Climate Change vs Human Change in anticlimatic

I think a lot of people forget that Nature is the enemy, but not me.

I am inclined to take care of It- to collect and remove rubbish from natural spaces, to escort pests away from homes instead of killing them, to try to leave a minimal disruptive footprint anywhere I go- but these are gestures motivated by basic respect. A respect for my constant mortal adversary. It is a fight we ultimately will not win. We are nothing, in comparison. Age and entropy are some vicious allies.

Where I live we have blizzarding winter, but every place has its own natural perils that serve as low reminders. I feel like winter is kind of special in that it is low in severity compared to, say, a hurricane- but it endures for much longer and is just as deadly. Without the innovation of men, beginning with animal fur and fire, Nature would snuff us out immediately. We buy ourselves a little time, maybe innovate some things to help buy the next generation a little more time, and so on and so on into the future.

It’s partly this respectful adversarial relationship that keeps anything “climate change” near the bottom of my list of global priorities. Pretending for a second that I trust any source on any issue that I don’t have personal empirical working knowledge of, there is no threat to “The Planet” greater than the eventual swallowing of the entire thing by the sun as it turns into a Red Giant, not that there will be much left but rock by that time. So saving The Planet is pointless. It’s doomed.

What might NOT be doomed, are people. With enough innovation and scientific discovery, maybe we can ditch this berg, take our conquering of nature across the stars, and fulfill the star child evolution prophesy of 2001 A Space Odyssey. All of our efforts should go into that. Anything less is short sighted.