Sunday, July 14, 2024
On my perfunctory daily walks with my friend Paul (which I look forward eagerly to, mainly because the topics of our conversations are anything but perfunctory), whether we are discussing politics or history or literature or even science, we always leave each other feeling smarter, after every journey through neighborhoods and parks. After leaving him I feel the same way I feel after reading an Amandala editorial, much smarter. I would compare these well-thought-out, comprehensive, and unbiased editorials to any respected editorial, in any newspaper, anywhere in the world! But I digress.
On our last walk we were discussing how much climate change is affecting us, how we live and how we plan for the future. He suggested that folks in Florida and Arizona and Texas might start reversing migration to the Midwest, instead of the other way around, to cool off and escape the blistering kiss of Phoebus, the sun.
After leaving him, I started to think of a future that I know I won’t be around to witness. A future where places like the Jewel and the lower Yucatan and Quintana Roo, Miami and New Orleans will be inundated. A time when water will cost more than fuel, when food will be a luxury and not a staple. When we will live like it was portrayed in the movie Elysuim, where the rich live above earth in their own cloistered world, while the wretched starve and die in misery and without hope on this dying planet of ours. Whoever wrote that movie script had great foresight, in my opinion.
My thoughts are that as global warming increases, Antarctica, Patagonia, the Arctic Circle, Greenland, will become our Elysium! With all the technology, especially AI, now accessible to us, almost anything is possible these days. Man’s imagination and ingenuity can never be underestimated! But it’s also the logical choice for a withering planet. There’s enough water and sea life to begin with, then, through technology, other foods can be replicated or invented to satisfy the needs of humanity. I know it is a far-out concept, and I’m also positive that those much smarter have already thought about this idea, but I can’t be certain. Maybe there are barriers that could prevent the expansion of our living space, I don’t know, I’m not smart enough to figure that all out.
Personally, I don’t believe that anything can be done to stop the catastrophic collapse of our planet. We have already gone too far and too deep, in our reckless pursuit of more and more and more. All the entreaties about being carbon neutral, all those imaginary ways brought up to curb this hell we have started to face, in my opinion, are all futile. The damage has already been done.
I am not an authority on anything I’ve just written about! I know that I believe myself to be environmentally conscious, and I can see the results of our indifference to nature. I put my thoughts into words not for my personal benefit, but to make the readers think! Maybe that could make a difference.
I was born in a time when everything was green, our waters were clean and not corrupted with chemicals and other manmade substances. When food was plentiful and cheap and easily accessible! When the sea had an abundance of life and food and heathy corals and vegetation. When the air was much cleaner, when we looked forward to summer with hope, not with the dread we feel today as we are toasted and roasted every day!
That time is fast disappearing. But knowing man’s hunger and thirst for survival and comfort, maybe my premise isn’t so far-fetched. That the capital of this new world will be somewhere in the Antarctic! But then the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans, will start fighting for dominance, and here we go again!
“The things which I have seen, I can see no more.” — Wordsworth
Glen