NOT using the
panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in
Helsinki, Finland in August 2017 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire
from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree
with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not
today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes
reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the
spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
The title alone
should get me more hits than I usually do, so I’ll get right to the point: I’m
not denying Climate Change. Wooly mammoths in Texas and Xiphactinus fossils “from
the Niobrara Chalk formation in western Kansas” are clear evidence that the
climate has changed over time.
My rant is against
the claim that Humans are the sole cause of climate change and that if we don’t
stop doing…whatever, life on Earth, and the Human race in particular, will
cease to exist.
I could get
extremely snarky and point to the response of some Anthropogenic Global Warming
advocates and their attacks on anyone who disagrees with them and reference the
response to Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift. “David Attenborough,
who attended [Cambridge University] in the second half of the 1940s, recounted
an incident illustrating [the scientific community’s] lack of acceptance then: ‘I
once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental
drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could prove there was a force that
could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I
was informed.’” At that time, most scientists believed that the science of
earth movement was quite settled. I’d also like to note that each of the
Climate Change Conferences must have left a carbon footprint, but I can’t seem
to find that data.
I won’t get snarky,
though.
What I will do is
write very briefly about a universe I’m creating in which Humanity finishes its
move to urban areas by instituting the Return To The Wild laws. In my universe,
population is concentrated in 20000 mega-urban structures scattered over the
face of the Earth, occupying places of many of today’s major cities. The
climate rebounds from its warming period by dropping into a mini-ice age. Progress
toward “the Singularity” continues apace. Not long after RTTW, Humans discover
that We Are Not Alone and become a reluctant part of a union of sentients held
together by their debt to each other…
At any rate, I’d
like to propose one possible reason for the tenacity with which people who
resist the idea that climate change is not the sole responsibility of Humanity.
While I know some of these people, I don’t know all of them. My own belief is
that Humanity has CONTRIBUTED to climate change, but so have other factors –
some simply the cyclical nature of variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt,
variations in solar activity, variations in volcanic activity, continental shifts,
El Niño, and geologic CO2 release.
The belief that we
are the sole cause comes from the announcement of the death of God (if it ever
existed at all) and the possibility of belonging to something greater than the
individual. Some people who have eliminated the idea of God have discovered
that they have an unexpected (though minor) deficit in their lives. They have
trouble with being part of “a country”, especially as countries have (at their very
best) dark periods in their histories (yes, even Sweden, Nigeria, and Canada
have created or supported policies or rulers and authorities in their histories
that they would rather not highlight). They have trouble with being part of a
scientific community (which despite claims to the contrary, doesn’t always
agree on the science of ANYTHING, for example, the speed of light…)
They choose to
believe in the power of Humanity (I won’t get snarky about the exclusion of the
parts of Humanity they don’t like, like roughly half of the political structure
of this and most other countries), and how, like the God of Old, their Humanity
can do ANYTHING – their Humanity can Transcend its physicality, it can throw
off the chains of institutional religion and believe in the purely “spiritual”
part of its Humanity (if it wants to), it can change the genetics of Humanity
and reserves to right to declare this part or that part of Humanity useful or useless.
In order to be all powerful, Humanity must certainly be able to change the
environment of an entire planet. It must be seen to not only be ruler of the planet, but the ACTIVE ruler. The only Humanity some
people want to belong to is the Humanity that can at first accidentally change
the Climate and then can, through force
of will and application of Human-created technology, change it back to “the way
it was”.
I believe that
there is an aspect of the people of the Anthropogenic Global Warming community –
and I believe that even though the currently useful phrase is “Climate Change”,
the underlying belief is that Humanity is responsible for it ALL – that seeks
to fill a void created when God was slaughtered in this post-modern,
Singularity-welcoming, post-Christian era…again.
In my story, Earth
has rebounded from our future Climate Maximum with a Little Ice Age…and while Humanity
is powerful and can influence future events, it’s not All-Powerful.
That place still
belongs to God.
Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age,
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/228755/variable-speed-of-light-in-loop-quantum-gravity
Image: http://www.travelingkings.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Pic-08-Admiring-the-Xiphactinus-one-of-the-largest-bony-fish-ever-discovered.-570x380.jpg
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