Unlike Prophet Gore, i have little faith in my own species of murderous apes to prevent global warming. We are despairingly short-sighted.
The engine of capitalism has given us so much freedom, but the downside of the greed that is required to grease it's wheels is environmental catastrophe. Science won't save us- and nor will blogging! People just don't believe in science. What's needed is a kooky new reinterpretation of eco-Jesusism.
I had thought that we'd run out of fossil fuels before we could do too much damage- but now it seems there are trillions of barrels worth of methane trapped in ice crystals (methane hydrates or clathrates) at the bottom of the ocean. If the methane escapes- we'll get a runaway greenhouse effect: the so called "Clathrate Gun". If we burn it for fuel, we'll generate so much CO2 we'll probably get the same effect.
So now I think we are essentially flucked. The end is nigh.
I suspect many prominent environmentalists are privately very pessimistic and are in therapy - but paint a brave facade of optimism: "YES-You CAN make a difference!".
There's just not much real point circling with a "We are Doomed!" placard- you might as well go find a nice beach to sit on and read a book and wait for the end to come. I've heard it said that one good thing about global warming (and rising sea levels) is that we'll all own beachfront property one day!
It should really be re-branded as "Global Boiling" - 'warm' makes it sound so nice- you can now grow tomatoes in Finland- so what's wrong with that? Perhaps rebadging it as an "Unavoidable Disasterous Global Dying Event" would help.
No government can think in terms of the "long now"... and i don't know if anybody is taking those crackpots at the "Long Now Foundation" seriously. Don't get me wrong- i love the LNF and those crackpots are my heroes (i even subscribe to their podcasts).
We absolutely must build a clock to last a zillion years - so when the cockroaches evolve to sentience they will know what time it is.
Their roach-o-pologists will probably need to go scuba diving to find our artifacts (rising sea levels again)... perhaps they will think of us as we think of the ancient Egyptians .. until they dig up a few fossilized roach baits .... eh? i wonder what this was used for?
Really, we should get 'over' ourselves- sure we're going to auto-extinctify ourselves and lots of polar bears etc- but there have been many mass extinctions before. The largest one ever occured 251 million years ago and wiped out 96% of all marine life, and 70% of all life on land. Do we weep for those lost trilobites? I doubt it. In any case, when the sun expands at the end of it's life, the earth will be sterilized, shortly before being literally engulfed by it. But don't worry, the ultimate heat-death of the universe is coming.. and nothing will be able to survive that.
Posts
