Okay, I know the ice caps are melting. But after putting up with the 8 foot high snowdrifts and the endless Winter of 2008, I expected to be rewarded with at least a bit of global warming. All the buzz in various emergency services blogs, mags, ezines and conferences was about the impending heat wave that would kill off the aged, the infirm and those of us without central air. So I bought a pool, a beer fridge and a second pair of swim trunks. I may as well have bought a space suit. Actually, the space suit would have been more useful, especially during the torrential rains of the “Summer” of ‘08.
The tragic part, if you are an Al Gore disciple, is that this year is going to put a bit of an amber light on the race to get green. Suddenly the Alberta tar sands, carbon sequestration and cheap oil are looking pretty good. And my coal mine stocks aren’t doing too bad either.
So I’m guessing that for a big change to occur, and I mean B-I-G, in consumer habits, we’re going to need something on a somewhat larger scale. Vancouver falling into the sea, for example …OK, stop cheering you Torontonians. (Americans, please substitute LA for Vancouver and New York for Toronto). Or Amsterdam under 10 fathoms of sea water. My point is that until something dramatic happens, elected politicians will almost never make the hard decisions that need to be made to save the planet. I think this has to do with both the democratic systems of government and human nature. We can’t blame them…after all, the goal of any organism is, primarily, to survive and introducing a punitive tax on lifestyle is not conducive to survival.
The solution? No simple one, I’m afraid…Chaos will rule. Something, somewhere, sometime, will force us to act. Hopefully, it won’t be too late. Hopefully, it won’t be in my lifetime.