Waiting for the Catastrophe
Will a major catastrophe come soon enough to change attitudes and motivate people to really do something about climate change? This question popped into my head the other night while I was watching a news story about some change in weather patterns. What will it really take to convince most of the population that what we are doing to the climate is dangerous to our health and ultimate survival? The problem with humans is that they generally act in their self interest only when there is no other choice. What will be the final catastrophic disaster that motivates us to actually act with serious intent to help ourselves.
Some might think that we are taking steps to mitigate the rise in CO2 that controls how much our planet warms. But the sad fact of the matter is that corporations and energy producers have done little to nothing at all. They talk a great game, but as to real action they hope we believe their words and not notice the lack of progress on their part. Even the world’s leaders can do little enough. On 20 November, the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), that took place in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh. It concluded with a historic decision to establish and operationalize a loss and damage fund for climate damaged countries. But there was also consensus among the delegates that the world would not be able to meet the Paris Climate Agreement (COP 21) in 2015 of keeping global warming to under a 1.5 degree Celsius increase by 2030.
In the last 10,000 years we have benefited from a relatively mild climate that has enabled us to develop agriculture and our resulting civilization. We rely on our climate to create the essentials of life and are now nearing the point where increasing swings of temperature and shifting wet and dry seasons will severely impact our growing cycles. Certainly our oceans are also nearing a danger point with over saturation of carbon dioxide making the water increasingly acidified, expanding ocean dead zones, killing species and severely limiting important fisheries. Melting the permafrost in northern zones will release even more CO2 along with industrial and transportation emissions, taking them to a point where we will not be able to correct these additions without expensive and difficult changes to our economic and political systems, all of which we humans would be very reluctant to go along with.
With 8 billion people now on our planet, we are closer then ever to catastrophe on a unimaginable scale. Is a massive catastrophe what it is going to take to make us aware that we are all in great danger, and how soon will that catastrophe happen?
(An old painting of mine. We are not the only intelligent species on our planet, but we are the only one that can act to help save the rest of the worlds species.)
