Doomsay

Hey, you know how food prices keep going up? That's pretty lame. Do you know why that happens? Because food is harder to grow these days. 'Cos of Global Warming.

Most of the nations that produced an agricultural surplus 20 years ago, (i.e. produced more tonnage of food that they themselves ate), now... um... don't. In Asia, for instance, China and India were once renown for their rice exports, now, in the entire region, only Thailand produces enough rice to be able to safely flog on the world markets without risking famine within its own borders.

The same goes for all other staple crops in the world. Millenia of selective breeding has made the plants we eat very specified. The problem with biological specification is that it leaves you very open to extinction, especially when your specific environment begins to whither away. Well, maybe thats a bit alarmist, there are countless breeds of staple crops - if a farmer notices his current crop isn't taking too well, he can order in a load of seeds for a different breed that will handle better... But this can only go so far, agricultural difficulties are steadily accumulating.

And hey, that word, 'steadily'... yeah... don't get used to it. Right now Climate Change is steady, but it won't stay that way. There are a certain number of 'tipping points' in the global system, that, once reached, cause huge chain reactions. For instance, the temperature in Antarctica only has to raise by a few more degrees to drastically increase the amount of meltwater dripping off the Antarctic Mountains, this water seeps down through the ice and accumulates between the snow and the land... essentially lubricating the entire ice sheet. Eventually, several million tonnes of ice will simply slip off the land that holds them, and result in a large increase in sea level.

This itself will cause a new chain reaction, a higher sea means higher winds, and higher winds means warmer weather at higher heights, warm weather at high heights, especially in the polar regions, will lubricate more ice sheets and fuck us up even more. So don't expect anything moderate. Ice Sheet Collapse will either not happen, or happen to an insane degree... and the former is not very likely.

So what do people do? They say, 'Uh-oh! We need to do something!', but, because they themselves are not very well informed, and, more importantly, because there is a huge multi-million pound industry dependent on misinforming them, the completely well-meaning urge to 'do something' ends up causing more harm than good.

Case in point: biofuels. Now, there are essentially two issues at stake in much what is jumbled under the 'Green' umbrella. The first is the maintaining of resources, making sure we don't run out of anything crucial, the second is protecting the macro-environment, minimising the output of greenhouse gases, etc... sometimes, these two issues interlap: for instance, recycling certain metals assures that new mines need not be opened, and preserves mineral resources for future generations, whilst simultaneously saving energy, as metal recycling often only requires a simple process of remelting and remoulding, as opposed to a process of heavy-mining, smelting, schmelting, zibbilimelting and all those other clever, yet very carbon-intensive processes, that metalmongers have devised over the centuries: metal recyling preserves resources and saves energy. However, this interlapping is far from common. Biofuels are often believed to be good for the environment: they are not. The chemical reaction taking place within a tank of biofuel is identical to the chemical reaction taking place within a tank of diesel... the benefit of biofuel is that it does not require the burrowing into of oil deposits, its impact on the atmosphere is negligible if not nonexistant.

Furthermore, the production of biofuels relies on huge areas of arable land... we're starting to see this today, in communities where people are starving, farmers chose to rip out their stable crops in order to produce the cash crops needed to made the biofuels. El Jefe himself, Fidel Castro, is a staunch proponent of this view: he says that Western insistance that Developing World farmers turn their attentions to the growing of plants to fill our cars' engines rather than the growing of plants to fill the bellies of the world's poorest people amounts to a campaign of Imperialist genocide... He may have a point.

So, good intentions + oppurtunistic capitalists = a plethora of supposedly 'Green' schemes to free you of your cash without necessarily assisting our species' ability to survive in the slightest.

And that's why environmentalism won't work. Because the principle actors involved in stopping Climate Change have no interest in stopping Climate Change. They have an interest in selling peace-of-mind to people by assuring them that they themselves are helping; supposedly, one would assume, the best way to convince an individual that they are helping would be to actually make them help... but this doesn't take into account how easily tricked human beings are. So people go about recycling their used paper, despite the fact that a) paper biodegrades completely in landfills, b) paper recycling is a mechanical industry, complete with all the conveyer belts and furnaces and all that carbon-burning shebang and c) tree farming is one of the only industries in the world that actually produces more oxygen than CO2.

My personal opinion is that instead of trying to prevent Global Warming, we should prepare for it. Forbid unsensible building on flood planes and deconstruct/dyke up anything under 30ft elevation above sea level, invest more money into greenhouse and hydroponic farming, and other methods that don't rely on the external environment. Because these are concrete aims. If we hire private companies to do these, there are simple and intuitive ways to make sure that they do actually do them, in contrast to the claims that we are given these days, ("We've built an off-shore wind farm that will help the environment!" - Will it? Can you prove it? - "Absolutely not!").

However, opinions like these are considered defeatist amongst mainstream environmentalists... so, yeah, that's why we're fucked.