Al Gore stated that we face a choice regarding whether the earth’s ecological system will remain viable for our species. He cites the carbon that is frozen in the permafrost in the north. As the permafrost melts, carbon is added to the atmosphere, making it “difficult” for the human species to live. I am not a scientist so I have no means of knowing what the state of the research is on these matters. Nor am I particularly interested in debating it. In my view, if there is a chance that we could be effectively ending our our species, we ought not to be held back from acting in a prudent fashion even if it is “just in case.” I understand the economic costs, and that some are particularly attached to short-run costs (and less enamoured with long-term benefits). Still, that the debate itself would be allowed to stall even a “just in case” response reflects badly on our species. At a worse case, it could be something like two parents debating which of them will get their baby out of their burning house. Meanwhile, the baby burns. We would call that a dysfunctional family, would we not? Still, no such appellation goes to those involved in the continuing debate on climate change.
It strikes me that we as a society may be too innured in our own presumptuousness to even realize how badly we are handling such decisions. I can’t believe that the society is predominantly made up of the two, rather vocal, extremes on the matter. The extremes are presumptuous in their determination to continue the debate unless they get exactly what they want while the rest of us have been guilty of allowing them to dominate the decision-making process. Consider, for example, a reasonable person saying, “ok, we need to make a decision,” and one is made. The refusal to make compromises (whether an extreme in the US following a rigid ideological agenda or the Chinese government presuming that national sovereignty is absolute) is not only childish, it is rather arrogant concerning that the eventual demise of our species might hang in the balance. Even this “might” should be a wakeup call that posturing and debating evince a selfishness that the rest of us ought not to countenance. Yet we do. We are too passive, those of us without a dog in the fight. The truth is, we all have a dog in this fight. Are we to be survived by cockroaches? Wouldn’t it be fodder for a divine comedy were the antics of the cockroaches superior to the presumptuousness of humans? The species left standing is the one that wins.
I can visualize a later generation (of humans) looking back at our generation as incredibly selfish and incompetent even to reach a decision. “They knew what might hang in the balance, and yet they were so caught up in their own petty circumstances.” It is like we are captains on the Titanic debating which way to turn after it being reasonable to believe that there is an iceberg somewhere ahead. It could even be that we see the iceberg and still we debate. Such pettifoggery is mere dribble in the divine comedy that may well already be in Act III.
We are so small, even smaller than the cockroach, and yet we presume ourselves to be so big. We we to have the distance of perspective such that our immediate pathos would not blind us, how would we view our society…ourselves?
