Apocalypse soon

[ WARNING: This will be a hopeful, uplifting post that will leave you so full of joy you may actually enter a euphoric coma and die.  Read with caution. ]

Regular readers here will know I'm somewhat concerned about global warming.  When a Mack truck is coming at me at 100mph from a few feet away, it tends to really focus my attention.  I'm just like that.

Jonathan Schwarz, a cheery, optimistic sort, looks on the bright side of the issue in this posting, in which he points out one ray of hope: there are sane billionaires out there who not only have the financial wherewithal and political clout to make something happen, but who actually take the threat of climate change seriously.  This is one of the reasons he believes human civilization will likely "manage to mitigate global warming and survive."

Now, I can be a cheery, optimistic fellow too; in fact my closest friends know me as Señor Sol.  But I'd say it's much more likely that humanity will not mitigate warming, but will still survive, albeit in a much changed world.  And the billionaires—sane and otherwise—will survive in that new world quite comfortably (as long as they're not hacked to death in their arctic redoubts by the massive mobs of displaced, starving peasants).  Which naturally mitigates their motivation to do anything about it.

I don't think we'll mitigate global warming for one simple reason: there's just not enough time anymore.  The tipping point—the point beyond which accelerating feedback effects make it all but impossible to reverse the process—is likely within 10 years, and quite possibly less.  And as I've observed before, at this point there's nowhere near the sense of urgency there'll need to be to avert it—especially because averting it will require large-scale changes that would be slow and disruptive to implement in the best of circumstances, even if they weren't already so near-impossible to achieve politically.

One informal but telling measure of that lack of urgency is the deafening silence in the presidential campaign on the issue.  We're not hearing about global warming all the time from Obama and McCain, and other politicos, for one simple reason: most Americans simply do not give a royal rat's ass.  They're focused with laser-like intensity on the economy, and they're plenty worried about the price of gas, because they can see and feel the effects of those things right here and right now.  But something that a bunch of NASA "scientists" claim could be a big problem in a few decades, or whatever it is they're saying now?  "We have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb", and "the next president and Congress must define a course next year"?  Yeah, sure, Poindexter.  Go tell it to the ozone hole!  Ha ha ha!

So barring a miracle, we're screwed.

But I've got my Señor Sol reputation to think about and "screwed" is a relative term, so I should point out that there is a sunny side: if you're over 30, or thereabouts, you'll almost certainly be dead before the worst hits.  It'll just make your twilight years a little more interesting.  And that's not all: if you have a reasonable amount of money—even if you're a few bucks shy of a billion—you'll be able to buy your way out of the worst of it.  Take that, 2.6 billion people living on less than $2 a day!

Comments

[Thomas Daulton]

...aaaand, as other commentators have pointed out, howcome Al Gore isn't trying to inject some Global Warming Wisdom into the Presidential race? Howcome he isn't cornering the candidates in print or on his cable network or whatever, and raising the issue with the public? I thought the whole reason he decided not to run again, was because he felt he was _more_ effective at bringing up this issue as an "outsider". Now, I won't dispute that statement -- it would be very, very difficult for Al to be _LESS_ effective on Global Warming than he was as an "insider" from 1992-2000 -- however... he's just not holding up the part of the bargain where he raises the issue...

Once again, as I mentioned in an earlier post while discussing rank-and-file Democratic voters... for the Democrats, any particular issue _ALWAYS_ takes a back seat to "winning the next election" by any means possible. Any means besides, that is, taking a strong stand against Republican policies. These people are interested in political power, and political power _only_. The one price they are not willing to pay for it, however, is to buck the big-money/politics-as-usual system. _That_ promise is always, perpetually over the next distant hilltop.

[John Caruso]

Great points all. I agree approximately 6032%.