Reflections on Change
Change is difficult for people, I get that completely. The older I get, the less flexible I have become and am now, more resistant to change in my own life then ever before. So I understand that it is going to become very difficult for people to adjust to a climate that will definitely become more variable, but it will not be impossible. Humans have always been able to adjust to almost anything, we have populated the world from the coldest arctic lands to the hottest deserts, we are adaptable, flexible and resistant. Despite my rantings over the last few years, I am here to state, that the human race will not die out from climate change and civilization as we know it, will not collapse. And I am sure that most advocates for action against global warming are not saying we are going to all die either, we just may not like any of the consequences.
Our grand experiment in warming the planet with massive amounts of CO2 will bring changes whether we like it or not. Most of those changes we can cope with, I guarantee that. Humans are endlessly inventive, and though a lot of people show a great deal of distrust for education, science and technology, through them, we will figure out ways to overcome many problems that lay in our future. In our modern technological world we are better able to handle changes now then anytime in the past 6,000 years, since we settled down to more agrarian societies. Things that brought down entire nations as little as 300 years ago; famine, plagues, environmental disaster and natural disasters such as earthquake, volcanoes and hurricanes can be overcome, and despite our many ideological differences, we will always help each other out in times of great need.
The worrying thing about our changing climate is that we will need to act at some point. We can actually do something about adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, but will we? Things will get hotter, and colder. Many places will get drier, and others wetter. Crop yields will become less reliable, and the spread of diseases less predictable. The world’s oceans will slowly rise, and storms will become stronger and more dangerous. We can cope, we can adjust. But there will be some point where we will be forced to change, a lot, whether we like it or not. We don’t have to go that far, but we could, it will not be the end of the world, just a world that is not quite as friendly and forgiving as it once was.
(During the so-called little ice age, (a period of global cooling, approximately between AD 1300 and 1850), many societies coped admirably by invention and adjustment.)
[image error]
