I feel that within my life time humanity may be forced to undergo a revolution of attitude, of self-perception. When it becomes universally obvious that we have broken the climate, that we have become a dominant and destructive force on our planet, and that a deity is not showing any signs of bailing us out, how will that fit into peoples (usually religious) mindset? Will the political will to actually deal with this, and aggressively limit CO2 emissions (i.e. stop mining and burning coal) happen in time, or too late? This final passage in a NYT book review (which I edit a bit here) by Paul Krugman on a climate book (The Climate Casino by William Nordhaus, who is not a greenie!) haunts me, since I think about this each and every day: We have been living in an age of unusual climate stability—as quoted by Nordhaus, “the last 7,000 years have been the most stable climatic period in more than 100,000 years.” This era of stability coincides pretty much exactly with the rise of civilization, and that probably isn’t an accident. Now that period of stability is ending—and civilization did it, via the Industrial Revolution and the attendant mass burning of coal and other fossil fuels. The Scientific Revolution that accompanied the revolution in industry has also given us far more knowledge about the world, including an understanding of what we ourselves are doing to the environment. But it seems that we have made an immensely dangerous bet: namely, that we’ll be able to use the power and knowledge we’ve gained in the past couple of centuries to cope with the climate risks we’ve unleashed over the same period. Will we win that bet? Time will tell. Unfortunately, if the bet goes bad, we won’t get another chance to play.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 02:23:53 +0000
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