is it too late?

Is it too late for humanity to save itself from the ravages of climate change and the ecological damage caused by a consumerised, exploding population held hostage by the economies of the "developed" and "developing" world?

I fear that it is.

For several reasons:

a. Climate change experts, almost on a weekly basis, point out that fresh evidence suggests that their previous estimates were way too conservative and that the rate of change is much bigger than previously thought. Does the word exponential mean anything? Does it apply here? I think it does. Even the graphs [1] [2] in Al Gore's book depict exponential rates of change. Spend a moment or two contemplating the true impact if it's indeed gone exponential...

b. I posit that the real measures necessary to save the planet's climate and ecology would, absolutely, crash the global economy. Which politician in which democracy is willing to commit political suicide by advocating anything which is catastrophically bad for the economy? See? Right here is democracy's biggest flaw: The people won't let the politicians do the right thing. They don't want the politicians do the right thing. They don't want the hardship which would ensue if they did the right thing. But all of this a moot point because we will never agree on what "the right thing" is anyway... If ever the world needed an enlightened dictator, it's right friggin now... Of course, we'd kill her, right?

c. Combine (a) and (b) and what do you get? You get an ever-reducing window of opportunity during which only token and grossly inadequate changes will be implemented, and after the window has slammed shut, the rhetoric will shift to "ah well, it's all too late now anyway, so why risk the economy" and it'll be business as usual while the ecological shit hits the fan in ever-bigger lumps.

And then what? A brief era of fatalism will precede The Catastrophe.

So then, here are some interesting words for you to ponder upon, etymologically, dear reader:

Develop (developing, developer)

Evolve (evolution)

Progress

I wonder what the few shell-shocked survivors of The Catastrophe will make of our take on those words... I wonder what new meanings they will assign to those words...

All this too big for your itty bitty brain, huh? That's why we're phuqued (so to speak)...

Of course, I won't now throw you a curve ball and ask you to ponder upon how Utilitarian Ethics would apply to the current crisis...

Here endeth the rant, me little luvvlies... nyack nyack nyack