Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of
Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of
Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of
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156 S far<strong>the</strong>r horizons<br />
ameliorate <strong>the</strong> deep fi ssures that divide people. Some <strong>climate</strong><br />
change is irrevocable, water stress will persist in many places,<br />
extinct species will not return, and lives will be lost <strong>to</strong> deprivation.<br />
(Raskin et al., 2002, pp. 94–95)<br />
Considerably less optimistic, Thomas Berry concludes that “It<br />
is already determined that our children and grandchildren will<br />
live amid <strong>the</strong> ruined infrastructures <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> industrial world and<br />
amid <strong>the</strong> ruins <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> natural world itself” (2006, p. 95). James<br />
Lovelock’s view is even darker: “<strong>the</strong> acceleration <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>climate</strong><br />
change now under way will sweep away <strong>the</strong> comfortable environment<br />
<strong>to</strong> which we are adapted . . . . [There is evidence <strong>of</strong> ] an<br />
imminent shift in our <strong>climate</strong> <strong>to</strong>wards one that could easily be<br />
described as Hell” (2006, pp. 7, 147; The Vanishing Face <strong>of</strong> Gaia,<br />
2009). Given such dire predictions, <strong>the</strong>ologian Jack Miles, author<br />
<strong>of</strong> A His<strong>to</strong>ry <strong>of</strong> God (2000), suggests that we begin <strong>to</strong> ponder <strong>the</strong><br />
possibility that “<strong>the</strong> effort <strong>to</strong> produce a sustainable society has<br />
defi nitively failed . . . that we are irreversibly en route <strong>to</strong> extinction.”<br />
Alan Weisman, in a striking exercise <strong>of</strong> journalistic imagination,<br />
describes in The World Without Us how our infrastructure<br />
would <strong>the</strong>n crumble, <strong>collapse</strong>, and fi nally disappear (2007). These<br />
are only a few <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> recent musings about <strong>the</strong> human prospect.<br />
But we’ve been alerted, warned, and warned again by ecologists,<br />
geologists, systems analysts, physicists, sociologists, political scientists,<br />
biologists, National Book Award winners, Pulitzer Prize<br />
winners, Nobel laureates, teams <strong>of</strong> international scientists, and <strong>the</strong><br />
wisest among us, but so far without much effect.<br />
Might we still avert catastrophe? Facing <strong>the</strong> realities <strong>of</strong> ecological<br />
decline, <strong>the</strong> end <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> era <strong>of</strong> cheap fossil fuels, and <strong>the</strong><br />
destabilization <strong>of</strong> <strong>climate</strong>, it is not easy <strong>to</strong> fi nd solid ground for<br />
hope in a sea <strong>of</strong> wishful thinking, evasion, and half measures.<br />
I believe that <strong>the</strong>re are grounds for genuine hope, but since we<br />
have frittered away our margin <strong>of</strong> safety, <strong>the</strong>y are a century or<br />
more ahead in an unknown future when we have stabilized <strong>the</strong>