Dr. Steve Best’s spot-on, thought-provoking blog post, “Climate Armageddon: How the World’s Weather Could Quickly Run Amok,” prompted this, my reply:

The bad part is that it doesn’t take a perfect storm and domino effects to make the planet uninhabitable for today’s earthlings.  It takes just a small fraction of that.  While some may suggest that THIS scientist is spewing doom and gloom, it’s an apt and fair assessment.

Consider the recent weather, the extremes that caused people to stop using “Global Warming” and call it Climate Change.  These seemingly capricious swings are already making this planet uninhabitable for those in flood and drought areas, in places of extreme heat or cold, and creating radical changes in places like Greenland as the ice melts.  In science-fiction worlds, we see human ingenuity compensating.  In that speculative fiction universe, mankind develops new ways to live within the harsher climate.  But that’s only for the rich.  The everyman, the villager, the lower class (even in urban areas) doesn’t possess the resources to have such housing, transportation, etc.  It’s great to say “Well, we’ll just live in air conditioning, as they do in Dubai.”  But Dubai has the money (from oil, how ironic) to pay for those comforts.  The upper mucky-muck in the UAE doesn’t even pay for electricity.  What will the everyman do?  He will suffer, and he will die, and his wife and children with him.

Perhaps this is Gaia’s way of ridding herself of an annoyingly destructive parasite, a plague of vermin that she recognizes as a threat to her well-being.  In the bigger picture, it is of no consequence to her what life form inhabits this rock as it spins and zooms through space.  Quite the contrary, our clever monkey brains have made us that very parasite in just a couple centuries — not even the blink of a god’s eye.  Gaia may not care if she is inhabited by the current creatures or the new beings which spring up able to thrive in the new climate(s).  But wouldn’t WE (and our fellow Earthlings) be better off to stave off that climate change NOW?

I think and believe it to be true that we are flying headfirst towards a precipice, a point beyond which we cannot recover.  If we and the current Earthling species are to survive, we MUST put the brakes on.  We MUST cease use of all combustion processes (as they are ALL inherently destructive and toxic) and stop spewing noxious chemicals into the air and water — and we’ve got to do so sooner, or there will be no Later for us.  This does not mean returning to living in cabins and dying of easy  cured diseases, as some reactionaries would attempt to claim.   We took a wrong turn at the combustion engine.  We just need to go back that far and replace the energy generation with PASSIVE electronic harvests of energy.  The forces of solar, wind and tide, combined with more energy-efficient devices AND a more responsible stewardship over ourselves, can easily provide us all with everything we need.

The time is now.  If we are to survive, instead of causing the end of nearly all life as we know it on this beautiful, wonderful world, we MUST recognize our place AMONGST the species of the earth, toss away the Judeo-Christian “thou shalt have Dominion over them” presumptions, and live in ways that are harmonious with the rest of the planet.  In short, it’s time we grew up… and if we do not, we will not survive this adolescence, and we’ll take every other living being, the dogs, cats, wolves, eagles, hawks, falcons, gorillas, orangutans, dolphins, whales — all the innocent creatures great and small will suffer our fate along with us.  Do we REALLY need to feel powerful that bad, to reassure ourselves that we are in control, at so horrible a price?