I don’t like the way it is being put. By now everyone understands there’s something really wrong with the climate. You don’t need to be a genius – just have a look at the calendar and the thermometer.Rather than being some degrees below zero, this winter we have blossom, buds and shoots. That’s not the way that’s expected to be in mid-January.
So media are starting covering the issue. And I don’t like the way they are handling this. They are telling us that unavoidably things will go worse and worse – desertification, sea raising and submerging lands and cities, drought, and so on. Now, even more alarmingly, they speak about huge number of casualties and economic crashing in the Mediterranean areas.
The reason I don’t like in this message is the implicit statement that all this is ineluctable and unavoidable and it has always been. In other words – you are going to die, start considering it… but, hey, you wanted comfort, car and TV-set? Don’t complain… die quietly please.
Since I was young (that’s now more years than I’m keen to mention), environmentalists and scientists are telling us, our government our industry leaders that we were polluting too much, that we had to choose a more sustainable way of exploiting our planet resources. We also had a number of summits and round tables (Kyoto anyone?) about the matter where light or no actions were agreed.
If now it is too late, the only fault we could be blamed about is not having given our vote for different political leaders more attentive to these problems.
But is it true that nothing can still be done?
It is true that things change quickly, often with an exponential rate rather then linear. The meaning is that it could well be that we get aware of a certain effect when it is too late to act on its cause removal.
To explain exponential growth I really like the chessboard example. Everyone knows the legend. It is about the payment a wise man asked to his King for having taught him to play chess. The exact amount of the payment had to be computed with the chessboard. Starting with one grain of wheat in the first square and doubling the amount at each square. That is 1, 2, 4, 8, … and so on.
Here comes the most interesting point – the King gave him a couple of sacks thinking that it was enough, but the wise man objected that the exact quantity was more than the entire collection of the whole kingdom.
What’s so amusing? It is that exponential growth fights and defeats our intuition. You can consider it a slow pace linear process until it really explodes.
Back to the weather it is well possible that now it is to late to cancel the nefarious effect of the mankind on the environment, but I am strongly convinced that it is never too late to do the right thing.
I have the impression that media are just relaying propaganda. What is the most convenient move? Just do nothing, let the poor people die while those who hold the power survive. It won’t be hard to survive if you can live everywhere you like, if you can afford water, food and energy at any price, if you can have your personal army.
“Dear passengers this is the captain speaking, the smoke on the right side of the aircraft is the engine that’s burning, the little spot below it’s me with the only parachute that was on-board… I hope you enjoyed the flight”.