Clock Ticking: Bottom Line on Climate

What irony—that a significant contributor to climate change is our desire to control climate! Bottom line: we can live a climate-controlled, push-button convenienced, air-conditioned nightmare of a life only at the expense of environmental destruction and global warming. In all fairness to our forefathers, that fact was not obvious even a hundred years ago.

Even less obvious is that maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be anyway, separating us from the forces of nature. When’s the last time you swam in a lake or even walked to the store? If you’re an American like me, it’s probably been a while. Such activities are usually relegated to recreation or exercise, not ordinary life. That’s a shame.

Even more important: when’s the last time you went a month without pushing a button on the thermostat to blow a warm breeze up your a$$ or a cool freeze in your face? Admittedly if you live in Tucson AZ or Fairbanks AK that may be tough—but probably not as much as you think. People did it for thousands of years, with rich meaningful lives. But that’s another point.  Vikings died in Greenland before they’d ask the Inuits up farther north how they survive.  Racism rules.

The epiphany came for me living in the piney woods of Mississippi for years without so much as a fan, much less an air-conditioner. Those were some of the happiest years of my life. Our modern lives are a lie.  Adjusted for inflation, gasoline is cheaper now than 1965. And that’s supposed to be good news?  Did the climate conference in Paris last week really accomplish anything?  Seems like a lot of mouth, not many teeth.  Sometimes it seems hopeless…

Advertisement