climate change gloominess

I’ve been in a bleak mood recently, which is probably why the tone of this post will be so dour. I’ve been thinking about climate change, and how America seems to be the only industrialized nation in which a large number of people dispute either the fact of global warming, or that humans cause it, or both. (America is also the only industrialized nation with such a high number of evolution deniers, but I digress.) (I digress! Imagine that!)

This leads me to two lines of thinking. The first is about the hypocrisy of the left on this issue. We regularly spoof the righties on the inadequacy of will-power solutions to the problems of unwanted pregnancies (such as virginity pledges) or drug use (such as the “Just Say No” campaign). Yet we expect people to embrace a will-power solution to the climate change problem – smaller cars, lower temperatures on the thermostats, whatever. And in developing countries, these solutions would mean that these populations might not ever get to what we in the developed world consider a normal standard of living.

I heard an article on yesterday’s Here and Now about Wal*Mart and the Chinese coming to some agreements about greener manufacturing procedures. Now, I doubt that either Wal*Mart or the Chinese government or manufacturers are all that concerned with climate change… except that both are probably concerned about their images in the world, and, right now, an ecological response is probably good business PR. (The linked article does not include a discussion, which I seem to remember, about Wal*Mart’s motives and history.)

I suspect that when there is a solution to climate change, it will not be based on will power or behavior change. I suspect that there will be a technology change. Technology changes have reduced or eliminated certain diseases, widespread hunger, and the likelihood that the human race would die out due to lack of numbers. Technological solutions bring their own problems, but those problems bring their own solutions.

Or they don’t. The other line of thinking is about whether it’s important to avoid changing the climate at all. It’s not that I think that the climate is not changing; it is. It’s not that I think that the change may make the earth uninhabitable for humans; I think it will.

The issue is about whether it is worthwhile for humans to exist at all.

If the climate on earth changes, and humanity dies out, it is not at all clear that all life will end. In fact, discoveries of life in odd, dangerous places suggest that life not only will go on, but we might not be able to stop its going on. (I note that the odd, dangerous places are only odd or dangerous to us – certainly not to the creatures that live there quite comfortably, thank you.) So here are the options, as I see them:

1. It is possible that we will arrest and manage climate change, and humans will survive.
   
2. It is possible that we will not manage climate change, and humans will still survive.
   
3. It is possible that we will not manage climate change, and humans will die out. In this case,
   
   1. Either there is life elsewhere in the universe, and they will find our remains. If they are smart, our experience will serve as a lesson to them – perhaps we will be a byword, the way the “Tower of Babel” is for us.
      
   2. Or there is no life elsewhere, or the life that there is will never find us. In that case, self-aware life on earth was simply a dead end.

I can’t say that any of the outcomes in 3 makes me sorry. For now, I'm just gonna ride my bike.