Today is Blog Action Day and its theme carries with it several layers of tragedy. The first of which is fatigue.
Because when I tell you the theme is climate change, you’ll probably roll your eyes. And that’s the problem with humans; me included. We like novelty – new problems to worry new neurons. But it’s the fact that this issue has become cultural wallpaper that is the problem. It’s wallpaper, because it’s a problem humanity has failed to make a dent in despite it being a pressing global matter for a VERY long time.
The below TED talk by David Keith references an article written in 1953(!) warning about the effects of industry on the climate.
The article – published in the New York Times fifty six years ago – can be found in this 2007 ppt presentation by Eshwar Sunderasan. It’s also below:
“The amount of carbon dioxide in the air will double by the year 2080 and raise the temperature an average of at least 4%. The burning of about two billion tons of coal and oil a year keeps the average ground temperature somewhat higher than it would otherwise be. If industrial growth extended over several thousand years instead of over a century only, the oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. Seas circulate so slowly that they have had little effect in reducing the amount of gas as man’s smoke-making abilities multiplied during a hundred years.
“All this and more came out in the course of a paper that Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of John Hopkins presented before the American Geophysical Union… thus man tends to make his climate warmer and drier; should there be a decrease in carbon dioxide, a cooler and wetter climate would result… All this reinforces a theory advanced in 1861 that decreases in carbon dioxide explain the growth and advance of glaciers at various intervals in the earth’s history.”
I’m not informed enough, nor smart enough to add intelligently to the debate about what to do about climate change, but I am well-poised to highlight our incredible ability to forget about this issue. I’ll probably forget again the minute I finish writing this.
The question is, what will happen if we forget for another 56 years?
