Month 8, Day 24: Pulling Out All The Stops

I figured I’d make one last plug for world peace before I go back to chastising the news media for ignoring climate change.

Dear President Obama,

By substantially altering the nature of the world’s climate, humanity has created and entered the Anthropocene Epoch. Indications for the long-term survival of our species in this eponymous age are less and less favorable.

The short-term effect of global climate change is of course to create ever more chaotic and damaging weather patterns — leading to devastating events like Pakistan’s floods and Russia’s fires. While it’s impossible to say that a specific calamity was specifically triggered by climate change, the greenhouse effect is predicted to increase extreme weather exactly the way it’s happening today.

The short-term effect is disaster, deprivation, and misery. A longer-term effect is the likelihood of political instability. Resource wars brought about through weather-induced food shortages; water wars catalyzed by droughts; governments toppled because of a failure to respond appropriately to a climate catastrophe…these are among the “coming attractions” for our species.

Unless we act thoughtfully and carefully to head them off. The U.S.A. must set an example to the world by enacting strong climate legislation, rewarding organizations and individuals who make important contributions to reducing greenhouse gases, and investing heavily in renewable energy systems. If America is to be a world leader, we must lead, not wait for China and India to get their houses in order, as some of the procrastinators in the Senate would have us do.

But this is only the beginning. We (and the rest of the world) must gaze unflinchingly at what’s going to be coming at us over the next centuries, and make plans for how we will cope with a global increase in droughts, fires, storms, blizzards, floods and famines. Can humanity unite in the face of a common enemy? If humanity is to survive climate chaos, we can no longer afford war.

Never has the case for world peace been of such urgency.

Yours Sincerely,

Warren Senders