Never Too Late

I recently read that some experts think that it is too late for us to alter climate change: we’ve done too little too late.

It is never too late. At least, it is never too late to change our thinking, to come to a realization of the fragility of the world around us. An abundance of knowledge coupled with limited wisdom and the propensity of our species for belly button gazing and escalating hopelessness simply feeds more despair. Our way of thinking can cripple us.

In the early days of the American Revolution, the odds against its success were overwhelming, and yet a new nation, one based on democratic principles, was born and has inspired positive change everywhere for the past 250 years despite all the obstacles.

We now number nearly seven billion on this small planet. We, as a species, differ from the other species we share this little dot in the universe with in that we have awareness of our mortality, and never have we been more aware of the possible extinction of our species as we are at this time. We have changed this earth beyond recognition and depleted its resources with alarming and ever-accelerating speed. This realization compels us to ask what we, as a species and as individuals, can do to sustain the delicate balance and reverse the devastating consequences of our own actions.

Only three years ago Al Gore’s seminal film, An Inconvenient Truth, brought international attention to the perils of climate change. As Congress debates today the form of legislation to address this problem, the situation is growing worse minute-by-minute. Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, increasing carbon emissions are the indisputable results of what we perceive to be minor changes in human lifestyle while population, and its inevitable needs and wants, continues to grow.

At the present time, we breathe more carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases than we have in the last four hundred thousand years. Fifty years from now, babies born today will have to subsist on air containing more greenhouse gases that at any time in the past three million years.

Global warming has altered the very chemistry of our oceans. The drop in ocean pH levels in the last fifty years may well exceed anything that has occurred during the previous 50 million years. Currently, nearly a third of the ocean’s corals and amphibian species, along with a quarter of all mammals, and an eighth of all bird species are threatened with extinction. And that is without counting the millions of species that are already extinct: it is impossible to quantify the disappearance of life forms already lost to collapsing ecosystems.

Not only has our population more than doubled in the last fifty years, but also our global economy has doubled every 10 years for the past few years. Between 2003 and 2007, average income worldwide grew at a faster rate than ever recorded in history. Our global economy has grown from $31 trillion in 1999 to $62 trillion in 2008. All you have to do is look at our run-away use of coal and oil—natural resources that required millions of years to form—supplies in the last century to get an idea of the rapidity with which we are killing our planet.

We are barely recovering from a worldwide financial meltdown caused by unbridled human greed. This economic disaster is distracting us from the ominous ecological disaster before us. The shallowness and lack of public debate and dialogue with regard to cap and trade vs. carbon emissions taxation clearly illustrates the general disregard for these fundamental, and infinitely more critical, issues.

In addition to the current economic worries, Americans are faced with a broken healthcare system. This too is an issue of enormous societal implications that diverts our attention from any debate or actions concerning climate change even though, ironically, our health is directly related to our environment.

Yes we live in very complex, stressful and desperate times. Nevertheless, each of us does have a choice as to how we deal with these challenges. A feeble ray of hope perhaps: people of all walks of life everywhere around the world are awakening to our interconnectivity to one another and to every aspect of life on this planet—a fine thread to which our very survival is attached.

It seems at times that our species should be called “bozo sapiens” to reflect our monumental egocentricity and ability to delude ourselves. We are truly on the edge of a precipice. Can we make the right choices? Can we act responsibly and with respect for all? Can we ensure a world for future generations? Or will we doggedly continue to self-destruct? This is our greatest challenge, and each of us must unblinkingly face it with purpose as well as with humility.

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