As a child, I had an obsession with dinosaurs. I watched every special and flick I could find. When I finally got my library card at age eight, I was checking out books by the bagloads, learning about all things prehistoric.
When you’re a dinosaur kid, you become very familiar with mass extinctions, which are frightfully common in the Earth’s geological history. In summary: Some change in global conditions, either a massive release of carbon dioxide and methane (and oxygen in one case) into the atmosphere, continental drift, one or more invasive species, or, on rare occasions a foreign body like a meteor or major geological disaster causes local circumstances in an ecosystem to change enough so whatever is living in that ecosystem can’t sustain itself anymore.
Usually the creatures that have the hardest time are the ones which take the longest to breed the next generation, which in our current time includes humans. The last mass extinction before the industrial revolution was the loss of the megafauna — mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, and short faced bears in our neck of the woods, which evidence suggests was caused by the spread of humans across the planet who slashed and burned heavy foliage along the way to build their homes.
I bring this up as we are entering another week of Inuvik being encased in a cloud of smog from a nearby forest fire which, at least as of this writing, is not poised to burn the town to a crisp. Regardless, I strongly recommend you wear an N95 mask when you go outside, as forest fire smoke is very different from smoking tobacco or cannabis. This is ash and soot, the charred remains of tree bark and furry little animals. You really don’t want to breathe that in.
But, unfortunately, we collectively made our choice, deciding that enriching a select few of us was more important than ensuring the long-term viability of civilization. Now, we’re clearly in the “find out” phase.
As it turns out, climate change isn’t just no more glaciers. It’s also runaway inflation as climate disasters and crop failures disrupt supply chains. Of course, any comment on inflation needs to point out costs of goods have been artificially kept low for decades by globalization, where we used gigantic greenhouse gas emitting transport vessels to move goods from economies with low valued currency to our privileged shores. Not only did this create widespread inequality across the Earth, it also accelerated climate change.
If you think things are bad now, just wait until there’s droughts across the Midwest of the United States, also known as the breadbasket of North America. Inflation will seem like a minor problem when there is no food available. Here in the North we’re slightly insulated against food shortages thanks to the hunting and on the land culture which still exists up here — so long as the land cooperates. But as reported a few weeks ago in the Inuvik Drum, living on the land is likely going to look extremely different in 2050 than it does today.
Another aspect of climate change people need to realize is that as reality sets in and areas become simply too hot for human habitation, those humans are going to move to places they can survive, meaning heading towards the poles. This will put massive pressure on our own supply chains and infrastructure, assuming the people who migrate here in desperation come peacefully.
We’re already at the point where floods and heat are killing people. It just gets worse from here. We need to start taking climate change seriously.
Now.