Describing Climate Doom

 

Mark and I were talking about Climate Change this morning. It’s not an unusual topic of conversation around here. I am always wondering what I need to say or do to have people take the issue seriously and make profound changes.

                “I don’t think we are doomed,” Mark said.  “Human being are not going to be totally wiped off the face of the planet.  That’s just not possible.”

                “ I don’t think so either,” I agreed. “I just think we are going to go back to the Dark Ages. No energy, very little food, no medical care…”  It was kind of a revelation; we had never really tried to quantify or describe what Doom looks like. The Dark Ages—we could both agree on that.  But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that, in Europe and The United States, it might look more like Ukraine, right now, going into the second winter of the war. Or Maybe France during World War II. Or any other war torn country. Very limited fuel. Bombed out buildings. Restricted  food, mostly locally produced. Poor health care. Tainted soil and air.  Add in drug resistant viruses so basic infections are no longer curable and nowhere to go that is not in the same situation. There will be no escape. James Kunstler called it the Long Emergency.   That sounds like Doom to me.

                Then I continued with the thought experiment. What if we all lived with the same consumption patterns as people in the early 1950s, but with the newer, more efficient technology?   Average house size was about 1400 square feet, rather than 2200. That’s half the space to heat, cool, maintain, and fill with stuff. There were 380 cars per thousand people in the U.S. in 1955; 808 per 1000 in 2012, when the chart ends.  Regular people did not fly for vacations. If my Betty Crocker cookbook—and my mother’s cooking—are any indication, people ate meat, potatoes, and a veg for dinner almost every night. Mostly fresh, some frozen. But portion size was much less. Gong out for a meal was a special occasion. People had fewer clothes, coats, pairs of shoes, toys and bikes. But this was not a time of deprivation; consumerism was just ramping up after the war.   But the life style, just by scale of home and not flying, is less than half of a carbon footprint today.

 We can do this. We just have to want to.