I have been in this class about climate change for about two weeks now. I have read multiple stories about climate change and what the future may hold for the human race. Most of them are bleak, miserable futures, with environments deteriorating in barren wastelands, and society along with it. I quote an example from the short story “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet”:
“In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it. Wars, plagues and famines visited us, but we did not stop in our industrious creation of deserts. At last all wells were poisoned, all rivers ran with filth, all seas were dead; there was no land left to grow food.”
This describes a possible future where the land becomes bone-dry deserts, and the seas becoming poisoned and rotten. And yet, despite all these morbid stories, I don’t feel afraid about the future. The human race is a resilient and adaptable species, and will more than likely live on after the worst of the “global wierding.”
Sure, if the ice caps are lost, then sea levels will rise. Coastal cities will be flooded. Florida will be a thing of the past. Temperatures will swing from sweltering hot summers to freezing winters. Some places of the world will become more productive for plant life, while others will become less productive. Some animal species will become extinct. Others will thrive in new environments.
We can work with all of this. We can move to areas where we feel more comfortable. And if we can’t move, then we can change our surroundings to better suit our needs. We can change our diets, and find new ways to get the sustenance that we require. If people live in areas that have become flooded, then they can purchase boats, jet-skis, or other modes of transportation to get where we need to go.
It won’t be just the physical world that we’ll have to adapt to. The political environment will change as well. Tensions will mount for resources. Uprisings will pop up in many areas of the globe. Governments, countries and religions will come and go in this turbulent time. But we can work with this too. New ideas and ways of thinking will emerge out of this turmoil. New governments that suit the people’s needs will be created. Order will once again be restored in this world.
If you ask me right now if I’m scared for the future due to the changing climate, my answer would be no. We survived the last Ice Age fairly well. We will certainly survive whatever Mother Nature throws at us. Our race will be battered and bruised afterwards, but we will push on. Humans, after all, are an extremely tough race to kill.
C.J. – Thank you for your honesty and openness in this post. Like you, I too have a strong belief in humanity’s ability to adapt, and, more generally, our resilience as a species. There are also many examples of how the more-than-human world (i.e. nature) adapts in difficult situations. However, it is crucial also to consider that not everyone (not every individual, community, population) will be able to adapt equally. That is, adapting to a changing climate requires having money, power, and privilege, things that most people in the world don’t have. The short story, “The Tamarisk Hunter,” does a good job, I think, of illuminating this truth. Lolo and the other desert residents (including the trees themselves) are denied water, because people in L.A. are using it all up. How do you think other short stories are able to address both these ideas: that on the one hand, humans are resilient creatures, while on the other hand, climate change impacts are uneven and unjust (and thus some communities are able to adapt easier than others)?
I enjoyed reading the post because it made me think about global warming and its effect on humanity in a different way than I have before. Usually, as you can tell in my post, I have looked at global warming from the perspective that humanity and the earth the way we know it will be changed unless we act now. What I found interesting, and what I hadn’t thought of before, was how humanity has really been a very adaptive species. From Ice Ages to living virtually all over the world, humans are pretty rugged and can make the best out of many situations. That being said, I think it still must be taken into consideration about the potential effects of global warming and how devastating they could be. Unfortunately, we will never know exactly what is going to happen until it truly hits us.
I completely agree with you that I am not scared of global warming/ climate change. At least not yet. I don’t know if that is the naiveness in me thinking that this will never happen, at least when I am alive, or if I am actually that brave to take on whatever the future holds. But I do agree with how you talked about how our world is adaptable and we have gone through major climate changes just like ones that are supposed to happen in our future.
I wonder, what they would say know, all them not scared about climate changes…