I tweet every now and then. Never anything terribly important; just to draw attention to myself. Anyway, the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) announced a couple of weeks back that he was going to the Glasgow Climate Summit and as he was having some trouble convincing the Nationals to agree to whatever he had in mind about global warming. I made some crack about him probably having to type up Australia’s climate policy on the plane on the way over. LOL.
I got my Likes and my shot of dopamine and that, I thought, was that. A few days later though, when people who don’t watch Mad as Hell happen across my vaguely political tweets and assume I’m as serious about it all as they are, a comment appeared from someone with a lot of numbers after their name pointing out that China had thousands of coal-fired power plants and we only had twenty-four, the implication being that we shouldn’t bother doing anything by 2050 or at all because it wouldn’t make much difference anyway. In other words, make hay while the Sun shines regardless of how hot it’s going to get.
This was pretty much the Sky News Australia approach until Rupert’s recent epiphany. Alan Jones would pour rice on his desk and talk about the amount of carbon in the atmosphere (one man-made grain!) and Andrew Bolt would shake his head and wonder aloud why we would even consider abandoning fossil fuels and jeopardising our economic growth when global warming couldn’t be reversed anyway. Rowan and Rita and Peta and Chris may have said something along these lines too but there are only so many hours in a day to research my jokes, so I left it there. I got the general idea. Even if we were able to lift our weight, the whole thing was still going to be too heavy to carry so why be under it when it falls and crushes everybody. And, I have to admit, Alan and Andrew and @Mickbot374643 did have a point.
I’ve never been one to believe in the Primacy of Man. I’ve always thought we were an evolutionary dead-end (like a banana) and that one day some other animal or microbe or whatever would take over as apex predator and rule the earth. I’m obviously disappointed we didn’t last longer (the dinosaurs were much better at it than us) but I’m not surprised we’re heading for oblivion and can’t bring ourselves to pull off the road.
It’s in our nature to be selfish. We are, after all, nothing but biochemical machines bent on reproducing ourselves. Individually, we know we’re going to die one day, but we distract ourselves with our plans and projects or fool ourselves into thinking that there’s a place we go to after we cease functioning. Collectively though, we don’t have the will to do anything about it because our selfishness trumps all the stuff that’s going to happen to those left behind after we’re dead. Oh, we’ve slowed things down by changing how we apply deodorant and maybe bought ourselves a few more years, but all this talk of lowering emissions and even doing anything about it is just staving off the inevitable. Humanity is done for and we should use what time we have left to get our affairs in order. Be kind to each other, say all the things that have been left unsaid, hug those you love and make amends with those you don’t. Forgive, forget, have a Final Reckoning of sorts and give your life some meaning.
After we’re gone and all we ever created or built or dreamed of has crumbled and blown away, Life on Earth will go on for a few more million years with something else in charge (my money’s on Sir Walter Buffalo Grass). Eventually the Sun will snuff itself out and our bit of the galaxy will become cold and dead like the moon we seem so keen on re-conquering at the moment. The Universe will continue expanding and contracting and doing whatever it’s always done and one day some alien will land on our planet and take a core sample. Analysis will reveal traces of our self-destructive DNA and we’ll be cloned in a lab, improved, and eventually released in a theme park for the amusement of other lifeforms. If only the core sample they took had included a DVD of Jurassic Park to warn them what was about to happen.
