The phrase ‘Global Warming’ leaves some of us weary after hearing it for
what seems like decades.  No catastrophes have occurred yet, so we wonder if
the skeptics might be right?  On the other hand, we’re just beginning to
learn how interconnected, yet fragile, our earth’s environment actually is,
that forests are shrinking and deserts growing much faster than forecast.

‘Global Warming’ is a misnomer.  The problem is more than ‘warming’, and the
problem is worse than we knew and growing, especially in the poor world.
Over-grazing and over-planting, soil depletion and erosion, falling water
tables, shrinking forests, desiccating grasslands, expanding deserts,
recurring droughts, deteriorating water stocks – ocean and inland, and
globally worsening air pollution.  Why are these worse now?   Two principal
reasons:

1. Increased industrial production and consumption by more rich and ‘newly
wealthy’ consumers are depleting resources faster while overloading the
planet’s capacity to absorb the massive increases of pollution.

2. Human populations of many poor countries doubled over the last few
decades, especially in environmentally fragile regions.  Many areas are
losing their capacity to support life.

The problem is better understood as uncontrolled ecological degradation in
which the world’s oceans, forests and air lose their capacity to sustain
life.  When?  Sooner than we think?  A decade or two?  Next century?  Will
our economies collapse first?  What will that look like?

Energy is the key ingredient in these intertwined problems that entangle
each of us.  That’s right, every human on the planet is inescapably
affected: our livelihoods, even our very existence is threatened regardless
if we are a poor world villager or a rich world commuter.  The crisis is
global: rich countries can’t stay rich, and poor ones won’t advance out of
Neolithic poverty, until we begin making cheap, abundant, renewable, clean
energy.  And do it everywhere.

A dark-age beckons: over-complexity and continuing marginal decline
collapsed Rome and the Mayas.  Do we face a similar end of civilization?  Of
life?  Or might technological innovations stem the decline and reverse it?
Can we invigorate the rich world but ignore the poor one?  If we do, the
number of poor refugees on rich world doorsteps will keep swelling; that is,
the fortunate ones who get that far before their local biospheres collapse.

We know in our hearts that we are stewards, that our children and
grandchildren will inherit only what we leave them – prosperity or calamity,
that we are ultimately responsible.  Only humans can affect the planet’s
destiny, and their own, for good or for ill, forever.  Those are the stakes;
it’s for us to decide whether humanity and life on earth continues or not.
What are you going to do?

© Copyright Christopher W. Johnson, 27 February 2009