The New York Times raised the alarm today with this article: Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans as Antarctic Ice Melts

It cites new research that confirms what climatologists have been warning us about: the Antarctic ice sheet is in a state of collapse, and the resulting ten-foot rise in sea level will render many cities around the world uninhabitable.

The good news is that they reckon this won’t really occur fully for another century or so. The bad news is, the toothpaste is already out of the proverbial tube on this one, so whether it will occur is no longer open to debate.

But it does beg a number of questions. I find myself wondering what we (i.e., you, me, my friends, my family) should do about this now. Should I water my lawn less? Should I turn down my thermostat during cold spells? Should I grow my own food? Should I use more public transportation? Should I install solar panels on my roof? Should I get rid of my hottub? Should I consider selling our house and moving somewhere away from the coast, where catastrophe now looms?

I mean — what can one do, practically speaking, about something like this? In the last few years I’ve engaged in this debate with very informed and concerned people several times, asserting that there isn’t really anything I can do about global warming. And up until this year, there has been so much conflicting evidence about whether global warming and its attendant consequences are really a function of man-made activity or not, I was finding it difficult to muster the level of resolve needed to actually take action, to make some substantive change that would contribute even if only meagerly to the reversal of this slow motion train wreck.

Well, any skepticism I felt is now gone — and it has been for some time now since the body of evidence has become pretty hard to ignore. Our climate is changing — that much appears to now be sure. And human activity has contributed at least partially to this change — that also appears to be clear now.

So given that, I come back to my questions about what it is, exactly, that I am supposed to do? Shall I adopt a more committed attitude toward changing my own behavior, doing everything I possibly can to slow down, stop or reverse this climate crisis? Shall I go on a personal crusade to persuade my family, friends and total strangers to do likewise?

Or shall I instead take a more fateful stance, and accept that this is now going to happen, and my energy would be better spent preparing for the inevitable, and doing whatever I think is necessary in order to be ready for the increase in freakish storms, rising sea levels, and significant changes in the average seasonal temperatures where I now live (or will live)?

Or, shall I just go on my merry way, ignoring the alarmists and the warnings? After all, what can I do about it anyways? My climate is really pretty good — if it got a little warmer that wouldn’t be so bad. And I’m on a hill, so it’s not like my house is going under water anytime soon. And anyways, that’s not for another 100 years, so I’ll be dead by then.

In the mean time I have to keep working and saving for retirement. I’m worried that I might lose my job and not have enough saved to retire. And what if social security goes broke before I even have a chance to start drawing it, and we don’t have enough money to live on. Then there’s the government employee pension disaster that threatens to bankrupt our local government, driving huge local tax increases that make it impossible for me to live here anymore.

It’s a lot to think about, to plan for, to prepare for, to take action against. Oh what to do?