Another Year
Dec. 31st, 2008 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaActually it's kind of weird.
The idea Bush is basically gone is still sinking in. It's really weird. I mean, everyone's still worried. But, now we worry about if the problems have become too big and if Obama will be able to fix them. It's something we could even really worry about before, because we couldn't get past the thought that Bush simply wouldn't do anything. There isn't the same sense that we're just trapped and doomed.
Well, kinda.
Conversations with Dad keep circling back obsessively to issues of methane, namely, it's melting and it's melting faster, because that's getting in the news now. Yeah, it's what I was talking about before, and no, once again, being right really is not all that satisfying. There are few thoughts more disturbing than the idea you're right about your doomsaying, it's just that everyone else is a couple years behind the curve.
I don't know, really.
The thing is, we're so far past the point where the solution is to do less of what we're doing wrong. I really do believe people can do incredible things if we try. But the problem is that what we really need to do isn't just lowering our existing emissions or, really, anything at all from the stupid set of responses that says the only solution is to reduce the amount of terrible damage we do and hope the world magically fixes itself if we just clap our hands a few times and chant that we believe in fairies.
Because really, that's all it is.
If the apex predators are about to starve to death, you organize a food drop. You'll notice people very rarely take the view that, if children are getting cancer from radioactive waste, the solution is to stop dumping it in the water supply and wait for it to degrade over the next few centuries, rather than, say, bringing in clean water. But among the environmentalist movement, the idea of tampering with nature is one of those core beliefs, the ones that aren't rational and frankly, if you cornered some, you'd eventually get to a bunch of Gaia ramblings. You'd think they'd know better than to use religion as the basis of policy, you really would.
So in conclusion: we probably can and really must, but I don't know if we will.
The idea Bush is basically gone is still sinking in. It's really weird. I mean, everyone's still worried. But, now we worry about if the problems have become too big and if Obama will be able to fix them. It's something we could even really worry about before, because we couldn't get past the thought that Bush simply wouldn't do anything. There isn't the same sense that we're just trapped and doomed.
Well, kinda.
Conversations with Dad keep circling back obsessively to issues of methane, namely, it's melting and it's melting faster, because that's getting in the news now. Yeah, it's what I was talking about before, and no, once again, being right really is not all that satisfying. There are few thoughts more disturbing than the idea you're right about your doomsaying, it's just that everyone else is a couple years behind the curve.
I don't know, really.
The thing is, we're so far past the point where the solution is to do less of what we're doing wrong. I really do believe people can do incredible things if we try. But the problem is that what we really need to do isn't just lowering our existing emissions or, really, anything at all from the stupid set of responses that says the only solution is to reduce the amount of terrible damage we do and hope the world magically fixes itself if we just clap our hands a few times and chant that we believe in fairies.
Because really, that's all it is.
If the apex predators are about to starve to death, you organize a food drop. You'll notice people very rarely take the view that, if children are getting cancer from radioactive waste, the solution is to stop dumping it in the water supply and wait for it to degrade over the next few centuries, rather than, say, bringing in clean water. But among the environmentalist movement, the idea of tampering with nature is one of those core beliefs, the ones that aren't rational and frankly, if you cornered some, you'd eventually get to a bunch of Gaia ramblings. You'd think they'd know better than to use religion as the basis of policy, you really would.
So in conclusion: we probably can and really must, but I don't know if we will.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 05:17 pm (UTC)The melting methane right now is bad, because it'll make things warmer, but the real problem is that once we pass a certain temperature, the methane at the bottom of the ocean will melt, at which point everything in the ocean will die, at which point 95% of life on land will die, including all larger forms of animal life. The ocean is what produces the oxygen we need to breathe.
So basically, our current options are "build massive domed cities" and "stop the methane from melting".
The second option is not going very well (http://earthfirst.com/arctic-sea-%E2%80%98foaming-with-methane%E2%80%99-as-permafrost-melts/).
no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 02:19 am (UTC)Basically, methane release will end up turning the oceans into a dead zone - the initial deaths kickstart the whole ecosystem flipping into an anaerobic one as everything rots. And unfortunately, life on land relies on the oceans to produce the surplus oxygen we use, so if the oceans die we go next.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 05:28 pm (UTC)I mean, the coral reefs are going extinct. That's like saying the trees are going extinct. We have singlehandedly destroyed an entire class of ecosystem, one that makes up or is required by somewhere over 80% of the ocean's species. The time for caring about gas has passed us by a long time ago.
Alex Warlorn
Date: 2009-03-09 07:07 pm (UTC)