Climate change is a clear and present danger

After reading a US report that says Climate change is a clear and present danger, I hear that western Antarctica is melting faster than many scientists thought possible...

I find it interesting and even a bit exciting to ponder the early stages of what may well become the catastrophic event that leads to the ultimate downfall of humanity. A slow unfolding of a disaster story that will affect billions of people but many of them, like me, will probably be dead and gone by the time the real disaster arrives. Of course until that day arrives, many will doubt that this disaster is in the early stages of unfolding. 

How and when did this clear and present danger begin?

When I was born in 1960 to my 30 year old parents, they must have wondered what threats this little baby might face in his lifetime? Of course the big threat then was the Cold war going hot, and this nearly happened in Cuba before I could walk or speak. This was only 15 years after WWII, so the prospects for a WWIII in my lifetime were not only real, but likely. By then, humanity had become so deadly with their bigger and deadlier military technology, that war on a global scale was rendered unwinnable and inconceivable, so cooler and smarter heads prevailed and the superpowers turned to space and landing a man on the moon was the ultimate gold medal prize. Despite the Vietnam proxy war to stop the spread of communism, it was a time of optimism and unprecedented technological change and consumer growth. This was symbolized by the summer of love, the Beatles and Montreal’s Expo 67 “Man and his World”. But by then, the nuclear genie was out of the bottle and this doomsday know-how was shared with allies and rogue states as a new atmosphere of détente filled the global vacuum.

The super powers instead celebrated the peaceful uses of nuclear technology for clean energy, I find it strange that this one peace dividend has been squandered as a legitimate option to help fight climate change because we can't seem to get it right. The super powers also built more and bigger nukes than anyone could imagine and the concept of overkill was emphasized to the point that new concepts such as nuclear winter and MAD (mutual assured destruction) came into the vernacular. I think if humanity continues for centuries more, historians will agree that it was a miracle that we came to our senses and found a way to avert the use of nuclear weapons in a theater of war and terrorism.

I doubt many parents like mine were thinking that a natural catastrophe like climate change could threaten their children. Unlike the event of a nuclear war, it was thought that we would see an environmental collapse coming and have time to tippy toe out of it. The Club of Rome published the “Limits to Growth” and Rachel Carlson stunned the world with the relatively tame “Silent Spring” and the horrors of DDT use which sounds naïve by today’s standards.  By then we had a growing reliance on technological fixes that started the industrial revolution and allowed us to get incredibly big very fast. 

Of course the ancient world saw similar apocalyptic threats like influenza and bubonic plague etc. that must have seemed like the end of humanity at the time. This lesson was the end-game result of the same rich-poor divide that plagues humanity today; living in squalor and neglecting health or human rights standards. It was a war that was created by the wealthy and primarily felt by the poor, but like radiation poisoning, it spilled into the wider public domain. At least we had relatively strong immune systems back then which is now being eroded by the absence of disease and the over-use of antibiotics. We have found another way to create similar conditions for a pandemic to bring untold death and pain to the human race. If all else fails to instill a balance to counter our exponential growth that we erroneously like to call “sustainable development”, then there is always another "big gun" to scare us and bring us to our knees.

Now the Green economy has been born to show us the SANE (Survival Assisted Natural Economy?) way to tip toe out of our narco-oil dependence and the build up of greenhouse gases that is slowly cooking our planet and melting the massive reservoirs of ice in Antarctica and Greenland. We seem to forget that although our megalopolis’ have mushroomed in size in a single generation, undreamed of by our parents or grandparents, we are surrounded by oceans that make our continents seem puny in comparison. Unless we’re ready for a futuristic version of Water World or living on other planets or moons (Expo 2067 “Man outside his World?), the likelihood of the Earth’s landmasses being inundated by water will be an endgame akin to a nuclear winter and bubonic plague together. We need to find another way to save the day and humanity from ourselves. I think we’ve met our supreme challenge on this issue and it is probably too big and too late for us to tackle. Like a child playing on a beach, making little dikes and dams and trying to control water, our feeble attempts to control nature is overwhelmed like divine intervention by the big boss called Mother Nature.

I feel sorry for the future generations who will, through no direct fault of their own, have to deal with such daunting and devastating realities of oceans swelling and climate change to make all their attempts to survive a normal life, seem like children making sand castles on a beach. Like an individual complaining of the pains and foibles of growing old, consider the alternative… We didn’t blow ourselves and the planet up with WWIII and life is a gift right? It’s hard to imagine being born into a world where all we can expect is misery and a painful early death, but it wasn’t that long ago that most men could expect to fight and die in such regular bloody wars for reasons that seemed ridiculous and futile.

The madness is now part and parcel to humanity’s slippery grip on this blue planet yet somehow, we keep finding ways to stumble along. Maybe we’re delaying the inevitable or maybe we'll eventually stumble upon a SANE way of living and learning from the past that will secure our future? I don’t have children who will act as a genetic time machine for my existence to continue on and witness this interesting human mystery. Will we make it or will we stumble and fall on our sword? I guess this gives me a unique perspective and allows me to objectively sit in my armchair time machine and ponder such deep questions of the survival of humanity. As such, I must admit, I’ve become more concerned over the fate of the natural world, the biodiversity from which we are part of and divorced from. The natural world from which we share this blue planet have become my children and I deposit my worry and hopes there. I suppose I can sleep better knowing that life in some way or form (cockroaches?), will go on no matter how we manage to screw ourselves and the planet. This is not something to feel happy about, but we've made it this far and its better than the alternative….