Many of us argue that we’ve gone so far beyond human scale that we’ve become out of control and the earth is our petri dish. I can see that. Bringing things back to human scale will be a monumental task. It will in fact require for various reasons that we utilize these massive structures we’ve built to mitigate global warming. As far beyond human scale as the whole climate change problem is, is just how far we will have to go for the solutions.
This is not to say that simple living isn’t the answer, I think it is. The main problem, as I see it, is that we have 442 nuclear power facilities and various weapons manufacturing facilities in various states of decay and these facilities will require that we humans retain a high degree of technology in order to prevent these reactors from poluting the environement beyond the earths ability to support sentient life. It’s kind of like the earth is being held ransom by the old bad ideas of the past. Our greatest hope is that our technology will produce the ultimate energy source (fusion) and nearly completely eliminate our carbon footprint. I think it is safe to say that since technology got us into this mess, that it’s going to play a significant role in solving this problem.
The amount of co2 Humans have released to the atmosphere in a mere hundred years took the earth hundreds of thousands of years of volcanic activity to produce and millions and millions of years for the ocean to scrub it out.
Since the earsth climate system naturally changes much more gradually, this almost certainly represents the largest single shock to the climate in earth’s entire history. I think we can safely say that this is well beyond human scale and yet… we did this!
We will need all the tools at our grasp to change the climate back.
