So here we are again, in the sweat box that is the back bedroom, isolating from the rest of the household following a call from work. It is the second time in two-weeks and while the first time round wasn’t at all difficult or challenging to the soul or body, now with the heat rising to Mediterranean heights, my biggest challenge is not to melt into the floor like a green-hued witch.
I once thought on taking myself to Mumbai for a cultural excursion, living in a chorl for the summer months but now I realize that might not be a good idea.
Let’s reflect then on the impact of climate change on our world, as the heat rises. Surely, it is in everyone’s best interest to be a climate change advocate? Even from the conservative stance rather than liberal. If those on the right wish to curb and dissuade immigration, surely it would make sense to endeavor to ensure that the nations south of Europe are at least habitable for humans – something that will change if climate trends do not. While the northern hemisphere begins to slowly resemble North Africa what will be left of the south?
Speaking purely form the stance of a devil’s advocate here, it confuses me to why climate change is so often seen as a partisan issue. It’s a human issue caused by humans. Sure, environmental factors contribute such as St. Helen’s, Mt. Etna and other volcanic activity that I can’t name off the top of my head. Hell, even the dinosaurs caught a shit deal. Yet in each of those cases, it was not in the control of the dominant species to change that, to ensure the survival of their race.
Every year it’s become on of my running jokes that this will be the coolest summer for the next thirty years.
True, in it’s current form, the lithium-ion battery reliance of electric vehicles will become unsustainable with lithium eventually becoming a rare commodity but, it’s also reusable unlike fossil fuels. So why do we cling to the ways of the past? Out of some nostalgia for the Industrial Era when children died up chimneys covered in soot and bird shit; when the smog of London was so thick that it caked everything it touched; or perhaps, let’s look more recently to a time when profit-hungry oil conglomerates spilled their treasure into the sea poisoning everything for miles and miles. For what reasons do we hold on to these methods? Pride? Stubbornness? A strange and deep love of petrol station coffee?
People mock Greta Thumburg, those of the older generation. They mock her and call her a puppet. A puppet for what? Those dastardly liberals with an evil goal of saving the world? Just the other day I saw and article of plans to release Aston Martin DB5’s with electric engines and modernised interiors. The old ways aren’t dying, because they were never the old ways. The ways are simply evolving.
And, as I’m facing the choice right now in my hotbox, the paths seem clear: adapt or live in abject misery, cutting of your nose to spite your face. We have a social responsibility to each other whether we like it or not. Even those who claim to be an island and entirely free of societal bonds, I simply say:
“Who made your iPhone?”
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