(Photo from International Space Station, NASA)

As heinous, despotic, ignorant, and incompetent as Donald Trump is, his election may actually save the world. Here's how.

Earth's biosphere has been in dangerous decline for decades -- human population now over 7 billion and rising, dramatic resource depletion, toxic contaminants, forest loss, ocean decline, hunger, disease, failed states, wars, refugees, climate change, and mass species extinction -- all of which threaten the integrity and livability of the biosphere. That is status quo -- even during Bill Clinton, Obama, and even if Hillary had been elected.

Unfortunately, even faced with this existential threat to our biosphere, the progressive movement essentially went to sleep during the Obama years, assuming all was well and this threat would be attended to. It wasn't.

Even with the environmental accomplishments of the Obama administration, we are still heading into an ecological abyss. That is scientific fact, not "alternative fact."

And now with the Trump election, we find ourselves in an Alice-in-Wonderland world of chaos, nonsense, grudge governance, and dangerous stupidity. Evidently, that is exactly what we need to galvanize action.

To be sure, Trump is an ignorant, insecure, childish, narcissistic buffoon, a dangerous conman. While some ignorant Americans voted for him well knowing what they would get, many were simply conned into voting for him. There will inevitably be extraordinary damage from his (hopefully short) reign of power.

But his coronation as POTUS, orchestrated in part by fellow tyrant Vladimir Putin, is more than a slap in the face to our democracy -- it is a kick in the ass. This may be democracy's singular, historic opportunity at resurrection. Right here, right now, for we-the-people to capitalize upon.

In short, Trump is so damn bad, he may, in the long run, be good. As the infamous song by Sam the Sham and Pharaohs goes: "Oh, that's bad: No, that's good."

It is as though Trump and company is a virulent, potentially fatal infection introduced into our democracy, and the immune response of our body politic is now kicking in full-bore. Which will win -- the infection, or our immune response? I am putting my money on our collective response to purge the infection. And to not stop there, but to move forward with a deliberate focus on doing everything we need to do urgently to reclaim a sustainable future.

After decades of somnambulism in the U.S., informed democracy may have finally re-awoken, and just in the nick of time. This may represent a return to the activism of the 1960s, when people cared about government policy, said so, and did something about it. The Founding Fathers and Mothers must be smiling.

If this indeed is the case, history may record the coronation of crooked Donald - or more specifically, our collective opposition to it - as the singular event that saved the world.

But this all depends on we-the-people rising up, standing tall, telling the truth, acting for the Earth and civilization, without fear.

Mahatma Ghandi said:

"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good."

And the Memorial to the German Resistance in WWII says:

"You did not bear the shame.
You resisted.
You bestowed the eternally vigilant symbol of change
by sacrificing your impassioned lives for freedom, justice and honor."

Viva la resistance!