Denial: it’s not just a river in Egypt 😉

I don’t know what the answer is. If you take the consensus view of the most commonly quoted scientists, it is already too late, and there is nothing we can do to fix the climate. If they are right, then what’s the point?

Then there are those who think we have twenty or thirty years during which we have to somehow reverse a trend that we barely understand. That has some possibility: I mean look at population growth. When I was ten years old or so, the trends all indicated the global population would be around 20 billion by now. And of course, back in those days we were all expecting to die in a total, all out nuclear armageddon. Somehow humanity turned things around, not via some grand political/corporate program, but seemingly just via a societal shift.

If most folks start realizing that there is something we can do, even if it seems small, and if we all “chip in”… will that be enough? If 3 out of 5 people choose to buy an economical car when, a few years ago, 3 out of 5 would have bought a big SUV. If 5% or 10% of our power comes from solar/wind/geothermal instead of 0.01%. If 60% of the incandescent lightbulbs are replaced with CFL or LED. Would all of these things combine together in a surprising way to shift the trends just enough?

Again, the consensus seems to be saying “we are already screwed”, and that all the “little stuff” won’t help one bit. If the only way the tipping point can be avoided is if the entire world suddenly switches off the lights and goes back to living in caves, or if the only possible corrections are insane sounding radical solutions like pumping billions of tons of iron into the oceans that are just as likely to destroy the environment, well, what’s the point of even trying? I refuse to accept that.

I guess we’ll see where we are in 30 years. There are all sorts of studies showing things like we will run out of all the metals we need for our high technology society by then as well. Undoubtedly, if we manage to dodge one self-generated catastrophe, there will be an even bigger one waiting for us. Hurray for humanity!