Embracing Global Warming
9/12/06
Commentary by Captain Paul Watson
One thing that I am absolutely convinced of is that
global warming is not an imminent threat. It is not
something that we should be trying to prevent for the
simple reason that global warming is not the future.
Global warming is now. It is a today. It is a clear
and present reality. For those who do not believe that
global warming has arrived, they can only fantasize
denial for a little longer. We are all in the midst of
it, and the world is quickly changing and that change
is accelerating rapidly.
The Kyoto Protocol was a big waste of time and money.
The United States was right to not sign it although
for the wrong reasons. It was just the usual lets
have a conference where we will once again do very
little to address a problem we should have done
something about decades before. In the end it was all
about signing some papers and patting each other on
the back for being ecologically correct.
An Inconvenient Truth is an entertaining second wind
for a failed politician but it simply is little more
than a scary movie without practical solutions. Al
Gore, a man with a very big ecological footprint wants
the rest of us to leave a shallow ecological footstep.
The Earth can be saved if we do as he suggests. He
also seriously believes we will be saved with the
return of Jesus Christ.
Is the Earth threatened by global warming? Not really.
The earth will adapt as the Earth has always adapted.
This planet has witnessed and endured phases of
warming and cooling of violent extremes. Climate
change has been the leading cause of habitat
disruption and species extermination for a few billion
years.
There is nothing new about global warming except this
time we the human species are responsible and we the
human species will reap what we have sown. This is
nothing unnatural because we as a species evolved
naturally and we are very much children of this
planet. We are incapable of doing anything contrary to
the laws of nature, at least not for long, before the
consequences come around and smack us smartly in the
back of the head like a nun scolding us for talking
during class.
Except that the consequences may be a trifle bit more
severe than an angry sister Mary of perpetual
discipline.
Which brings us to the next question and the one most
important to human society in the present. Is global
warming a threat to human civilization?
The answer is quite possibly and most likely a
qualified yes.
Rising sea levels, more violent storms, changing ocean
currents, drought, flooding, famine better conditions
for insect and bacterial species and thus more
virulent and new disease, more forest fires and
assorted inconveniences will certainly be a cause for
concern, especially for people in the coming decades.
On the other hand humans historically only seem to
react, adapt, and thrive to adversity. Perhaps our
survival will be because of our folly that brings us
to an environment of perpetual adversity.
Natural history tells us that periods of global
warming are beneficial for increasing biological
diversity. Humans have been a leading cause of
diminishment of diversity over the last few thousand
years. For every action there is a reaction and
diminishment of diversity by humans appears to be in a
stage of being corrected by the activities of humanity
that are contributing to global warming.
Ecologists should not be fearing global warming. We
should be embracing it as a solution to the serious
human caused problem of loss of bio-diversity. What
may not be good for civilization may well be very
beneficial for the revival and rejuvenation of global
eco-systems.
We certainly should not be wasting our energies trying
to prevent something that has already begun and is
unstoppable. The fact remains that if we stopped
production of all greenhouse gas emissions today, the
climate change juggernaut is well on its way like a
runaway train on a steep decline.
And the reality is that even faced with a 100%
certainty of the collapse of civilization in one
hundred years, human society will not abandon the
present economic and cultural pressures that are the
cause of our greenhouse gas emissions.
We will not stop driving cars, flying in airplanes,
heating our homes, cutting down our forests, burning
coal and oil for power and over-fishing the seas. We
will not stop over breeding and expanding our numbers.
We will not because we are culturally wired towards
short term survival. Material gratification today and
in the near future guides our actions more than
abstract long term academic concerns. We tend to take
today and worry about tomorrow well, tomorrow.
Natures great, brief, experiment in intelligent
primate dominance of the Earth may turn out to be a
super big glorious mistake. In the end we may only
have succeeded in creating the conditions to better
the lives of insects and ferns, which may not be a bad
thing because at least after the collapse of our
civilizations the earth will abide.
Captain Paul Watson is a co-founder of the Greenpeace
Foundation, a former director of the Sierra Club USA
and the
Founder and current President of the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society.
Permission given to reprint and distribute
Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society (1977-
Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)
Co-Founder - Greenpeace International (1979)
Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute
Director - www.harpseals.org
"Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with
me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to
go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all."
- Walt
Whitman
www.Seashepherd.org
Tel: 360-370-5650
Fax: 360-370-5651
Address: P.O. Box 2616
Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA
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