The scariest headline I’ve ever read

It’s been a little over three weeks but the shock has not worn off. It’s as if there was a time before the headline and then there is now, after the news, when the future seems much less certain and life as we know it, even just a couple of decades ahead, is emphatically in peril.

Yes, we’ve been reading about it for years, and for most of us it was not something that would happen in our lifetime, or so we confidently thought. But it is happening now, each summer with heat waves and wildfires, and hurricane season and once in 500-year flooding every other year or so in North and South Carolina. One of the largest cities in Africa nearly running out of water. Hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific more overfilled than any in history. The planet is experiencing many more extreme weather events than were predicted for this decade. Here in South Carolina we’ve had three years in a row of record breaking rain and flooding from storms.

The headline is this one, and it just happened to appear in CNN online but it was all over the place:

“Planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, experts warn”

Just ponder those words for a moment. This is from a major UN report summarizing the work of thousands of scientists and many thousands of published scientific studies. The message is if the world does not meet the threshold of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees (Celsius) or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2030, we will likely pass the tipping point where extreme flooding and high temperatures will lead to a planet increasingly uninhabitable for the human race. We’re already at 1 degree and look what’s happening: the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica are starting to melt. The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia  is dying, Europe is suffering one of the worst droughts ever in the historical record.

Civilizations rise and fall. We are very likely next.

Considering our still overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels for every adpect of our lives, it’s looking more and more unlikely that we can meet that goal. And no one, not even the best scientists thought it would start as soon as 2030.

Then just two days ago, I read that scientists had discovered that the oceans are absorbing much more heat trapped in our atmosphere by 200years of carbon emissions than was previously thought. The oceans were helping us stave off warming disasters. Not any more. The oceans are rapidly heating up. That means global warming will accelerate even faster.

The implications of all this are beyond mind-boggling. What on earth kind of world are today’s children and young people going to inhabit? I see young couples with babies in strollers and wonder, “Do they have any idea?” It’s all rather surreal. People act like this is all just make-believe or exaggeration, or political fear mongering and “fake”science. It’s not. It’s real. Are we counting on artificial intelligence and technology to save us? It better come fast.

I’ve never been so concerned that it might be too late. I’m glad I’m the age I am, frankly. We’ve altered for the worse a pristine planet ideal for human life and that of countless other species. The great blue planet. Mother Earth. We’ve overpopulated the planet. We’re using up all our natural resources. We’ve been mindlessly selfish and unheeding of what we’re doing and have done to Earth for many decades.

Way back on high school in the late 1960s, not long before the first Earth Day, I submitted an editorial for the school newspaper on air pollution. It was titled, “We could asphyxiate.” When you think of the filthy air countless millions around the globe breathe every day, I have to owonder if that nightmare scenario from the 60s is coming true. Will will we ever learn?

We’ve got to make drastic changes before it really is too late. I can only hope and pray we have the will to do so. And I can do my small part in whatever way I can.