Last night when I was watching this amazing documentary called Racing Extinction, which I wanted to watch for years, with literally tears in my eyes (It doesn’t usually happen), I was wondering about why despite the science being crystal clear, and everyone knowing something is wrong, we (as common people) aren’t doing anything about it.
For a little bit of context, Racing Extinction is about the things we are doing – As humans overall - which are driving other species extinct, and even threaten our own existence. Mainly about, how doing our everyday things, threaten our own existence. The focal points are on Climate change and wildlife destruction. (Seriously, I have attached a torrent link to that movie... try to watch it)
For everyone who has a nose in working condition, you should have felt an appreciable difference in air quality and overall ambiance during the COVID lockdown. There is enough empirical evidence about the increasing atmospheric temperature, rising sea levels, and even increasingly erratic weather patterns. The least is everyone has felt that the things we (individually) are doing are damaging the environment.
In western countries, governments are doing whatever they can to mitigate this climate change situation. Even our own Prime Minister Modi is trying to as much as he can for the global climate change crisis. But, why, we the people, even if we pretend to care about it, are not doing anything. The worst thing here is we can.
I have a hypothesis…
We are complexity averse… I don’t mean hate here because even then we have an emotional connection, it’s something even worse, Indifference. Like when trying to understand complex derivations in Laplace transforms, you just give up and don’t care after a certain point. There is a fine balance here, we get bored by something that’s too easy, we don’t care about things that are too complex, and right in the middle, there is an interesting spot. A little difficult but within grasp. If we don't have a clear understanding of it we don't care about it.
And Climate change problem is really complex and I am not talking about machine learning background math or engineering of the International space station level complexity… I am talking about serious multi-level complexity (however complex the previously cited examples may be, they are built by humans). Things get even worse since almost every aberration in the natural phenomenon is attributed to Global warming and climate change (Some true and some are misattributed).
Let me elaborate a bit more here…
Let’s start about with what you probably know, emitting CO2 causes rise in global temperature and it causes the polar Icecaps to melt and which raises the sea level, which forces the polar bears out of a place to live and maybe, in the distant future, sinks the coastal cities. But, TBH, this explanation is superficial at best, and at worst misleading. Chances are, if we are to continue what we are doing now, we will all be very dead long before the seas sink the coastal cities.
Ok, let’s start… At one side the excess CO2 in atmosphere goes on increasing the atmospheric temperature, the excess of CO2 in the atmosphere means more dissolved CO2 in rainwater (It does happen and that’s how our world regulates CO2 levels), water reacts with CO2 to form carboxylic acid, which when falls on land increases soil acidity (I will come back later to this), and when falls on sea increases the acidity of seas along with raising sea temperature, kills sea life (certain fishes and most shell-based animals) and along with it kills seemingly trivial sea micro-organisms like Diatoms and Planktons, which believe it or not, produces the majority of the oxygen we breathe. You probably thought Amazon produces most oxygen, Amazon, for this matter any sufficiently dense forest, has enough life in them that sucks up all the oxygen produced by the trees before getting out for the rest of the world. But indirectly, all forests produce oxygen, say for “our” consumption by producing rain which leads to silicon runoff into the oceans, which are kind of like food for all some of these ocean micro-organisms which produce our O2. Decreasing in O2 means increasing the atmospheric composition of CO2, which in turn increases global warming even more. Killing these micro-organisms deprives us of O2. Complex…Isn’t it?
That’s not it, let’s go again… At the same time, we are killing all these micro-organisms, the carboxylic rain acidifies the soil, thereby killing forests slowly, which reduces rain and which even more kills the sea micro-organisms. At the same time, there is a certain and insidious threat under the Icecaps… “Methane”. We don’t clearly know why there is this insane amount of methane stored under Icecaps, but what we need to know is that melting Icecaps means sooner than later the gargantuan amounts of methane will be released into the atmosphere. Methane being several times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 expedites the entire processes I was talking about.
What’s happening here is some kind of an avalanche effect; like when a small disturbance in the top of the mountain, multiplies enough in a short period of time to get powerful enough to completely destroy forests in the base of that mountain. It is the recursive nature of the problem makes it more dangerous and unpredictable.
I presume you all know about the carbon cycle, the total amount of carbon amount on earth has always been constant, it is just changed from one form to another. Think about what we are doing now, sucking out stored dormant carbon from under the earth’s crust, which has been there for several millennia, and releasing it into the environment- artificially. There have been 7 extinction-level events in the history of the earth and the one thing common in all of them is increased levels of Carbon in the atmosphere.
The worst thing here is what I have said is not it… there is a lot more going on which don’t know anything about (We cannot discount what we don't know) and no one knows the exact scale and the timeline of what’s happening. I am also not going to pretend here that I understand what I am talking about here, I don’t. As a matter of fact, most qualified scientists at Harvard and Stanford don’t yet have a full understanding of what’s happening.
What we are being taught being a gross simplification of what’s actually happening, and not clear understanding by the scientists of what’s really going on is causing this. By wrongly simplifying what’s happening, we are also mistaking the scale and timeline of the impending danger. What we normally think is “whatever happens, it’s not going to happen now”. I don’t blame you; we are not programmed to care for our great grandchildren’s life (who are way long from being born). So, we simply don’t care. And even if we know everything happening, we would simply be overwhelmed by the complexity and the number of things we have do, to alleviate the problem.
But, it is better to light one candle, than to curse at the darkness…
To be continued in part 2….
References
Racing Extinction - A Must watch film, I have attached a torrent link, if you want to watch... I strongly urge you to do so...
https://yts.vc/movie/racing-extinction-2015-8e2a08
National Geographic -One Strange Rock
https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming-vs-climate-change/
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