Climate Change and War
I’m supposed to be studying, but New Scientist’s “War has historic links to global climate change” caught my attention. Written as a follow-up to “Climate change linked to a millennium of war in China”, it turns out that climate change and warfare is a vicious cycle. And yet the irony is that war also gave us modern technology (well, not all of it).
That brings the question: Is our ‘pristine’ environment really so-called untouched by humanity? An example is the American Prairie, thought (it’s just one of a few alternatives scenarios in academia) to have been an African savannah look-alike but has been reshaped by human activity towards the end of the Pleistocene epoch. So, if that’s true then what the hell are we conserving? Mother Nature or our predecessor’s handiwork? Like Y2K (still remember what that was?), sometimes we seem to be stuck with the muck the previous generations left us. Who knows that our attempts to stop global warming is simply a rearguard action to prevent our extinction and setting the stage for the next species’s global donimation. Time will tell, but our species’s selfishness and inability to plan for the future is starting to hurt us all. Let’s hope that we’re smarter than these frogs.
As a solution to our problems, geoengineering or planetary engineering is starting to make the headlines once again. Sun’s warming us too much? So just make a huge sunshade for Earth! I’m not saying that it’s a foolish idea, but given historical precedence, it might just be a good idea to thread carefully. From what I know, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a pioneer in this field (as well as rocketry). Thankfully, even though his ideas fit with the Soviet communist ideal of man subjugating nature for his needs, they were never carried out (although Soviet disregard for EIAs did cause environmental disasters in the former bloc). Well, sneer at the commies for their stupidity, but some Christian evangelicals adhere to the same idea as well (that might just explain the Republicans’ apathy). Besides, I think that individualism isn’t as environmentally friendly as we might want it to be.
Why so?
SImple. A lot of call-to-action has been issued for us to do our part in reducing our environmental footprint. But let me ask you, what have YOU done to reduce consumption? More likely than not (and I applaud the rare exceptions out there), I’ll wager that you would most probably be more concerned about the rat race or having fun.
In contrast, while the Chinese are bleching out plenty of carbon their government is quite efficient in enforcing green ideas. The enforcement ranges from the humourous, inconvenient and not very effective idea of cutting vehicular traffic by half in Beijing (find out how here) to the deadly serious blowing up of coal factories not compliant with SEPA (China’s EPA) standards in Linfen. Collective behavior is not that bad after all (if executed correctly). Even if governments and corporations are slow to react, the masses can still drop carbon emissions quickly if given the right incentive to do so (so far, sticks are far more effective than carrots). Only thing that remains now is for you to decide whether you want to wait for the stick to fall on you first or start working now to harvest the carrots later.
