Last Time
In my last post, I’d written that there is hope for humanity, as long as several key aspects are addressed in the near term. I wrote them with honest sincerity and eagerness. Humanity has survived tremendous cataclysms, both induced by nature and created by man. There have been massive plagues that wiped out significant percentages of the population, as well as the horrors of genocide enacted by the cruelest people on the planet. Yet somehow, we always seem to find a way to get past them. We survive. And, as of late, we’ve been flourishing. Maybe a little too much flourishing, as the planet is becoming overpopulated. The original warnings about it in the 1970′s was pushed aside by the prosperity of the 1980′s and forgotten. It has now come back to remind us, with an unexpected intensity.
One of the key points I’d made was about the environment. I mostly focused on the ecosystems, how our exploitation of the oceans and land is having a very negative effect on the ecology, such that it cannot recover fast enough to even match our foraging. And yes, pollution is not healthy to the environment and has contributed to global warming.
The Impending Suffering That Awaits Humanity
But what I failed to address is that the global warming issue is far more significant than most people realize. Frankly, when people hear scientists lamenting about how our pollution is raising global temperatures with the ramifications already coming to bear, they’d rather turn to the ones who say “this is happening due to nature, not humans, so we don’t need to change our behavior.” That’s the easy way out. It’s painful to face the hard facts. But now? We have proof. Undeniable proof that the climate is changing faster than ever before, and that the only explanation is humanity’s influence.
NOVA and Awareness
NOVA is a phenomenal science series hosted by PBS. They cover many interesting topics, some curious and others provocative. And occasionally, they feature something alarming. One such show was Extreme Ice, published in 2009. This feature, along with Expedition to Greenland, brings to light the looming problem of global warming and its very gradual devastating effects. Where previously most scientists weren’t too concerned about the melting of glaciers, many are now realizing that some critical information was overlooked. The biggest hindrance to getting that information was time. But a few persevering individuals have captured a significant amount of time elapsed photography which illustrates just how rapidly the enormous ancient glaciers around the world are melting. For more information on the subject, also see the column Vanishing Into Thin Air, Photographing Climate Change (interactive), Hear From the Real Iceman (interactive), and a Q&A from the ice experts.
The fact is that the rate of glacier melting is much faster than originally predicted. And there is a momentum afoot that is so great, the effort to effectively stop it and reverse the trend must happen right now. Unfortunately, the momentum of human population growth is such that it would require a level of cooperation that is impossible to secure. No country is going to risk the health of their economy by stopping all sources of pollution. In essence, we are now drifting past the point of no return, that being the complete melting of the glaciers, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it save a genocide campaign (first world against the rest of the world).
It’s Too Late To Stop It
What does this mean? Well, in about 50 years, the land presently occupied by about 100 million people will be under water. That means those people must migrate to other locations already populated, increasing congestion and overtaxing infrastructures. Also, the availability of safe drinking water will significantly shrink, becoming more concentrated in fewer areas. The ecology as it presently stands will start to collapse. In fact, it is already happening. Twenty-five percent of the world’s ocean coral reefs are dead, and another 25% is expected to die within the next 15-20 years. The rate of decay is increasing, to the point where the entire coral reefs throughout the oceans could be completely dead 40 years from now. So, while the human population continues to grow, the available food sources begin to shrink. Eventually this will reach a critical mass. We will see significant human suffering as the population is culled at a slow, painful pace. The third world will suffer the most, obviously. And there will be a tremendous shake-out of the first world global economy.
The Erosion to the Quality of Life
In about 8-12 years from now, the average citizen in the modern developed nations will feel the pain of this erosion to life on planet earth. The cost of living will continue to go up, and the compensation of wages will remain stagnant or diminish. There will be tremendous unrest, both socially and politically. The “good old days” of the 20th century will be sorely missed, as people face an even bleaker future. Indeed, humanity will be facing a very rough ride ahead. What we have taken for granted in this period will be looked back upon with envy and disgust at how we not only recklessly indulged in the greatest luxuries but ruined life for the generations that would follow. It was mostly out of ignorance, but also out of arrogance. Good old fashioned greed and selfishness.
There Is Still Something We Can Do
If we take to heart this realization and work hard to prepare for the worst, the transition to those looming leaner times won’t be as bad. But given how current social trends have been, there will be too many people eager to indulge and gratify themselves “while we still can”, rather than conserve resources. I hate to say it, but I am becoming very ashamed of the “baby boomer” generation, as they are responsible for having led us down this path. Well, humanity has done a great job at innovating technology, but not a very good job of crafting responsible and fair societies. We are still quite backward in this respect. The coming erosion to life will challenge us tremendously, eliminating many people. I guess it is a necessary wake-up call, the incentive to change in the ways that matter most. So, perhaps 200 years from now, we’ll have a generation that is capable of returning humanity back onto a path of prosperity, as the ecology recovers from our massive mistakes. I feel badly for them and ashamed of what “we” (the generations at the helm) have done. I can only hope that as humanity progresses onward, people will look beyond the shameful and see the wonderful. That they will recognize how there were people who stood up against the social pressures and persevered to warn people of what lays ahead. And that this was an unfortunate but somehow necessary step in the social evolution of the human being.
I’m Really Sorry… For All Of Us
As a citizen of this time, all I can say is that I’m sorry I wasn’t more proactive beyond my own life (which I have lived conservatively) and join the ranks of those who could help alert everyone to the differences that must be made. Every little bit of contribution to this effort would help in some ways to diminish the extent of it, to make the suffering a little less worse. It is already too late to stop it, but not too late to help lessen it.
