Climate Change is the Best Thing That’s Happened to Humanity
“As I noted above, climate change is a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of government response,” General James Mattis, Secretary of Defence for the climate-change denying Tangerine Regime.
At least someone in the White House is paying attention. Or at least keeps far enough away from oil lobbyists to speak the truth. It’s been a depressing few weeks for anyone who cares about the planet, as Trump turned the stove up to 11 on our impending Global Climate Deathorama.
Like lice digging a bit too deep in the scalp, we’ve awoken the great beast we live atop. Forget fighting global warming — it’s already here: longer and deeper droughts, intolerable heats, home-wrecking sea levels. What’s worse, the frenzied human migration, entrenchment, and war that these crises spawn will only get worse. Mother Earth won’t be sparing in punishment — when the sea levels rise enough to flood out beach settlements in developed countries, you can bet “Middle America” is not going to take kindly to a bunch of coastal elites on their doorstep.
At its very simplest, climate change is going to force massive human migration. And we don’t tend to handle that shit very well. We need to strongly consider the way we use resources on a day to day basis when water becomes scarce. We’re going to be hot, agitated, and thirsty — and it’s going to make us violent.
It’ll be the best thing that ever happened to us.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and…
Mother earth is not going to die. These fits and tantrums are going to change things, rapidly, but it won’t end the world. Climate change kills species — many of them. But we are remarkably resilient, and the entire planet is not going to become so hostile to human life that we’re going to vanish into the night. We’ll adapt. A large (-ish?) portion of us will live. We climb hostile mountains for fun and live in a tube under the sea for 8 months out of the year. We can limp through worldwide climate chaos, even if just barely.
And the perks will be amazing! One — there won’t be nearly as many people. We might misplace a generation, like we do every few year. But it’d be cool if there were less people on the planet. Would you rather have 40 roommates or 4?
We need less people. Overpopulation needs to be addressed at some point in the future and there aren’t a lot of attractive ways to do it. This way no one has to go commit atrocities or say “… have we talked about eugenics?” Mother Earth will just slowly murder millions and millions of people until she gets us to tolerable levels — much like a New York pizza owner and their in-the-wall rat population.
It’s a teaching moment.
Plus we’ll be actually and acutely aware of our resource usage since, in all likelihood, we’ll have to travel down The Road to get supplies when they run out. No one is Instagramming their $15 dollar sustainable-organic-but-still-ocean-killing-because-it’s-seafood-from-fucking-Hawaii-you-idiot poke bowl when the discovery of fresh water feels like Black Friday on bath salts. The current economy incentivizes constant consumption — the future one will shame it.
But seriously, the only cities, countries, and societies that will flourish in the rapidly shifting world of climate change are those that use everything for anything. Thriftiness, a low-footprint, and re-usibility won’t be a fashion statement, it’ll be an economic necessity. Communities will have to work together, because we’ll finally realize how our actions actually impact our immediate environment. We won’t be able to avoid it.
Finally, though the rich might have an upper hand for the early innings, calamity has a way of flattening the economic playing field (as it flattens everything else). All the money in the world won’t save you when frack-driven faults rend the earth in two under your basement. And if the world is half-underwater, millions of homeless climate refugees (also — angry, hot, and thirsty), are going to need distractions beyond whatever the Mouldy Tangerine is currently Tweeting. Great catastrophes are never fun — but the climate shrug should kick off the worst of capitalism while it’s bucking the majority of us. After all — capitalism is one of the prime reasons we need a correction in the first place.
It won’t be all utopian frolicking through eco-friendly, community-driven, un-crowded streets. In all and somewhat terrifying likelihood, multi-national corporations will erode our borders as deeply as the rising and unconquerable ocean. They will be better equipped to deal with large scale, global issues, providing resources and goods, and not as prone to infighting as Congress. The climate-changed world needs entities that aren’t beholden to an arbitrary set of borders, because all of our current borders will be useless. Our Googles, Alibabas, and Apples will continue to survive, innovate, and run our lives.
There are issues in society that seem, right now, like they will never be fixed. Or, at least, there is no feasible (read: easy) solutions for growing overpopulation, low-efficiency/high-waste consumption, and extreme income inequality. Simply put, we’re not up to the task. We’re too afraid of the (admittedly) difficult choices — redistributing wealth, incentivizing lower birth rates, cutting off our addiction/crippling economic dependence on consumerism — to fix our bad habits ourselves.
General Mattis’s statement was nice, but it wasn’t about fighting global warming. It was about dealing with the inevitable consequences. He doesn’t trust our politicians (his boss included) to actually do anything, and I don’t either.
I do trust mother earth, though.
And, weirdly enough, I trust us. If not to stop the forthcoming crisis, at least to survive it. To innovate, kick, and scream. I’m not saying we give up — I’m saying we fight harder than ever to hold this thing back. Even if we’re not going to win. Even if people will lose their homes, chaos will spread, and land masses will shrink.
Even if it’s going to royally suck.
Global warming will save us all.
Nick Geisler, me, is a writer and multimedia artist. Check his/my other work, including my/his new wiki-novel, by clicking this shiny link.
