“Game Over Man, GAME OVER!”
Well, putting Chicken Little aside momentarily, I think it is about the right time to acknowledge full well that the sky is in fact falling. Or maybe Hell has indeed frozen over. “That’ll be the day,” we used to say. That day is today.
As Greta Thunberg has suggested, it is perfectly okay now to panic with respect to the existential threat that is today’s climate crisis, but not enough of us are. Humans are wired by nature to think of threats first and tend to use our imagination to create doomsday scenarios in our minds to protect ourselves, sometimes even with scant factual basis.
So how again did we miss the mark and not get our ducks in a row with all the overwhelming scientific evidence about global warming and its resulting climate change spawning horrifically severe weather events?
It probably had something to do with the greed, stupidity, stubbornness and racism of just enough anti-science zombies to stymie intelligent action. A lot of us knew exactly where this was headed decades ago but were held back in preventing it.
What more evidence do people need? How many freakishly destructive weather events need to take place? Cataloging the cascading crises is just depressing. Take a look at the news any day, and you’ll gather more evidence that what we have known full well would happen for the last 50 years is now happening. And it sucks, big time.
So, it’s no longer okay to talk about global warming or climate change. This is a freaking CLIMATE CRISIS created by stupid and selfish human beings, and it will get a lot worse before it gets better. The most vulnerable in our global society will suffer horribly. The powerful and privileged will get by just fine.
Oceans will rise; great cities and even island nations will flood and possibly disappear. Catastrophic weather events will kill millions. Food supplies will be disrupted. Social unrest will become the norm. Great migrations of dispossessed climate crisis refugees will cause conflicts and possibly wars.
Things are going to turn to crap in a big, big way. And even if we suddenly got very motivated right now, it will take decades to return our out of control ecosphere to its natural balance.
It is time to throw inhibition and caution to the wind, justifiably freak out and run around like your hair is on fire, because very soon it easily could be. Get in the face of everyone you know, especially your elected representatives at all levels and anyone else that will even pretend to listen. Let them know you are mad as hell, and you’re not going to take it anymore.
Because we know what to do to stop this, and we have known for a long time. It’s no secret. The technologies all exist to deliver a carbon neutral planet, and do so in a way that is economically sound and delivers an avalanche of good paying new jobs.
But greed has been the powerful motivator that has stopped us; so plenty of robber baron oligarchs have done quite well the last fifty years as this incomprehensible but entirely real mess has been created. They MUST be held accountable, as must congressional Republicans that have stood in the way for decades and have literally lit the damn globe on fire.
So, now it’s okay to panic. Maybe that will help get something done.
(Image created and photo by J.E. Hargate)
