Global warming: My perspective

Now that the silly season that is valentine has passed, I can safely move on to more down-to-earth things.

I was intrigued by a discussion on lowyat.net forum about the international debate on global warming. As with any worthwhile issue, there are 2 strongly opposing camps - countries that signed the Kyoto agreement and countries that didnt. One side says that humans are to blame for the warming while the other insists there is no proof to support that.

Okay, there is a 3rd school of thought - that the earth is being terraformed by aliens. Being a Trek fan myself this theory is my favourite but apparently it hasn't gained much of a following.

But regardless of whether man, mother nature or aliens are to blame, I do share the view that we are sliding down an irreversible path to climactic doom. The awakening of developing nations to the dangers of uncontrolled pollution, particularly China, comes too little too late as my recent trip to Guangzhou tells me. The US's lethargic response to its own CO2 emmissions is also very telling. Just how do you tell a red-blooded American that driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is a bad thing?

Quite frankly, even if everyone signed on Kyoto today, what difference would it make when the horse has bolted from the barn.

What does remain today are these facts.

- The arctic icecap is melting.
- Strange unseasonal weather patterns have beset the world.
- Storms and droughts are getting more intense.
- Deserts are expanding.
- Sea water levels are rising.
- Ocean temperatures are rising.

And that's not all. Other non-climatic events are also jumping into the fray.

- Noticeable increase in earthquakes and tsunamis.
- An environment struggling to cope with rapid population growth.
- The emergence of new fatal diseases like H5N1.
- The onset of "mass insanity" - world conflicts beckoning ppl to kill each other in large numbers.

So not only are we killing each other with our own industrial garbage and ideological differences, nature is kindly giving us a hand by throwing at us new incurable diseases, moving earth's crust around and cranking up the thermostat. With luck it might even throw in a couple of asteroid our way to make things merrier.

If I sound a little pessimistic, its due to the fact that out of 6.6 billion people on the planet, I estimate not even 1% has the capacity to understand much less do anything about global warming. Most don't have any choice but to go back to their air polluting vehicles, their strip-farmed land or consume products that disproportionately strip the planet of its resources. To convince the other 99% to take heed and actually do something will take a thousand years too many. We've started on the wrong foot. We've built entire civilizations on self-destructing habits like slash and burn farming and unbridled consumerism. If destroying and rebuilding cultures on a global scale is as easy as what Al Gore thinks, we would have it by now but we don't.

So am I being a little fatalistic in saying we're headed for a climactic armageddon? I don't think so. I believe only total rebirth and regeneration can save the planet. But to be reborn, the planet has to die first. All indications are that this is well under way.

Science is already predicting the arrival of a new ice age resulting from the melting of the polar ice cap. Great. Nature is defrosting the fridge before laying down some new ice, except this defrost cycle might last a million years. I'm not putting any hopes or money that man will survive it.

I've long shrugged off the world's petty bickering because of all this. All the opinions and beliefs, the rights and wrongs, none of it will change how our story ends. The way I see it, the most humane thing we can do today is to make sure the next generation can make their own exit as comfortably as possible. In fact, try not to have kids. Why have them and then leave them on a desert island. Even if you believe the situation is not as dire, deep down you know that the world is not likely to change in this lifetime or in your children's lifetime. What you can do is reduce future suffering by reducing the number of its recipients. The other thing is to consume less today so that there's a little more to go around tomorrow.

But who am I kidding. Isn't our greatest motto "its every man for himself?" Doesn't the attention span of the average human go only as far as his next meal, his next paycheck or his next shag? Will anyone listen if there's no bread on the table? On that score alone I'm convinced that as humans, we are pretty much screwed.