There's no reason to believe my grandchildren won't see the end of this century. And if I and science hold out, I just might see the middle of it. I think of the changes I have seen and the social changes that happened around me, whether I was all that aware of them at the time or not. For instance, I was a young kid in Detroit during the days of the equal rights movement and I have vague memories of the race riots happening only a few miles from my home. I remember the National Guard driving down my street, though I had no idea why--I just thought it was cool that "the army guys" were driving in front of my house. I didn't know why my mom wouldn't let us out on the street to watch, though.
In 1973, the year we moved from Detroit to Traverse City, the American Indian Movement was under siege at Wounded Knee. I was ten years old and had absolutely no concept of what was going on. I thought it was cowboys and Indians. I suppose it was that same old story, but back then I was ignorant enough not to realize whose side I should have been on.
In April of 1970, just a few days past my seventh birthday, we celebrated the very first Earth Day. It was an age of environmental awareness and, despite all of the bad things that would follow Richard Milhous Nixon to his grave, despite that he really was, in some ways, a crook, he was also a pretty damned good environmental President. A lot of our clean air and water can be directly attributed to the acts of Dick Nixon.
And it's the environment that spurred this post. I started it on my other blog and somehow it got off on television and playing outside and all of that, but the original intent was to ruminate a bit on the future of the world from an environmental position. You see, science clearly tells us that fifty years from now we will be living in a world very much different than the one we occupy today. Oh, sure, it will be the same size and shape, as long as a huge meteor doesn't strike us somewhere along the way. The continents will generally be where they are now, though they will be just a bit smaller as sea levels rise and much of our current coastline sinks below the waves. Global climate change is occurring and there's little hope of stopping it, or abating it in any significant way.
And that's what worries me. What will the world be like for my grandchildren? Millions of people will be displaced around the globe, mostly in regions that are already stricken by poverty and a lack of food. Fresh water will be a concern not just in those places, but right here as well. Many people--people we should be listening to, by the way--tell us that fifty years from now our concerns will not be for petroleum, they will be for clean, fresh drinking water. You can, however inconvenient it may seem, live just fine without petroleum. Try living without fresh water. It doesn't work. Water will be the most valuable commodity, followed closely by food. It is for these two things that the wars of the future will be fought.
We live in a world of nearly 6.8 billion people. The United States has a mere 300 million of those people and we use 25% of the world's resources. By 2050--a year I could conceivably see as a babbling, senile, all but useless 87 year old man--the world population is expected to be over 9 billion people. Some say as high as 10 billion. We are already living, well, most of the world beyond our borders, anyway, in a world where resources are stretched thinly and are nearing the breaking point. If you start eliminating coastal regions due to flooding and storm damage brought about by climate change, you're looking at a lot of hungry, thirsty, displaced people who are going to be looking for better digs. We is the better digs, folks.
Scientists have been telling us these things for several decades now--it's not just some crazy idea that Al Gore thought up. Al Gore just happens to be one of those rare people who was in a position to get accurate, factual information about what's coming down the pike and he got scared enough to use his influence to try and do something about it. But a lot of people who like their current lifestyle and don't feel like changing anything so some kids in the future can maybe be happy once in a while have done everything in their power to vilify him and try to make the rest of us think he is nuts and all the global warming science is a myth. Well, it's not.
We are in the midst of the next great extinction. We have been for at least a century. They come around every couple hundred million years or so. Anywhere from 75%-90% of species generally die off during these events. That's what happened to the dinosaurs. There are estimates that as many as three species go extinct every hour. Every. hour. Plants, animals, etc. It's an estimate, yes. And probably not easily confirmed since a lot of the species are rainforest species that might not have even been cataloged yet! There were over a thousand species of mammal on the IUCN Redlist in 2008. Their report "has confirmed an extinction crisis, with almost one in four [mammals] at risk of disappearing forever." It is much more than likely that I have seen animals that my grandchildren will never see. By 2050 we'll be living in a much different world; even if we change every single bad habit we have as a species, some of these events are already in place and inevitable. It's quite possible that American wildlife will be little more than white-tailed deer, coyotes, possums, rats, sparrows and black birds, vermin, and not a whole lot more. Diversity is dwindling and not just in the suburbs.
Somewhere in the middle of this I have to have hope. I have to hope that something will happen and we'll get ourselves on track before it's too late and maybe, just maybe, we'll preserve some semblance of a decent world to live in. I want happiness for my grandkids. I want them to be able to go out for a hike and see animals. Different animals. And not just in zoos. I want them to be able to see more plants and insects than they can readily identify. I want there to be some mystery to their world. Something exotic in a pleasing way. I want them to live a life where they can have a varied and healthful diet and clean water to drink and I want them to be able to have these things not at the expense of people around the world. There's a way for all of us to live sustainably. We just need to find it. To, first, look for it and strive for it. The future is now, as they say, and it's high time we all start looking for ways to break out of our paradigm and start shifting things around because our sense of importance is completely upside down.
