Zach Alsgaard.com A comprehensive guide to Zach's random thoughts

Let’s Get Creative?

Global warming isn’t really making headlines now, but it will be this December when 170 world leaders meet in Copenhagen for a massive climate conference.  You’re not seeing things; 170 of 195 countries will be there.  Essentially the entire world will be gathered in one place to talk about this.  I think that’s pretty cool.  One of the stated goals of this conference will be to draft a "Copenhagen Protocol" (I'm guessing a Kyoto Protocol on steroids and actually signed by the U.S.??).

Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean Secretary General of the United Nations (if you don't immediately recognize this name, shame on you), wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times today about his recent trip to the Arctic and how he agrees with most climatologists that the Arctic will probably be completely defrosted by 2030…  That’s truly awful news for people like me who love cold weather, but of course there will be a ton of other negative consequences around the world if this is left unchecked (none of this should really surprise you).

Now, I won’t say I completely agree with every forecast I’ve heard about global warming, and I’m still not convinced it’s entirely our fault (I don’t think we know a whole lot about climate change yet and what affects it – we just like to think we do).  I’d like to remind everyone that we were just as concerned about global cooling 40 years ago as we are about global warming today.  However, I think it has been fairly clear that the Arctic has been getting warmer over the past couple of decades and the rate of warming seems to be going up.  So are we totally doomed?

“There is nothing [we] can do.  It's over, my friend. The game is lost."

That was a quote from the late Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, in his interview for the Rolling Stone where he explained how he thought the war against global warming was lost years ago.  I happen to agree with this – I really doubt there’s a lot we can do now to completely stop global warming.  If you argue humans have little or no impact on climate change, then logically there’s little or nothing we can do to stop it.  If you argue humans have a major impact, then two questions come to mind: 1) What exactly are we doing that is directly contributing to global warming? (I think we know some of the answers to this now), and 2) How can we stop doing these things while continuing to thrive as a species?

I’m not going to pretend like I have any answers or even good ideas for dealing with climate change, but I think those types of questions are good to at least keep in mind.

I really don’t think we’re doomed, but I do think we’ll need to be extremely adaptive going forward.  That’s good news for us.  It seems like humans have taken over the world in part because we’re insanely adaptive.  I don’t know about you, but I’m still shocked by how we’ve learned to live in some of the craziest climates on Earth.  So perhaps our battle cry should change from “Stop Global Warming” to “Let’s Get Creative”.  How can we live in our post-apocalyptic, melted-Arctic, global desert of eternal misery with 24/7 mega-hurricanes world of tomorrow?