Let The Planet Die

“The force of the report comes simply from assembling all the data in one place; the summary reads like a laundry list of the apocalypse — flood, drought, disease, starvation. Climate change, the group noted, will reduce yields of major crops by up to two per cent each decade for the remainder of this century. (One of the reasons for this is that heat waves, which will become more common as the world warms, depress the yields of staple crops like corn.) Since the global population is projected to grow throughout the century — to eight billion by 2025, nine billion by 2050, and almost eleven billion by 2100 — this is obviously rather bad news. At the same time, the incidence of flooding, drought, and general weather-related mayhem will increase, and already-vulnerable populations will be pushed closer to the edge, or, quite possibly, over it. Conflict is bound to ensue.”
 — It must be nice to have been born at the beginning of the baby boom, winning a chronological lottery that put you in position for an opening up of personal, political and economic opportunities unprecedented in the whole of human history and allowing you to reap the benefits of all the suffering and struggle that preceded you while giving you the means to establish a domination of popular culture so pervasive and long-lasting that even your children’s children are unable to escape it, plus you get to die before all the real problems actually make themselves more than an inconvenient thought experiment. I suppose the rest of us will just sit here while the bill comes due. (Although who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky too.) Anyway, I guess what I’m wondering is if it’s too late to prepare for climate change do we still need to recycle? Because if it’s not going to make much of a difference I’ve got better things to do with my time.