Collective Trauma: The Fallout 19

We have been going through heatwave after heatwave this summer. It never seems to let up except for a few short blessed days of relative cool and then the furnace gets stoked again. Our summers never used to be this hot. And it does help to remember that the climate here on the loopy West Coast has always been mild. Until recently. It isn't that we are suddenly facing climate Armageddon and we're about to burn into a dead black cinder hurtling through the cosmos. It never is anything so dramatic. Not with a bang, but a whimper. Our part of the world is still very livable and it is not uncommon for average temperatures of thirty or higher to happen in the summertime (and in the tropics, year round) all over the earth. But here, in privileged Vancouver and outlying regions, you say? And I say, why not? We have gotten off scot-free all these years and now it is our turn to suffer and endure hot sleepless nights drenching our beds with sweat, and only for the sheer effort of trying to lie still long enough for a decent, hot night's sleep. Of course we are to blame for this. Our governments, anyway, and the energy industries of petroleum and coal and other environment bombs. Our prime minister really blew it when he pushed for the twinning of the badly deteriorated Kinder Morgan Pipeline, and that so many Canadians are on board with his hare-brained decision is nothing but at least troubling. And now it looks like the price tag to the taxpayers, since the public buyout was approved, could more than double to over ten billion dollars. That's a lot of low cost housing for the homeless and working poor and public health care gone up in carbon spewing smoke! How did it get this way? Well, we have always been at odds with the environment, ever since our ancestors decided to live in hostile climates. We are not a temperate, nor arctic species, Gentle Reader. We have no protective coats or layers of fur or blubber that'll keep us warm in winter. Northern Eurasia, North America and southern Patagonia, all became chilly default options because we could not compete for resources with other groups of hominids in the warmer, more hospitable regions. No one was willing to share the bounty they were already enjoying. Visiting bands were seen as a hostile threat and were either forced out or killed and (sometimes) eaten by the local NIMBYs. Or the invaders would simply kill off the locals and eat them and take over the joint. But no one wanted to share. They didn't know the words to Kumbaya. No one could even hum the first couple of bars. So our ancestors packed their selfish rapacious asses north, where the only competitors, in Europe anyway, were the Neanderthals, and no one knows really what happened to them, though most of us, except Africans, all carry in our genes a little bit of Neanderthal DNA. So we basically took control of regions not suited for humans and we wanted to stay warm. We already knew about fire, so we would burn whatever we could to stay warm. No one knew anything about carbon emissions in those days. And their descendants continued living in inhospitable climates, continued burning things, continued multiplying, and then one day Mother Earth woke up choking. And we continued to multiply. Like Big Macs. Millions. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions. Then in the nineteenth century we topped one billion. Here's the facts from Uncle Google: "It is estimated that the population of the world reached one billion for the first time in 1804. It would be another 123 years before it reached two billion in 1927, but it took only 33 years to rise by another billion people, reaching three billion in 1960. Thereafter, the global population reached four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, six billion in 1999 and, by some estimates, seven billion in October 2011 with other estimates being in March 2012. It is projected to reach eight billion by 2024–2030. According to current projections, the world's population is likely to reach around nine billion by 2035–2050." With our greed and shortsighted fear leading the way, our governments are still promoting the fuels of death, and really we don't have a lot of time left. In the foreseeable future, major parts of this planet could be uninhabitable to human life, thanks to warming temperatures and climate change, and where are those billions going to live? You guessed right, Gentle Reader. And how welcome are they going to be made to feel again in their new countries? You guessed right, again, Gentle Reader And how many of us are really going to change our hearts, stop building walls, stop fearing outsiders and stop hating, before it is too late? You guessed right again, Gentle Reader. Now go eat your chocolate donut. You don't have to share it.