What does the future hold for us?
Date: 11.11.15
There is something I believe we should all be aware of.
This year the world is about to crash through the one degree of warming threshold. Consensus is that we need to limit warming to two degrees. To achieve a 50% chance to do this will mean drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
What happens if we don't? Natural feed-back mechanisms start kicking in, such as the reduction of Arctic ice allowing more solar radiation to reach the seas, methane leaking from thawing permafrost across Siberia and Northern Canada, wild fires spreading unchecked through heavily forested regions, methane hydrates thawing from the frozen ocean depths, etc. It's termed run-away climate change and it's a bit like humans have started the car, put it in gear, left a brick on the accelerator and jumped into the back seat.
Unfortunately some of these natural feed-backs have already started ahead of schedule. Combined with the historical emissions accumulating in the atmosphere and the heat accumulating in the oceans, we may already be passengers.
So putting optimism to one side for a moment, what are the likely consequences of run-away climate change?
The warmer it gets, the more feed-backs kick in. 2 degrees leads to 3, 3 degrees leads to 4 until we are in a nightmare world of 6 degrees. Large areas of the world are uninhabitable, food production has sharply declined, ecological collapse, rising sea levels have altered the way the world looks, millions of people are hungry and homeless, storms rage with unimaginable ferocity. Law and order would collapse along with industrial civilisation.
But let's bring optimism back into the room shall we? This will take many years to come about, probably more than 100, so we're okay then, so long as we can put our conscience in the corner of the room and tell it be quiet. And there is still the possibility that fast and drastic cuts to GHG emissions can stop this slide to inferno.
However there is another problem.
Typically past civilisations have broken down due to wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few whilst resources for the rest have dwindled. Currently industrial nations are living beyond the planets' capacity to renew it's resources by many fold and the top 1% has almost as much wealth as the other 99% put together. Combined with the effects climate change is already having on poorer countries and the ludicrous situation some countries (like the UK) are in financially, it all looks pretty unsustainable. In fact I would say by 2050, the system will have broken down, what fills it's place is where we go next.
Now the top wealthiest 1% have some bright people working for them, and they can see what is happening. To maintain their position they will have to do something to prevent the collapse of civilisation. They will have to maintain some semblance of law and order. How can this be done?
Well I may have been watching too much science-fiction lately but the obvious way for a powerful elite is maintain order is to seize complete authority and install totalitarian rule.
Take a closer look at the world around you, the political landscape, Trans Pacific/Atlantic trade deals, the hyped-up threat of terrorisim. The balance of power is shifting away from the state and over to the corporations.
Forearmed with this knowledge, we have a choice.
Do we:
a) continue business as usual and allow the process to unfold, delegating our survival and freedom to the elite rulers.
b) tighten our grip on democracy and cut our GHG emissions by at least 80% within 10 years. This means the whole world going mostly vegetarian, reducing birthrates, generating all the electricity from renewables, transport going electric or something CO2 free and only using gas to provide limited heat.
One of these options is far more likely and it's not the nice one.