The climate change debate rages on. Is climate change occurring? Is the planet warming or cooling? Is humanity responsible? Are humans accelerating and exacerbating the problem with their never-ending green house gas emissions or does the planet's assimilative capacity dwarf anything we can dish out? I'd like to postulate that yes, climate change and environmental pollution is something we should be addressing regardless of whether we're the primary cause; though in the end, the entire issue may be moot due to the "natural" course of human evolution.
First, let's make one thing clear. It is not the planet that is at risk. At the very core of the climate change debate is the survival of humanity. Homo sapiens have only been on Earth for 200,000 years - less than a blink of an eye in terms of geologic time. If we become extinct, it will not take very long for the planet to wipe out all traces of our existence (except maybe for those pesky plastics...bottled water anyone?). As far as I can tell, the rock we live on is set to exist for another 4.5 billion years, with the ability to sustain life extending for another billion years or so. Even Nobel laureates confuse the issue. Robert Laughlin, a physics professor at Stanford University recently made these erroneous statements regarding climate change and the Earth’s assimilative capacity:
“Common sense tells us that damaging a thing as old as [Earth] is somewhat easier to imagine than it is to accomplish – like invading Russia.”
“The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we gaze into the future,” he says, “not because it’s unimportant but because it’s beyond our power to control.”
That’s all very well and nice Mr. Laughlin, but it is not the point. The point is that through man-made environmental degradation and overpopulation (don’t get me started on un-educated and archaic cultural predispositions for procreation) we are systematically compromising the planetary support structures required to sustain humans. Damaging the planet seems to be rather easy to accomplish, from punching holes in the ozone layer, producing plastic gyres in our oceans, or contaminating our fresh water sources like it’s some sort of limitless product, the evidence is non-refutable. Regardless of whether we're the cause of climate change or whether the planet is simply going through its natural climate cycle, it makes no sense to continue to pollute at our current rate. Finding ways to be less reliant on fossil fuels and living in a sustainable manner (yes that means having fewer children and not owning two gas guzzling SUVs) is imperative.
But here is why it may not matter. Pardon my futurist tendencies; I'll admit that this is where I get a little wacky, though not entirely unbelievable. Though the melting of the ice caps may shut down the Atlantic Current (of which the gulf stream forms a part of), plunging the northern hemisphere into an Ice Age, or global warming may cause ocean temperatures to increase to the point of killing off phytoplankton (their numbers have been decreasing by 1% every year for the past 50 years), allowing the proliferation of algae blooms and the subsequent oceanic oxygen depletion and the release of hydrogen sulphide into atmosphere that comes along with it (the most probable cause of the Permian mass extinction where over 90% of the world's species at the time died off), humans have one trick up their sleeves - technological innovation.
Humans are rapidly moving towards developing a collective hive mind. The internet and social networking forums such as Facebook, Twitter, Msn, etc..., are simply initial forms of this collective. One might even argue that the telegraph and telephone were the first steps in this process. Once we reach the singularity point - the point at which computer processing power (in terms of calculations per second) equals that of the human brain (expected within the next 20 to 30 years) and we have mapped all the functions of the human brain, humans may be able to neurally link with intelligent AI supercomputers and be able to analyze and solve problems in a fraction of the time presently required due to the rapid level of information exchange - with climate change being one of the problems addressed (note that in 50 years from now, computing power is expected to equal that of all the human brains combined...don't ask me what happens then...maybe some sort of transcendental ascension into another plane of existence). Therefore, all the bickering and arguing about our survival, rampant between politicians and scientists alike, may not matter given that human-machine symbiosis may be the solution to all our problems. Have faith in the machines my friends!
techonology will save us all