Heading Towards the Edge

SINCE 2022, the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the Earth's atmosphere by human industrial activity has increased by about one point five percent. Before and during the Covid 19 pandemic, there had been a leveling off of carbon emissions, as a great upsurge in sustainable clean energy production helped in slowing the rate of atmosphereic carbon accumulation. The great economic shutdown associated with the pandemic contributed to a lessening of carbon pollution. The air quality over major cities worldwide got cleaner, birdsong was heard where it hadn't been heard in decades, and visibilitiy in major metropolitan areas noticeably improved. Then, the pandemic receded from a volcanic avalanche of death to a dull roar, still unacceptable, but accepted by a world culture hell bent of materialistic industrial production resumption. Production came roaring back, with a vengeance, as the engines of prosperity came roaring back to life, refilling corporate bank accounts, restocking retail store shelves, and, almost as an after thought, resuming the catastrophic level of added atmospheric carbon. Pent up consumer demand was rewarded with a renewal of manufacturing, production, and distribution. Everyone seemed happy, except the Earth herself. The exact percentage of carbon in the atmoshpere was recently measured at four hundred and twenty five point nine parts per million, and climbing. Four hundred and fifty parts per million is considered the point of no return, afer which catastrophic climate change will have gone over the edge, slipped off into irreversible oblivion. At the current rate of increase, that level will have been reached and passed by the middle of this century. Perhaps the strangest aspect of all this is how meekly and uncomplainingly we the human species is spriraling downward towards its own extinction, and the extinction of all life on Earth. Almost as if in a dream, as if the horrible nightmare we are inflicting upon ourselves is precisely that; a nightmare, unreal, from which we will soon awaken, and thus need have no concern about. We are dreaming our way straight into self inflicted extinction, effectively, mass suicide. This rapid increase in carbon accumulation comes at the precise time when we humans should be going in exactly the opposite direction, phasing out fossil fuel use, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, converting to an all solar all wind driven energy economy, to prevent the worst possible effects of climate change. The climate change which is inevitable, baked into the system by our previous decades of unrestrained economic growth, is now beginning to have its impact full force on our daily weather and overall climate. Extreme weather patterns and events are happening on a daily basis. Torrential flooding downpours of unrelenting rain fall. Extreme heat waves at times during the year when the climate should be more temporate. The violent storms with which we are becoming increasingly familiar, to which we have become accustomed, become inured. We see all this all around us, but choose to do almost nothing, instead of cooperating globally in a drastic, sustained program of changing our habits. We are simply too addicted to our disastrous way of life, and, for all appearances, will continue as we always have before, content to enjoy our own lives of hedonistic denial as we pass on the ultimate final disaster to our descendants, straight into our, and their collective graves.