Accelerating Damages

            Congratulations, readers! You have successfully survived several weeks of 100+F degree days. Keep up the good work, stay hydrated, and don’t die.

            I’ve been grappling with the enormity of the climate catastrophe for more than a decade. It is abundantly clear that warming is accelerating even more quickly than previous climate models predicted: western Europe is (at the time of this article’s writing) enduring a sweltering 40 degree Celsius heat wave, something that wasn’t predicted to occur until 2050 (https://www.axios.com/2022/07/19/europe-heat-wave-climate-change-uk-france), and winter storms in the southern hemisphere are now reaching intensities not anticipated until 2080 (https://phys.org/news/2022-05-reveals-climate-rapid.html).

The exponential increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide combined with the forcings of positive feedback loops in the climate system are ramping up changes that Earth won’t be able to self-correct for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s troubling realizing we have even less time than we thought, less time than we need to actually implement solutions. We should be slamming on the brakes and yet we haven’t even taken our foot off the accelerator. Carbon emissions are as high as they’ve ever been, with little sign of true progress toward deep cuts.

            On June 10th, a British tourist just happened to capture on video the collapse of a glacier in the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan, a place that has been consistently glaciated for MILLIONS of years. The ice-like slush roars across the vast boulder-strewn field between the man and glacier in under a minute, and he ducks behind a rock to shelter from the river washing over him at the very last second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP82dujKfWA. Eleven people were killed in Italy July 6th as the direct result of Marmolada glacier collapsing above a popular hiking trail (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/all-11-victims-italian-glacier-collapse-identified-authorities-say-2022-07-09/). These folks are sad symbols of a planetary problem that will claim life slowly through famine, drought, and disease, as well as quickly during intense, punctuated natural disasters.

            It’s exhausting contemplating the full extent of our grim fate, made worse witnessing the abject refusal of Republican leaders and Joe “Coal-Sucker” Manchin to support and enact desperately needed mitigations.

            This never-ending stream of climate crises has noticeably soured the tone of my writing. For many years I maintained staunch optimism that technology would save us, preserve life, and help us adapt to the heat. Indeed, I feel hope spark in my heart every time I see folks walking, riding scooters, mopeds, and bicycles. But what happens when the air temperature is so hot that we cannot safely operate our machines? Our cars and air conditions, water pumps and medical devices? Have you ever seen the temperature warning pop up on an iPhone? It reads: “Temperature. iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it.” I saw that message for the first time last June during the heat dome.

Just as humans have their heat limit, so do the pieces of technology upon which we depend to cool, transport, and care for ourselves. We will perhaps need to build cool retreats underground, to take refuge during the scorching days. As much as I don’t want to go back to the “Dark Ages” where we subsist on grains and work at night by candlelight, we are fast approaching the limitations of technological adaptation. Icarus falling from the sky, wings literally melted. By refusing to make sacrifices now, we are ensuring a drastically lower standard of living for everyone to come in perpetuity. I vacillate between deep sadness during the dark winter and flaming rage during the searing summer.

            I’ve taken to adopting a zoomed-out 100-million year view to cope with the sorrow and anger. The word “Anthropocene” has been bantered around, suggesting this moment in history is worthy of its own named epoch. However, Peter Brannen argues quite eloquently that this current warming is more akin to an event, a brief carbon-induced fever that will result in a mass extinction event indistinguishable from all other such extinctions: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/. Cheery, huh?

            Obla-dee, obla-dah life goes on, I suppose. Earth will cool off long after human civilization has collapsed and any evidence we were ever here has been thoroughly erased. At least I lived in the same time frame as two of the surviving Beatles.