Racing To Extinction
By Hill Henderson
16 March, 2005
Countercurrents.org
There are tragic stories of death and
injury every day in all our local papers involving young guys in souped
up cars racing recklessly, loosing control and killing themselves, their
passengers, or, sadly in too many cases, innocent families in the wrong
place at the wrong time.
Us old codgers ask Why take the chance of possible death or a
life of remorse and jail in reckless, speeding behavior? Why get even
close to taking such risks everything considered?
Now this isnt an op-ed on street racers, on reckless youthful
behavior in sports cars or muscle cars, but on global warming. It is
an attempt to wake you up to recognize our reckless behavior in risking
the very future of humanity and maybe even all life as we know it by
going too fast and behaving extremely recklessly.
Most of us know a little about global warming: the burning of fossil
fuels and other side effect products of industrial societies combine
to produce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increasing global mean
temperatures leading to heretofore unprecedented climate change.
It seems that most of us think of this as a gradual warming, a far off
in the future, perhaps even beneficial, unimportant background warming.
In reality it is an almost unbelievably tragic disaster risking everything
we value; a catastrophic accident we are already in, sliding towards
a cliff.
In BC where I live the forest in two thirds of the province, plus parts
of the Yukon and Alaska an area equal to the American south-west
are dying due to a mountain pine beetle epidemic. The beetles
are part of these forest ecosystems but their populations were kept
in check by cold winter temperatures (more than thirty degrees below
zero for at least two weeks). Two decades of unprecedented warm winters
have uncorked a pathogen whose effects can be easily seen from space:
an evolving, rapidly spreading disaster for lifeforms including
us who live in these forests.
Warmer temperatures also mean deadly water temperatures in rivers and
creeks for salmon both beginning their journey or returning to spawn.
Combined with warmer waters disrupting feeding and introducing new predators
and food competition in the North Pacific where they will spend most
of their lifecycle, global warming may mean the end of the estimated
hundred million year history of salmon in what we have so recently labeled
the north-east Pacific.
I have used local, BC examples but global warming accidents are happening
everywhere, every day. Like salmon and the flora and fauna in our forests,
we are adapted for a very slender range of temperature to survive. We
are nested in and dependent upon historic climates and interacting ecosystems.
Global warming even now promises wrenching dislocation and death.
But these immediate effects of global warming pale before the possibility
of runaway global warming where warming due to our greenhouse gas emissions
causes greatly increased greenhouse gas production from normal terrestrial
sources the release of CO2 stored in tundra, for example - creating
positive feedback loops which overwhelm regular biosphere regulation
and lead to temperatures possibly hundreds of degrees warmer then present.
Runaway global warming that could lead to an atmosphere like Venus.
In September 2000, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking was widely
quoted in the press as being very worried about runaway global warming:
"I am afraid the atmosphere might get hotter and hotter until it
will be like Venus with boiling sulfuric acid," said Hawking. "I
am worried about the greenhouse effect."
If we go over this
cliff no more humanity; the extinction of almost every existing species
except some bacteria; the end of life on Earth as we know it.
I have a re-occurring dream: Im a young guy again, in a car with
some friends traveling at night along the mountain two lane blacktop
of my youth. Were going way too fast, way too fast. Were
doing things like passing blind and almost loosing it on corners. In
the moonlight I can see the lake far below.
I know an accident is going to happen but they wont listen to
me: shut up chicken. They are focused on the speed, the rush, on keeping
the car on the road. It is insane and Im trapped into going along
with them.
Wake up.
An exponential increasing population with an economy growing at two
percent, compounding in mere decades after centuries of industrialization
based upon fossil fuel use, has us speeding recklessly, growing way,
way too fast in a finite world.
Science has a convincing understanding of global warming caused by the
burning of fossil fuels, a cause and effect first postulated more then
a century ago. We are already in the skid the accident is happening.
The already existing greenhouse gases will continue to trap heat over
the next century. It might be too late already to overt runaway global
warming.
If we know that reckless street racing leads to death, why do we allow
the production and merchandising of cars designed, engineered and promoted
to street race?
If we know that continuing fossil fuel use risks our lives today and
maybe human extinction, why do we still have an economy almost totally
dependent upon fossil fuels while possible alternative renewable energy
sources languish relatively ignored? Where fossil fuel exploitation
is still subsidized by governments?
Why are we expanding
car economies (now in China and India as well as the developed
world) when we should be aware of the global warming danger and know
of other possible economic and social configurations that dont
require intensive fossil fuel use? Other ways of organizing our lives
that dont need the fossil fuel addiction?
Why do young guys continue to race recklessly when they see wrecks and
pictures of the dead in the media and guys like themselves remorseful
in the manslaughter trial coverage?
Why does everybody in our business community still demand exponential
rates of growth and the wasteful use of what are now becoming very precious
resources needed by future generations? Rates of material growth that
can clearly be understood as risking catastrophic death and mayhem and
perhaps even the extinction of humanity on this planet?
Why arent our captains of industry, our economic-centric politicians
and commerce focused governments and all of us that own businesses (or
work in or are financially dependent upon them) in the dock, right now,
today, for risking unbelievable calamity just because of our personal,
incredibly ignorant and unethical addiction to reckless speed?
When there are (when there were?) so many other possible ways
of driving, of operating our economies, that dont risk extinction?
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