safe for the carrion eaters to do their work. People being people panicked and began to lash out at all plant life. Sales of Roundup skyrocketed as our species went on a mad deforestation binge. Lawns were nuked, forests leveled, grasslands bulldozed out of rage and despair. The planet became as barren as the moon.

The final survivors of humans huddled in Anarctica, living off from whatever they could catch out of the sea. But eventually between lack of medicine, poor nutrition, high infant mortality and ever increasing birth defects, the species perished. There simply had not been enough time to adapt and evolve.

Today, the planet teems with a seemingly endless variety of life. It is a green world again and few things remain of the former inhabitants: Stonehenge, the Pyramids, a scrap of interstate in Nebraska. Grass has done it's work.