End Game

The dialog, on the infrequent occasion when it occurs, regarding Climate Change or Global Warming is disregarding a very important underlying fact: The natural world has ways of controlling or ridding itself of out of control organisms. At every level, when something gets too far out of balance, Old Ma Nature steps in and restores that balance.

When wild rabbit populations threaten to overgraze an area’s natural resources, an increase in local predators like foxes, coyotes, and raptors will occur in parallel. The same with insects like grasshoppers, for instance. An excessive hatch of hoppers will shortly be brought under control by flocks of birds, and by the hoppers themselves consuming the vegetation that allowed the over population in the first place, to the consternation of the farmers whose fields the insects have devoured.

We are now the infestation that the natural world must now attempt to get under some kind of control. For thousands of years, human population grew very slowly. At times even reducing as natural controls kicked in with wars or diseases slowed the inexorable increases. Homo sapiens was too smart for this to continue. A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in 30 years (1960), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987). During the 20^th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now. Even the massive die offs resulting from the wars and pogroms of the1800s and 1900s did little to slow the spread of humanity around the globe.

Where does that leave us, or more importantly the planet we call home, today? Even though it does not seem like to those of us fortunate enough to live in prosperous and relatively sparsely populated parts of the world, it is becoming more and more of a reality to those in other parts. Couple this with the droughts, fires, floods and diseases brought on by climate change and humanity is being challenged with a perfect storm. Even as it is becoming more difficult to raise crops and livestock, areas that can still do so are being invaded by refugees from areas that are more challenged. Agricultural populations move to urban centers in the hope of finding work, putting more strain on resources. Insecurity breeds revolt. As rulers are more and more challenged by their constituent populations, they become more totalitarian in reaction to any reforms which causes suffering people to look to more prosperous nations for relief.

This is where we are now. We are increasingly becoming unable to produce enough to feed the population. We are poisoning and trashing the lands and the oceans at an unbelievable rate. At a time when more people than ever are depending on seafood for all or part of their diet, 90 percent of global fish stocks are either fully fished or overfished. We’re making it worse at the same time, with increasing acidification from carbon emissions which increase pH levels and agricultural runoffs adding nitrates and pesticides.

The science is showing that while we’ve been fiddling on the sidelines and refusing to even have a realistic dialogue, the world has long passed the tipping point. With Donald Trump and his cabal still denying that change is even happening, Old Ma Nature is taking the steps to bring the earth back to some sort of equilibrium. Even the few in the ruling oligarchy who grudgingly acknowledge that some sort of climate change is occurring will tell us that there’s nothing to worry about, climate change happens all the time, and man couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it anyway. They are however, taking pains to build and supply various underground bunkers, ranchos in the Andes, private islands, or gigantic yachts that they hope could enable them to ride out the coming crisis.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are for the most part blissfully unaware of the fact that the crisis is not approaching.

It is here!

It is happening now!

It is far too late to open any discussion regarding how to reverse or even slow the catastrophe. It is likely even too late to discuss survival. Scientists are now calling this the Sixth Great Extinction. It is not in the future.

The Sixth Great Extinction is underway.