Last night at dinner, Kathryn and Alan talked about a phenomenon they have witnessed at recent Climate Change rallies they have attended.The Climate Scientists (among other scientists) are scared. They are exhibiting symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD.
I went home to find that this phenomenon is well documented (read this). Search "climate scientist depression" and you'll find over half a million results. This is real.
Although I've been more in the camp of "do what you can not to contribute to climate change", "put a price on carbon", and "the economy will prevail to make clean energy win", these are probably nowhere near enough.
As witnessed in this round of Presidential Debates, Climate Change was barely mentioned (and not discussed) during the two hundred and seventy minutes of torture we endured.
Our own federal government has started the process to allow Liquid Natural Gas to be extracted and shipped. Next on the agenda is the pending Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion through Vancouver (Burnaby).
The net-net of Climatologist depression is that "we don't listen". Although we know that Man Made Climate Change is real, we don't take it seriously and urgently.
Taking it seriously would be:
- Keeping oil/coal/gas in the ground.
- No new extraction (no new pipelines).
- Strategic financial moves to immediately get off fossil fuels.
The argument against this is impact to individuals (employment) and the economy (taxes). Significant.
The argument for this is if we don't do it, the world will be filled with climate refugees, severe weather will become the norm (droughts, floods, fires), and wars over resources will sprout up everywhere.
Imagine thirty million (armed) people coming across the Canadian border looking for a place to live, food to eat, and water to drink.
An excerpt from a John H. Richardson essay in Esquire in 2015:
The other topic he is obsessed with is the human suffering to come. Long before the rising waters from Greenland's glaciers displace the desperate millions, he says more than once, we will face drought-triggered agricultural failures and water-security issues—in fact, it's already happening. Think back to the 2010 Russian heat wave. Moscow halted grain exports. At the peak of the Australian drought, food prices spiked. The Arab Spring started with food protests, the self-immolation of the vegetable vendor in Tunisia. The Syrian conflict was preceded by four years of drought. Same with Darfur. The migrants are already starting to stream north across the sea—just yesterday, eight hundred of them died when their boat capsized—and the Europeans are arguing about what to do with them. "As the Pentagon says, climate change is a conflict multiplier."
Short term pain for long term gain. Mankind has never been good at this kind of choice.