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Message |
| Posted By: |
UT |
| Date: |
30-Aug-2003-10:24:39 |
| Subject: |
Taking The Heat: The Karma of Global Warming |
It's fairly fascinating having been in France this summer and living through the heat wave. Not everyone did. In fact, close to 12,000 people didn't. There are several real lessons to be learned in that, but given the trends and the stick-your-head-in-the-sand (if not somewhere smellier) nature of humanity, they won't be.
The first lesson is that it's a preview of the future, not just in France but everywhere. Ecologists point out that the temperature surges this summer match their computer models for what is expected to happen as a result of global warming *perfectly*, which is rather upsetting. It's upsetting because those *same* models predict a global temperature increase over the next decade of 6 to 7 degrees Celcius. That doesn't sound like much, but this summer's disastrous heat wave reflects a temperature rise of only a fraction of one degree Celcius. A rise of seven degrees Celcius would mean the end of rainfall-fed
agriculture on planet Earth, among other things. It's pretty serious, and life-threatening.
The second lesson has to do with *whose* lives are most threatened. In France, most of those who died from the heat fell into two categories, if not both -- the old and the poor. Neither could afford air conditioning; neither could afford fans; most lived in housing or in abandoned buildings that became literal ovens in the heat and baked them to death. And the rich and middle-class who ran the government failed to act because, sitting in their air-conditioned offices and homes and cars, they never even noticed there was a problem. If the doctors and medical professionals of France had not noticed what was happening and abandoned *their* vacation plans to stay at work and do what they could, it is estimated that the death toll would have been four to five times higher.
The third lesson, and the reason no one's going to learn anything from this tragedy and global warming is going to continue unchecked until millions start to die from it each year, has to do with who is *causing* it. It's the upper class -- the wealthy and middle class, who drive their SUVs and buy more and more products that require more and more power and thus require more and more pollution. And they never notice what that's doing to the world around them because -- being well off -- they live in nice, air-conditioned houses and offices and cars and never *feel* what their unconscionable lifestyle is doing to the planet around them.
But in the streets of Paris I can already see the future. It's really like "seeing," a virtual future so certain that it's like looking at a blueprint for what will happen. If the current trends continue, what the future holds for most of the planet, *including* the US, is class warfare. We're talking "Up against the wall, motherfuckers!" We're talking rich people being dragged out of their SUVs and beaten to death by mobs. We're talking entire upscale neighborhoods being looted by mobs of poor and lower-middle-class people who are tired of *their* parents being the ones who die so that these people can keep running their air conditioners and driving their gas-guzzlers. It's not a pretty picture, it's not a future I *like*, and it's *not* inevitable, but it's as easily predictable as anything in human history has ever been.
When it all comes down, remember you read about it here first, especially if at the time you are living in some wealthy community somewhere thinking you're safe... :-)
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