As the summer of 2006 rages on, with heatwaves stretching
from the American Pacific coast all the way across the North
Atlantic to Europe and virtually around the world, we now
discover that the great Amazonian rain forest has perhaps a
year to live.
If there is no rain in the Amazon basin soon, and that
forest is destroyed, mankind could die with it. This
is because the Amazonian forest is, in effect, the heart of
the world's ecosystem. It is a vast, unimaginably important
carbon dioxide sink and oxygen producer. Without it, the
planet's climate will likely become untenable for human life.
It appears that we are well on our way to another
large-animal extinction, and, if so, we will be among the
large animals who go.
If this catastrophe unfolds, I very much
doubt that more than a remnant of mankind would still exist
in 25 years. If it happens, most of us will be dead within 5
years, and those remaining at that time will curse God for
not having taken them, also.
Unfortunately, it is not all that unlikely that this crucial
ecosystem will die. The Amazon has droughts from time to
time, but this is the worst in at least a hundred years, and
maybe longer.
At this time, the stage is being set in the Amazon for serious
forest fires, that will come alight due to dry lightning and
people used to relatively damp and non-combustible foliage
accidentally setting them.
So, what can we do about it? The short answer is nothing.
It's too late. It is possible that overpopulation and
political inaction will
have done us in.
The next question, then, is how do we face it? My first
thought is a simple enough one: we need to pray our hearts
out for rain to fall in the Amazon between this coming
October and next May. Because if it does not come,
scientists from Woods Hole are warning that the forest
ecosystem will completely collapse.
Climatological studies show conclusively that this will lead
to profound drought across the whole of the northern
hemisphere. Our world, as we know it now, will be in ruins
by 2010, and something close to hell by 2012.
I know that it's almost impossible to imagine that it could
be that bad, but, in fact, it's true. The life of the world
depends on that rainy season working.
This gets to the reason that it has been so dry there for
the past two years. It is because the Caribbean has
overheated, and the hot water does not produce enough free
vapor to form the moisture laden clouds that usually sweep
across Brazil and push up against the Andes during the
Amazonian rainy season season.
Why has this happened? In great part, because the growth of
human population has happened too fast for the environment
to cope, and it's rebalancing itself by relieving itself of
the burden that is us. In part, it's because we have not
directed our intelligence or our scientific and engineering
skills to solving the problem of global warming.
This has not been a matter for debate for twenty-five years,
and yet lying politicans and greedy companies have kept the
false debate going anyway. The United States, the one
country with the power and the expertise to make changes
has, instead, ended up with an exceptionally poor leadership
that has promoted the shibboleth of denial until it is, in
all probability, too late.
The largest question is, how do we engage in this process of
dieback? How will it strike us?
Heat. At first, the sort of situation we are seeing now,
where spot heatwaves such as the ones striking California
and Europe at present kill a few hundreds or thousands of
people, or in Queens, New York, where long-term power
infrastructure collapse has taken place.
Next, we will experience similar crises over wider and wider
areas, for longer and longer times. There will come a time
when normally temperate regions display temperatures above
110 F, and nearby deserts become untenable for human life.
The next problem will be water. We'll run out. The desert
cities that have emerged in the US will experience
catastrophic water emergencies and forced migrations that it
will not be possible for the rest of the society to absorb.
Then will come the food problem. Already this year,
excessive heat has disrupted production of food crops
worldwide. The disruptions are not disastrous yet, and the
world still grows a food surplus, but the day will come when
that will not be true, and if the Amazon does indeed
collapse next year, the first great food shortages will
appear in 2010.
After that, social collapse will spread rapidly. The rest,
you can imagine. There's no point in describing it.
In my 1985 book Nature's End, I predicted essentially the
scenario that is unfolding now, and warned that the
Amazonian rain forest might become too dry and burn.
I understood very clearly in 1985 what runaway global
warming would do to the planet--what it is doing now. I also
saw that this catastrophe would not be recoverable for us.
Now, we are facing a stark reality indeed: the end of the
Amazonian rain forest and the subsequent end of man. It is
worth remembering that more than nine out of ten species
that have ever existed on the earth are extinct at any given
moment in geologic history.
Will we go entirely extinct? There is no way to be certain
of that, but we will experience a massive dieback, that is
certain...if the forest fails.
And for those of you who will scoff at this and say 'what
does the Amazon have to do with us,' I suggest you look at
the climate models. The peril is quite clear.
What will it be like to live in a dying world? We do now,
actually, but nobody really admits it. However, when
temperatures are still in the triple digits in Kansas in
November, as they will be if we lose the Amazon, people will
begin to face the reality that we waited too long to act,
and have run out of time.
Who will they blame? What difference does it make?
And what of the visitors? Will they help? Actually, there's
a possiblity of that. They are certainly around and they
probably have the resources to give us assistance of some
sort. Will they? That is a question I cannot answer.
I have been working since about 1980 to avoid ever having to
write an article like this. Unfortunately, neither my little
effort nor the much greater efforts of far more influential
people, have helped change the situation.
The Kyoto Treaty turned out to be a lot of talk built around
a dubious premise. The United States has not shown any
leadership at all in this area, at a time when the survival,
if not of the species, then certainly of civilization,
depended on bold and innovative action by the world's most
powerful country.
So now we stand just this side of dying. We who live on this
day may know the end of the world. There will be no rapture
of the congenitally selfish, and the Moslems will not meet
their sky virgins. What will happen will be hard, terrifying
beyond words, and fatal in a million different ways, but
always fatal.
How do we do a thing like this well, if it comes down to the
dying? It's hard to imagine. But I will say this, that the
peace that abides in my own heart will not be shaken even by
this suffering.
I watched a little boy today come down the street with his
backpack on and his eyes twinkling with the joy of his
boyhood. He walked on past me and I thought that we cannot
count how much we owe our children.
If I could, I would lift them all into a better earth, but I
have not the strength in my shoulders.
Now it's dark, the house is hot (we don't have air
conditioning) and the hour is late and weary. Somewhere
nearby, that little boy sleeps, and dreams perhaps of the
peaks he will ascend in the future to which he is entitled.
Now, the little baby who lives across the way cries and
fusses a bit. Mother comes, I hear her voice, tired in the
late hour, nevertheless cooing with the gentlest love.
Love. I don't see the world as a place of hate. I can hardly
hear words spoken in hate. It's as if they're being shouted
up from a deep well. I see the world as a land of love,
because that's what it really is.
Subtract the politicians and the guns and the media, and
think of your own life. You live in love. You love your
children, your parents, your spouses--and you are multiplied
by billions.
For uncountable eons, life on earth was governed by the
brutalities of nature. Animals fought and slaughtered and
died in abject terror here, for ages upon ages.
Then, just a short time ago, a man and a woman gazed into
each other's eyes and spoke words of love, and the world
changed. Now, in all this intricate vastness of billions,
there is love. In fact, mankind is an ocean of love riding a
little rock in the great dark of the sky.
An ocean of love. That's our reality. The guns and the wars
and the hate, the betrayals and the cruelty--those are mere
dimmings of the huge light of love that shines here.
A late hour, weary hour, and I am tired, too. I know well
that this is the first place where this warning has actually
been voiced. Hopefully, it will be proved wrong by
circumstances.
Even if the rains come this year and next year, there will
soon be a series of years when they do not come.
On the plus side, the Amazon rain forest has been around for
around two million years, and throughout that time has
experienced significant climate fluctuations. Scientists
consider it an extremely resistant ecosystem.
Earth, in other words, has a strong heart.
Have we broken it?
Pray.
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