Our species could conceivably be headed for "deep doo-doo," to use Bush 41's famous trope. If it is, a Jonathan Franzen article in The New Yorker takes the most realistic view of that alternative future I've seen.
His title asks the question: "What If We Stopped Pretending?" And the subtitle really lays out his view: "The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit we can't prevent it."
There is essentially zero chance poor people in underdeveloped parts of the world - India, China, sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh - will stop using cooking fires, burning fields, and acquiring the petroleum-burning vehicles they desperately want and are quickly getting. Given that, whatever steps our < 5% of the world's population takes are essentially irrelevant.
If Franzen is right and I'm wrong, if end times truly are soon upon us, riding a bike to work won't help. Our preparations should take a much different tack, one based on defending the turf we stand on from marauding hordes of starving people, trekking out from the megacities desperately seeking food.
That formulation brings to mind Kurt Schlichter's trenchant advice:
Right now, if you are watching the news, you have questions about the future. And the answer to all of them is to buy ammo.I haven't taken that advice myself, perhaps I should.
