Evolve, die or a better story

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

By Brooke Williams

While in Salt Lake City this past week, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Elizabeth Kolbert, the New York journalist who wrote “Notes on a Catastrophe,” a book on global climate change published last year.

While her book is a compilation of stories she gathered as she talked to scientists engaged in research being affected by global climate change, her speech consisted of graphs and charts tracking temperatures and the buildup of greenhouse gas emissions.

If there are still skeptics among us, questioning our contribution to this potentially devastating problem, the most compelling proof is a graph of data extracted from arctic ice that is two miles thick.

Based on 400,000 years of winter snows and summer thaws, these cores contain trapped samples of the atmosphere – including C02 that can still be measured – as well as information that can be used to pinpoint average yearly temperatures.

Based on this graph, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been nearly perfectly proportional to earthly temperatures throughout that entire eon.

Of particular interest is that, during the warmest periods contained in that icy record, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere never rose above 330 parts per million.

Today there are 380 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, making it clear why eight of the last 10 years are the warmest on record. At current rates of fossil fuel use globally, this number seems headed for 500 ppm.

The key to our future is to lower the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere to 330.

Is this possible, based on the growing global population and our increasing dependence on technology? More specifically, can we, as citizens of the country that releases more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere per capita than anywhere on earth, adopt a different story – a new story – in which we begin to understand that our actions have global consequences?

Charles Darwin wrote about the heating and cooling of the earth as a factor in his theories of natural selection. He said that during periods of shifting climatic temperatures, organisms have three options: move, evolve or die.

Those species with longer generations and small clutch sizes evolve slowly and need the freedom to find and inhabit survivable niches to prevent extinction.

Natural selection works faster on those species that reproduce quickly and in large numbers, enabling them to adapt to changing temperatures.

I doubt Darwin knew he was including modern humans when he wrote about climate change as part of the selection process.

In fact, we are organisms with those same three options. Because of the global nature of modern climate change, there is nowhere to move.

Therefore, we must evolve or die.

While our physical evolution is slow – our species may not have changed significantly for 100,000 years – we will need to evolve in other ways.

Many believe that since our technology has contributed to this problem, our technology will also save us.

Others, like Elizabeth Kolbert, are fearful that the lack of sufficient progress toward renewable energy technologies combined with the fact it is unclear how to curb the consumptive habits of Americans, suggest that we may have reached the point of no return.

Sacrifice or find a technological solution? Perhaps there is a third way. Could it be that we need not just a different story of self-deprivation or large-scale new technologies, but also a better story – one that includes lifestyle changes, new alternative energies, and more?

Is there a better story – a true story – in which we begin to know that quality of life has nothing to do with quantities of possessions?

Can this story elevate our focus above ourselves, to a level where our sacrifices seem small in comparison to the meaning and substance we gain from living in a way that acknowledges our connection to all of life?

Will this story help us to see our species as but one member of a family that includes every living organism, all of us with a built-in cellular desire and ability to pass our lives on to the future?
PERMALINK:
Evolve, die or a better story | Planet JH News Article: Left Wing Local

Leave a Comment