Thinking the unthinkable!

As a Green there are a whole range of things that are taken as read, in fact to many to list here, but one of them is climate change and carbon dioxide production. The general Green attitude to this is that it is a bad thing and we must stop, as far as possible, the generation of CO2 . But why? The answer given is that as the CO2 in the atmosphere goes up it forms a kind of blanket that keeps the heat in and so the world heats up and melts the glaciers and makes deserts grow and will kill life on Earth. Absolute rubbish of course but with snippets of the truth woven in. Global warming and/or climate change will not kill life on Earth. Life is a very robust mechanism which can survive from the cold of the Antarctic (-40°C) to the heat of volcanic water pools (+70°C) so it doesn't matter how hot or cold the weather get life will survive, it is just us, humans, and a few other animals, birds and plants who will be killed off. Life will go on and evolution and chaos will take an unsuspecting species of something and give it its turn in the sun.

So here is an idea. Let's use up all the fossil fuels that are on the Earth up as quickly as we can. Bring back gas-guzzlers, coal fired power stations, anything that will destroy fossil fuels because once it has gone it is going to take a very long time (55,000,000 years approximately) to come back. The result of this would be to increase the CO2 in our atmosphere by vast amounts, which will increase global weather instability (it might get hotter or it might get colder we don't really know which.) Many species of plant will thrive in the extra CO2 rich atmosphere, a number of animals will die out but not all of them. As to humans I think that we have evolved into a resourceful species and we will survive as a species. That is not to say that the societies we know today will survive. In fact you can be pretty sure that they wont. We may finish up with a "Green and Pleasant Utopia" where we have learnt out lesson and now live in harmony, but it may not be and I will leave it up to your own imagination as to what human society will be like.

Do I want to live in a future world where the Greenhouse effect has wreaked its havoc on the present ecology of the planet? NO, not really, but then I won't have to. At my age I have only a couple of decades left before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I do not want to leave a legacy to the ones who are coming after me of some of the unthinkable scenarios that slosh around in my imagination. I believe in Humans. I believe that in the past they have done astonishing thing. It is why, when I hear people saying that places such as Stone Henge were built by aliens, I take it as an insult. People like you and me built these monuments using the strength of their muscles and their mind to alter their environments. Climate instability is a product of natural cycles along with human endeavors working in a synergic way to make our world go in a certain direction. I believe that we Humans have the ability to change that direction into something glorious. It won't be easy, epically for us and the next two generations. We will have to make great sacrifices and stop doing some things that give us great pleasure like flying off to Spain at the drop of a hat, but it can be done. We Humans stand on the brink and we could go either way, so we must think the unthinkable and go in the right direction.