''People Get What They Deserve: --- Climate Change and the End of Humankind
on Planet Earth''
[I wrote this oped on my blog in late 2006 before I had started the POLAR CITIES PR camaign that led to the later Cli-Fi PR campaign and here we are now in 2017.]
[WRITTEN IN LONGHAND AFTER READING THE DAMNING IPCC REPORT THAT YEAR]
by Dan Bloom in 2006
The end of humankind's time on Earth is coming to an end, and I
welcome it. I can't believe I wrote that, but I did.
Let me explain
why I feel this way. God knows, we've messed things up real bad, here
on Planet Earth, and now it's time to pay the piper. Oh, it's not
going to end in a nuclear armageddon, no. And it's not going to end
because of the so-called "Clash of Civilizations" going on now with
our friends the terrorists. No, the end is coming because of climate
change, and it's too late to do anything about it now. Way too late.
Our fate is sealed. I should be in despair but I am not. I think we
are getting what we deserve. We did our best, as a human species, but
our best was not very good. We blew it.
Climate change, according to the Stern Report, has already pretty much
made it impossible -- read that word again: "impossible" -- to tackle
global warming. We are done for.
We are about to be fried, frozen, fingered. Put that in your computer
file. As a species, are are done for. Period. And while I don't
despair over this, neither am I gloating, no. We are headed for
extinction, and you know something, we deserve it. We sealed our own
fate by our foolish, greedy, convenience-addicted actions.
Maybe it was in our genes from the very beginning, this coming demise.
Maybe all this was meant to be, not some non-existant god or Creator
Being, but by the fickle hands of fate itself. If there really was a
God, we wouldn't be in this predicament. Think about it. We did this
all by ourselves.
There's no use crying over spilled milk. We're done for.
Oh, it won't happen soon, not in this lifetime, not in my lifetime or
yourtime. Give us 15 or 20 more human generations, 30 at most, and
then it's curtains. The Earth will be fried. The is already cast, it's
in the cards. There's no going back. Sigh.
As human carbon emissions continue to grow and grow, the rate of
climate change will accelerate and we will experience it sooner than
you can imagine. You think life is forever. It is not. Human life is
about to be deleted from the surface of Planet Earth. I give it about
500 years. Stretch it to 1000 years if you wish, and that's okay with
me. This is not an exact science. But it is science. We are done for.
The simple fact, the truth, is that we are headed for the exit ramp.
Our rise as a species on Earth in a long, long history of cosmic time
and Darwinian evolution has been capped. And we did it to ourselves.
Us. You and me.
Cars. Airplanes. Factories. Coal plants. Massive industrialization.
Oil. Technology. Convenience. Greed. We couldn't stop. Our DNA, our
intelligence, did us in.
It's over. By the year 2500 -- okay, the year 3000 at the latest --
we're history. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Not one bit. The
cosmos does not care one iota. We came, we saw, we're leaving.
why I feel this way. God knows, we've messed things up real bad, here
on Planet Earth, and now it's time to pay the piper. Oh, it's not
going to end in a nuclear armageddon, no. And it's not going to end
because of the so-called "Clash of Civilizations" going on now with
our friends the terrorists. No, the end is coming because of climate
change, and it's too late to do anything about it now. Way too late.
Our fate is sealed. I should be in despair but I am not. I think we
are getting what we deserve. We did our best, as a human species, but
our best was not very good. We blew it.
Climate change, according to the Stern Report, has already pretty much
made it impossible -- read that word again: "impossible" -- to tackle
global warming. We are done for.
We are about to be fried, frozen, fingered. Put that in your computer
file. As a species, are are done for. Period. And while I don't
despair over this, neither am I gloating, no. We are headed for
extinction, and you know something, we deserve it. We sealed our own
fate by our foolish, greedy, convenience-addicted actions.
Maybe it was in our genes from the very beginning, this coming demise.
Maybe all this was meant to be, not some non-existant god or Creator
Being, but by the fickle hands of fate itself. If there really was a
God, we wouldn't be in this predicament. Think about it. We did this
all by ourselves.
There's no use crying over spilled milk. We're done for.
Oh, it won't happen soon, not in this lifetime, not in my lifetime or
yourtime. Give us 15 or 20 more human generations, 30 at most, and
then it's curtains. The Earth will be fried. The is already cast, it's
in the cards. There's no going back. Sigh.
As human carbon emissions continue to grow and grow, the rate of
climate change will accelerate and we will experience it sooner than
you can imagine. You think life is forever. It is not. Human life is
about to be deleted from the surface of Planet Earth. I give it about
500 years. Stretch it to 1000 years if you wish, and that's okay with
me. This is not an exact science. But it is science. We are done for.
The simple fact, the truth, is that we are headed for the exit ramp.
Our rise as a species on Earth in a long, long history of cosmic time
and Darwinian evolution has been capped. And we did it to ourselves.
Us. You and me.
Cars. Airplanes. Factories. Coal plants. Massive industrialization.
Oil. Technology. Convenience. Greed. We couldn't stop. Our DNA, our
intelligence, did us in.
It's over. By the year 2500 -- okay, the year 3000 at the latest --
we're history. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Not one bit. The
cosmos does not care one iota. We came, we saw, we're leaving.
achieve? Miracles, yes, and then some. But these miracles have done us
in. Climate change cannot be unchanged. The course has been set.
There's no turning back.
Let me put it this way: the Earth's experiment with the human species
and most of the planet and animal species that evolved even before us
is coming to an end. And we humans did it. We pulled the levers, we
pushed the buttons, we pulled the trigger. We burned too much coal, we
guzzled too much gasoline, we used too much oil, we made too many
factories to make our toys and vehicles, too many motorscooters, too
many cars, too many smokestacks, too many people. We just didn't know
how to rein things in. And not it's too late.
Well, 500 years is a long time to plan for the end. Start planning.
I'm glad I lived in the last half of the 20th century and the first
part of the 21st century. It's been a wonderful life, a wonderful
ride, and I learned alot.
But even I, a common man with no PHD or expertise in anything, even I
can tell you it's over. You don't have to read the fine print, either.
The message is in plain English for anyone to read: increased
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have sealed our
fate. And I mean SEALED. By 2500 -- okay, 3000, if you want to stretch
it -- we will be goners.
The Earth will remain, of course, good old Earth, our temporary home
amidst the stars. But we, the human species, will soon be gone. And
there is not one single thing anyone can do about it. This is the sad,
bare, bald, truth
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