Leaving Las Vegas, Leaving Earth

The temperature spikes in the Indian sub-continent, Spain & North Africa at the moment will hit the States in 3–8 years, I imagine. Or much sooner. We appear to be sleepwalking into massive crop failure & the vacating of population centers throughout the world. It’s all happening in slow motion, but not that slow at this point. Atmospheric carbon is up 45% from pre-industrial levels (285 ppm to 415 ppm). That is The Mother of All Fuck Ups. We have departed the “Goldilocks Zone” and now proceed into the whirlwind. It’s interesting that modern humans lived, often quite well and quite happily, for 230,000 years without burning excavated hydrocarbons. None of our fellow species are engaged in such a project either.

It’s also interesting that getting out of this is proving to be a lot more difficult than it was getting into it. It’s much like the arc of drug or alcohol addiction in that way. One slides into enslavement to a substance. Parties turn into daily life. By the time you recognize that the substance is now pushing you on a jolly go-cart ride through hell, it may be too late — if the toxin has already severely damaged any bodily organs.

We have definitively gravely damaged the Earth-physics equivalent of bodily organs. And removing excess carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere is a bit like trying to remove the contents of a bottle of Tabasco sauce that accidentally dropped into your soup. No se puede.

To avoid vastly premature* death would require several billion people to live in a way they have not lived for over 100 years. Technically, it’s doable, but there are no signs indicating that it is happening or will happen. In that sense, we find ourselves in a weird sort of hospice. We are in hospice unless. The “unless” is still technically available to us but is simply not being pursued. Humanity, at this moment, most clearly resembles Nicholas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas.” He could avoid early death by not drinking alcohol but decides not to. We could avoid premature extinction by returning to pre-1835 lifeways but are apparently choosing not to. We are engaged in the most extreme act possible of tempting fate.

*(Homo sapiens sapiens could have potentially had a run lasting several million years had we not become invested in very bad ideas).