Extinction generation

The predicted consequences of greenhouse gas emissions are beginning to manifest themselves. Melting polar ice caps, permafrost and mountain glaciers, uncontrollable wildfires north and south, and drought or flooding everywhere are just a foretaste of things to come. Additional carbon dioxide that is not absorbed by oceans and plants stays in the atmosphere (45%). But its warming effect takes time. It occurs incrementally over two to three decades. This means that present temperatures and meteorological anomalies are the result of carbon dioxide emissions at the end of the last century, when the concentration was between 350ppm (1990) and 370ppm (2000). It has now passed 415ppm. So global warming has still a long way to go, even if emissions were to stop tomorrow. No one knows how hot it will get, as all this is unprecedented and most models so far have underestimated the speed of events. Extreme weather conditions seem to be taking everyone by surprise, though it should be clear by now that they are the beginning of a new normal.

The first widespread alarm was sounded almost fifty years ago. In 1972 a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology directed by Dennis Meadows published their conclusions in a small book titled “Limits to Growth”. Twenty years later they published “Beyond the Limits”, considering they had been passed. Other voices were raised. Even earlier, in the 1950s, Rachel Carson had led a brave campaign against DDT. In England, E.F. Schumacher published “Small is Beautiful” (1973), and in France, René Dumont went as far as being a presidential candidate in 1974 to get some media coverage. Meanwhile countless others were experimenting ways of living in better harmony with nature. But the whole movement was perceived as retrograde in a post-modern urban world. And servile governments and media echoed the capitalist creed of infinite growth. There was also the endless debate and disinformation over global warming. Was it occurring and was it the consequence of man-made greenhouse gas emissions? The result was more pollution, more carbon dioxide and more disappearing species. At present the process has gone so far that there is no going back. Just as the global pandemic is here to stay, so it is with environmental pollution. The ground, rivers and oceans are full of toxic chemical compounds, heavy metals and plastic waste. All will persist for ages. The air is full of micro-particles of soot, nitrogen oxides, methane and the ubiquitous carbon dioxide. The first three are fairly short lived, and would soon disappear if they were not renewed. The carbon dioxide, however, is there for centuries and will keep the planet hot for a long time. Today’s children will grow up in a slowly dying world swept by growing human ferocity. Born into an obese system they will experience its pathological deterioration, and a great slimming down that could bring extinction. They will be the last generation to remember what things were like before it all went wrong.