How do we tackle an enemy when the enemy is ourselves? How do we find human solutions to human nature? Are we at a moral precipice when some people would welcome a mass die off of ‘others’ if it meant we could continue to live as we have been?
My fear is that sustainable technologies will not be adopted fast enough to prevent a massive upheaval. Pockets of advanced communities will exist and possibly be best positioned to weather the storm. Unless we can create a workable plan to collectively address the world’s problems, smaller units – regions, nations, corporations, cults, individuals – will fight to insure their own survival.
The scale of these conflicts is total – from skirmishes to nuclear war.
I’m not well enough informed to have anything other than a foreboding that if it is not too late to change our path, it will be too late soon. The scale of the carbon economy seems too vast to contemplate being able to shift to much lower or negative emissions, without expending a vast amount of carbon in the process. Not to mention the need for the political will to even attempt such a shift.
But I also sleep well at nights. As a Canadian, I feel insulated from the brunt of a coming climactic collapse. We are a rich and sparsely populated country. That is not to say that Exodus – from America, or Asia or wherever, could not bring the world’s problems to our doorstep, but I feel – as many others probably do – that we have more time than the rest of the world. If things get really shitty, we’ll stock up on goods, get some guns, and bunker down somewhere.
I’d like to ask some smarter people what they think, because finally I’m willing to accept that navel gazing won’t give me all the answers.
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