Last week Alberta saw one of the worst forest fires that led to a massive evacuation of a town of nearly 80000 people. The unusually hot, dry spell of weather especially during the beginning of May provided good fodder to the fire now currently and aptly named ‘The Beast’. Being in the El Nino phase, the weather patterns have been changing in North America for the past couple of years. This warm phase should end and the cooler La Nina phase should commence soon. Nowadays ever since oil hit rock bottom prices and the growth of the oil and gas industry effectively stalled, there has been no mention of the eminent environmentalists that have been consistently dominating the headlines earlier when the prices were high. Leonardo DiCaprio won his Oscar, many of the environmentalists have either entered the polity or gone underground and so on.
Climate change has taken precedence with almost the entire world endorsing it and all doubters effectively silenced through aggressive marketing, relentless posturing and acts of intimidation etc. In a recent comedy show on Netflix, one of the supporting characters was remarking that ‘climate change is a way for Californians to sell books’. It is clear that the message of climate change has been accepted widely across the world and stringent climate rules and regulations are on its way that may affect the 21st century lifestyle that we have been accustomed to till date.
If the war on terror dominated the headlines in the beginning decade of this century, the issue of climate change will dominate for the foreseeable future. It will continue till a day when the people of this world will finally realize the true fact that climate changes consistently. The only difference here is the burgeoning population and the increased appetite towards materialism and the resulting consumerism. These factors has had an adverse impact on nature. Never before has the world’s population ballooned into such astronomic numbers and with the passage of time, the living conditions on earth will only deteriorate. Lack of clean air to breathe, fresh water to drink or hospitable conditions to work and live would make conditions hellish for a good majority of the population on this earth. The only solution would be to traverse the outer space and build space colonies and find newer worlds to live.
If the human life was meant to be a journey, may the journey to find newer worlds be the correct thing to do. I do think that climate change will be the inevitable trigger for that journey.
Photo Credit: nevil zaveri (thank you for 10million+ views 🙂 via Compfight cc
Tenny Thomas 