Dumb History of Climate Change
“It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!” - Donald Trump, Former President of United States
Our forests have been firing on all cylinders, plastics have completed their journey to the bottom of the ocean and Greenland is doing everything that it can to live up to its name and turn green. But humanity had always had a doubt in the back of their minds: Is climate change real? It took over a hundred years of scientific research to convince people that it is. While, today, we are finally convinced, we’re not quite sure whether we should pack our shorts or parkas.
The problem is, messing up the climate system is very much like gaining weight. We only notice it when we become excessively fat or we see some side effects like diabetes or wildfires. It’s so difficult to tell while we are living through the process. As Steve Jobs said, we can only connect the dots backward after we already messed everything up.
Humans have always suspected that they might have a hand in climate change but they never believed that they are capable of breaking a system that’s been in place for about 4.5 billion years. Only fairly recently did humanity set its modesty aside to acknowledge that they could be responsible for climate change when humans began tripping over their own carbon footprints.
Many years before humans, Polar Bears were one of the first species to express concern about climate change as glaciers began packing their bags for beach vacations. They knew summer was coming. Ever since Polar Bears have been preparing themselves by swapping their white fur coats for brown. It has always been a scientific mystery how polar bears got their white coat in the first place. We can now cross that mystery off our worries list thanks to climate change.
Looking back, making the climate change wasn’t easy. The roots of climate change can be traced all the way back to the end of the Stone Age. Yes, that ridiculous time in history when we ran out of stones. It was around that time that we began burning wood for fuel. Since then, we moved to coal and then to fossil fuels, all the while climbing up the energy density scale. We recently planned to move to uranium but we shelved that idea because we developed a rare talent to build bombs with it. Stunning that countries that struggle to build toilets for their citizens can now build nuclear bombs. Also, running a nuclear reactor requires too much due diligence. We barely remember to water our plants so I wouldn’t trust us one bit with it. So, we may have to bite the bullet and take a step backward in the energy scale and finally choose the sun or wind to run our cars and houses.
After decades of stellar interstellar exploration, NASA’s chief spokesman, Christopher Nolan, recently announced “This is it! This is all we have”. He added that planet Earth can support human life in the future if we get our shit together today. It’s easy for you to say, Nolan. We have a planet sized shit to clean but haven’t yet decided who gets to hold the broom.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” - Robert Swan, environmentalist and polar explorer.
Much of our fight against Climate Change is like George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones. We all know that the long summer is coming but nobody is willing to channel their inner Jon Snow. We have the developed countries, the Lannisters of this world, but these Lannisters do not want to pay their climate debts. And we have developing countries who like the Starks will be first to be affected by the changing climate but do not have necessary resources to march neither north nor south. And then we have the MNCs, who like the Iron Bank pretend like they’re not really involved in Climate Change and then the United Nations who pretend like they are involved. Finally, there is us: peasants of Kings landing who can’t even put the right trash in the right colored bins.
I know it’s not an excuse. But let’s be honest, we can’t even keep our own apartments clean. Cleaning the environment seems a bit of a stretch. We drank our smoothies with paper straws and took our cloth bags to supermarkets. Last year, California residents even took to the streets in their Teslas with plastic cups to buy coffee at Starbucks in a desperate bid to prevent their annual wildfires. Sadly, none of it was enough. At this point, I’m quite surprised that there are still any trees left in California.
In 1997, the world got together to write a strongly worded letter to themselves called Kyoto Protocol which forced the industrialized countries to make a pinky promise that they’ll reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. Two decades later, after spectacularly failing to meet their promises, came up with an even stronger set of promises. They passed another resolution in Paris to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees. But the problem with UN resolutions is that they are very much like new year resolutions, they go out of fashion a week after they’re made.
Recently, a 256-page report that was way too long to give it a read concluded that people talk a lot about climate change but do nothing about it. It further noted that most of that doing nothing is done by politicians. Global leaders reached an agreement to push ahead with their empty rhetoric on saving the planet. The UN Convention on Climate Change and Wishful Thinking claimed that if we close our eyes and believe hard enough, the climate can cool itself. They underscored their shared belief in saying things repeatedly and holding hands together as a solution to all human problems. So, every year, UNFCCC hosts press conferences in air-conditioned North Pole resorts to tell Santa Claus how good they’ve been this year.
After effectively labeling numerous studies linking MNCs with Climate Degradation as alternative facts, billionaire CEOs reiterated that as long as they control the narrative, companies can continue to focus on pressing topics like shareholder dividends and executive bonuses. They whispered sweet nothings about "green initiatives" and "carbon offsets" while secretly plotting to extract every last drop of oil from the far reaches of melting Arctic. They acknowledged that there is never a better time to make more money. While they were at it, they gaslighted common people that all of this would have been easily averted if common people had not forgotten to turn off the lights on the Earth Day.
When the polar bears first complained about global warming, we told them to put on less fur. Now the joke is on us. We finally realized that we live in the same climate system as the polar bears. I recognize that being oblivious to a global catastrophe is not an easy task, it takes tremendous amount of disillusionment. Recently, people in India braved record-breaking temperatures to cast their votes even as their political leaders avoided any mention of climate change. When questioned about this, the Indian Prime Minister reminded us that he’s never available for comment.
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words…How dare you!” - Greta Thunberg, environmental activist
I agree with the bullies of Greta Thunberg. We don’t need a new revolution. The earth will continue to revolve around the sun with or without us. We don’t need to save this planet. We only need to save ourselves because Elon Musk isn’t going to take all of us to Mars. I see the point of some of the detractors of Elon Musk’s plan to colonize Mars. Dust storms, check. Frozen food, bottled water, double check. Climate-controlled habitations, check. Red rocks and bald mountains as far as eyes can see - are you sure this is mars, this sounds a whole lot like Texas, only larger. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap back to where we started. Houston, we have a problem. Maybe, we are the problem.
The time to take action is now. Let’s visit those glaciers before they retreat into oblivion. Let’s take videos of great barrier reef before they are bleached out of all life. It feels like that’s about all that we can do now.
Here are “Five other places you should visit before they die”
- Miami, US: Climate models predict that, by 2050, everyone in Miami will be underwater except Dwane Johnson’s eyebrows
- Amsterdam, Netherlands: After 500 years of pumping water into the ocean, Atlantic Ocean just informed the dutch windmills that it doesn’t need anymore water
- Kolkata, India: Place your bets as mangroves fight a multi-front battle for survival against humans, ocean and all odds
- Maldives: 80 percent of their islands will be replaced by carnival cruise ships by 2050
- Dubai: well, floor is lava
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