We live in a greenhouse, and the temperature inside is rising steadily. Who cares?
The greenhouse effect, as you probably know, occurs when atmospheric concentrations of certain gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) trap the sun’s heat and warm the Earth's surface like an invisible blanket. Greenhouse gas emissions on our planet have increased dramatically since the onset of the carbon-industrial revolution, and as these gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, they cause our climate to change, often in ways that are painful and destructive of people and other living things.
Climate change is governed by laws of nature that no human legislature, not even the Texas legislature and its corporate contributors, can repeal. Laws of nature aren't persons. They're physical forces or processes. As such, they don’t have human feelings. They don't care because they can’t care. Like business corporations (legal 'persons' in name only) or market mechanisms, they are profoundly impersonal and incapable of concern for anything at all, including us.
Let’s be more specific about some of the things that laws of nature don't care about.
1. Laws of nature don't care whether we know of their existence, or whether we live in harmony with them.
2. Laws of nature don't care about the prosperity of any nation, state, region, city, small community or family, even yours or mine.
3. Laws of nature don't care whether capitalism, socialism, some hybrid of the two, or any other economic system succeeds. Nature’s economy trumps all human economies.
4. Laws of nature don't care whether democracy, oligarchy, or any other political system succeeds, or even survives.
5. Laws of nature don't know what religion or ethics are. Therefore they don’t care whether we perceive climate change as the spiritual and moral challenge it is, or whether our arthritic, sclerotic religious institutions are capable of launching a nimble and concerted response to climate change on behalf of superordinate goals or a common good. Laws of nature don't care how mature we are.
6. Laws of nature don't care who wins the World Cup, the Olympics, the Superbowl, the World Series, the next war, or any other tribal contest.
7. Laws of nature don't care about the lives and careers of billionaires, power brokers or celebrities, let alone ordinary earthlings.
8. Laws of nature don't care whether the human species hastens the extinction of millions of other species, or whether it eventually extinguishes itself.
9. Laws of nature don't care whether we like them or not. They don't care about our feelings. They're not courting our approval. 10. Therefore, laws of nature don't care whether thinking about global warming makes us personally uncomfortable. Nor does the greenhouse they create care whether it makes us happy or sad. It doesn’t know we exist, so it quite literally couldn’t care less.
In view of nature’s indifference to us, an obvious question, then, is this. If climate change doesn’t care about us, why should we care about climate change?
And if we reply, “for the sake of posterity,” we face the question provokingly posed by 20th-century economist Robert Heilbroner. What has posterity ever done for us?
How we answer these two questions may tell us more than we want to know about the sustainablilty of our deeply flawed species aboard this tiny pebble of a planet.
Yet perhaps some of our answers to these questions will surprise us with their wisdom and insight. Let's hope so for the sake of the future us.
-- originally posted in Danagram
The greenhouse effect, as you probably know, occurs when atmospheric concentrations of certain gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) trap the sun’s heat and warm the Earth's surface like an invisible blanket. Greenhouse gas emissions on our planet have increased dramatically since the onset of the carbon-industrial revolution, and as these gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, they cause our climate to change, often in ways that are painful and destructive of people and other living things.
Climate change is governed by laws of nature that no human legislature, not even the Texas legislature and its corporate contributors, can repeal. Laws of nature aren't persons. They're physical forces or processes. As such, they don’t have human feelings. They don't care because they can’t care. Like business corporations (legal 'persons' in name only) or market mechanisms, they are profoundly impersonal and incapable of concern for anything at all, including us.
Let’s be more specific about some of the things that laws of nature don't care about.
1. Laws of nature don't care whether we know of their existence, or whether we live in harmony with them.
2. Laws of nature don't care about the prosperity of any nation, state, region, city, small community or family, even yours or mine.
3. Laws of nature don't care whether capitalism, socialism, some hybrid of the two, or any other economic system succeeds. Nature’s economy trumps all human economies.
4. Laws of nature don't care whether democracy, oligarchy, or any other political system succeeds, or even survives.
5. Laws of nature don't know what religion or ethics are. Therefore they don’t care whether we perceive climate change as the spiritual and moral challenge it is, or whether our arthritic, sclerotic religious institutions are capable of launching a nimble and concerted response to climate change on behalf of superordinate goals or a common good. Laws of nature don't care how mature we are.
6. Laws of nature don't care who wins the World Cup, the Olympics, the Superbowl, the World Series, the next war, or any other tribal contest.
7. Laws of nature don't care about the lives and careers of billionaires, power brokers or celebrities, let alone ordinary earthlings.
8. Laws of nature don't care whether the human species hastens the extinction of millions of other species, or whether it eventually extinguishes itself.
9. Laws of nature don't care whether we like them or not. They don't care about our feelings. They're not courting our approval. 10. Therefore, laws of nature don't care whether thinking about global warming makes us personally uncomfortable. Nor does the greenhouse they create care whether it makes us happy or sad. It doesn’t know we exist, so it quite literally couldn’t care less.
In view of nature’s indifference to us, an obvious question, then, is this. If climate change doesn’t care about us, why should we care about climate change?
And if we reply, “for the sake of posterity,” we face the question provokingly posed by 20th-century economist Robert Heilbroner. What has posterity ever done for us?
How we answer these two questions may tell us more than we want to know about the sustainablilty of our deeply flawed species aboard this tiny pebble of a planet.
Yet perhaps some of our answers to these questions will surprise us with their wisdom and insight. Let's hope so for the sake of the future us.
-- originally posted in Danagram
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