The Future

A couple of weeks ago I read this article about climate change. It’s quite a long read and I will discuss some key points here, but essentially it discusses the things that WILL happen over the next few years if we don’t manage to slow down the increases in global temperatures. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Now I love children- I did a degree in primary education and have worked in a school for three years now. It was always natural that I would one day want children of my own. Of course I did.

As I’ve grown up and become more attuned to what the world is really like I have changed my mind. The world is a mess. Politically we have Donald Trump as president of the US, Brexit is actually happening and right wing parties across the world are growing in popularity. It’s hard enough for my generation to get a reasonably well paid job and actually afford to buy a house. I dread to think how hard it will be in another generation’s time.

But politics is temporary. Throughout history there’s been periods like this where things go badly wrong. But eventually they do get better. I’m optimistic about that at least. What I’m not optimistic about is what state the world will be in the not too distant future.

A few years ago two degrees of warming was thought to be catastrophic for the planet. But as per the Paris climate accords, two degrees is now our goal and many expert don’t think we’ll even hit that. The higher end of the estimations suggest the global temperature could increase by as much as eight degrees.

Even if met the Paris goals, place like Karachi and Kolkata would be almost uninhabitable- deadly heatwaves like in 2015 would be common. At four degrees the European heat wave of 2003, which killed as many as 2000 people a day, would happen pretty much every summer.

Then there’s sea levels. There are various models but no-one quite knows for sure how quickly the ice sheets will melt and how much that will affect global temperatures. The last time the planet was four degrees warmer the oceans were hundreds of feet higher.

Scientists can only guess at how much this will change our lives. Melting permafrost could unleash deadly diseases (it sound outlandish but last year 20 humans and 2,000 reindeer were infected with anthrax when just one infected carcass was was released from the ice). The chances of wars over resources will be much higher. Think of all the migrant problems the world currently has; imagine how much worse it could really get.

All this is already starting to happen. Recently a 6,000 square kilometre iceberg broke away from Antarctica. A study this week suggests that there is a one in three chance of monthly rainfall records being broken in the UK in winter months. This sort of thing is almost daily news.

And we’re not really doing much about it. Sure, there are some efforts to tackle the problem. We recycle more now and use more renewable energy. But it should be at the forefront of every human being’s mind every day of their lives.

Partly it’s a lack of imagination- it is hard to imagine how bad things could get. There’s plenty of stupidity. There’s so much overwhelming evidence now it’s impossible for anyone with any brain to deny climate change is happening.

There is going to be a lot of suffering in the next hundred years. And that’s why I no longer want to have children. How could I consciously bring someone into this world, with that future ahead of them? I do feel that when things get really bad we will probably be able to make the situation better. But it will take an awful lot of suffering before we get to that stage.

I’m sorry if this was depressing. It’s reality though.

[All the facts here come from this article. The iceberg news link is here and the rainfall one here.]