As someone fast approaching the anniversary of their eighth decade circling our sun on this rock we call earth, climate change should be of little concern. It is doubtful that I will suffer any dire consequence of the rising temperatures brought on by our heavy reliance on fossil fuels for our energy needs. Those fossil fuels are currently cheaper than most of the alternatives. Any change now to avert some future catastrophe would be a sacrifice easily postponed to future generations.
A person would be a fool to think it financially prudent to make such sacrifices today when we can kick that can down the road a bit. This attitude was best expressed in the cartoon character, Wimpy from the Popeye series. It was Wimpy who would say, “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Wimpy's quote shows his love of food, laziness, and manipulative behavior, which leads him to seek free meals from others, always with the excuse of future payment, which never happens. In the case of climate change, it is selfish greed that drives the fossil fuel industry to ignore science and even cherry pick items from scientific reports which, taken out of context, can be misconstrued to support an entirely different conclusion. They would lead you to believe that the burning of fossil fuels has not contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer, rising temperatures, drought, famine, sea level rise, and countless other changes that threaten our very existence.
It would be disingenuous of me to suggest I might not see the damage of climate change in my lifetime. We are currently living through a global migration of peoples fleeing the heat, drought, and famine that we politely call our “immigration problem.” While climate is not the sole cause of this gigantic population shift, it is a major contributor. If we also factor in heat related illnesses, air quality degradation, vector borne diseases, mental health impacts, precipitation changes, melting glaciers, rising sea levels with salt water intrusion, reduced crop yields, ocean acidification and fisheries decline, coastal flooding, and an ever-expanding list of things that threaten human survival, climate change can be seen as the most important problem on the planet.
The excuse that “the climate is always changing” and therefore we shouldn’t be concerned belies the fact that, during the past 4.5 billion years thousands of species have gone extinct, and man has only been here for around 300,000 years of that. During the reign of the homo sapiens, at least seven deadly plagues have ravaged the known world. The Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, Smallpox, The Third Plague, 1918 Flu, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19 collectively killed almost 500 million people. It was an asteroid impact forming the Chicxulub crater in Mexico that caused a chain reaction of global wildfires, tsunamis, and enough atmospheric dust to wipe out 75% of plant and animal life on the planet.
The term anthropogenic is a fancy word that means environmental change originating from human activity. Thousands of species could go extinct in the next century due to anthropogenic climate change. If bees were to go extinct, it would impact one third of the world food supply. That is to say, children born today could bear witness to mass extinction. Humans, unlike some less fortunate species, will undoubtedly adapt with technological solutions, migration, and lifestyle changes. That such future human misery could be avoided with sacrifices made today would seem prudent but not probable. I say not probable because human greed is a major obstacle. So, we all join Wimpy and enjoy our hamburger today, because Tuesday is a long way off.
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