The public figure I probably disagree with most is not even one person anymore. It is the entire species of leader that treats the planet like a temporary motel room they plan to trash before checkout. The smiling suits with dead eyes. The billionaire rocket cowboys trying to flee Earth while the rivers choke on plastic below them. The politicians talking about quarterly growth while forests older than civilisation get mulched into dust so somebody can sweeten a cheap processed snack with palm sugar. Somewhere in that chain reaction a tapir disappears quietly into extinction while shareholders clap like trained seals around a conference table. That is the part that hollows me out. Not just greed itself, but the complete inability to think beyond the width of their own lifespan.
⚡️Original pen & ink illustration up for grabs! Highest bidder takes it home (bidding in my Instagram Stories). 100% of proceeds go straight to @rainforesttrust , helping protect Tapirs and the forests that keep them, and us, breathing. You just cover postage. Bidding starts at $50 AUD (24 hour bid)
What public figure do you disagree with the most?
Legacy is not money. It is not brand recognition. It is not a statue or a podcast deal or having your name on a bloody stadium. Legacy is whether the creek still runs clean after you are gone. Whether children can still hear frogs at night. Whether there are still weird beautiful creatures stumbling through forests doing their strange ancient jobs long after your bones are dust. We are not isolated little kingdoms walking around in skin suits competing for scraps. We are cells inside something much larger. A living breathing web of consciousness stretched across time itself. Every action echoes forward. Every tree cut down. Every species erased. Every river poisoned. Every kindness offered. Every seed planted.
Human beings have somehow stumbled into the role of planetary caretaker, which honestly feels like giving a flamethrower to a toddler and asking them to babysit a library. We are clever enough to split atoms but apparently too stupid to stop dumping sewage into oceans and bulldozing ecosystems for short term profit. We have built economic systems that reward extraction over restoration, convenience over meaning, speed over wisdom. The machine keeps demanding more while the soil underneath it quietly dies.
The strange thing is I do not actually believe most ordinary people want this future. Most people love birdsong. Most people feel something crack open inside them when they stand in an old forest or watch rain move across paddocks. There is still an ancient animal inside us that remembers we belong to the Earth and not the other way around. But public figures with no sense of legacy keep steering civilisation like drunk miners ripping copper out of the walls of their own house to sell for beer money.
The leaders worth admiring are the ones capable of long vision. The ones who understand that prosperity without ecological balance is just slow motion collapse wearing a necktie. We need people who think in generations instead of election cycles. People who understand that protecting biodiversity is not some fringe hippie hobby but the literal maintenance system of life itself. Bees pollinate food. Wetlands filter water. Forests regulate climate. Fungi hold entire ecosystems together underground like biological internet cables older than humanity. Remove enough threads and eventually the whole tapestry tears apart in your hands.
Art keeps dragging me back to this truth over and over. Patterns in nature are not decoration. They are instructions. They are evidence of interconnected systems working together over millions of years. The spirals, veins, roots, migration paths, fungal webs, tides, weather systems, blood vessels, river deltas. Nature does not survive through domination. It survives through relationship. Through balance. Through endless adaptation and cooperation.
That is why I struggle with public figures obsessed purely with profit and status. They speak the language of ownership while completely misunderstanding stewardship. You cannot own a living planet. You borrow it briefly. Same as your body. Same as your life. We arrive here blinking into existence for one tiny twinkle in cosmic time, and somehow many powerful people still believe the purpose is to hoard as much as possible before the lights go out.
I want my daughters to inherit a world where wonder still exists. A world where tapirs still wander forests. Where creeks still carry tadpoles. Where artists can make meaningful work without being crushed into exhaustion by systems designed to extract every ounce of human energy for somebody else’s profit margin. A world where progress is measured not by how fast we consume, but by how well we protect what is sacred.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 