Craig Childs -- Apocalyptic planet: field guide to the everending earth
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Childs' time scales are huge.  He forces our minds out of the
immediate present into historical and geological time spans that are
thousands, millions, and even hundreds of millions of years long.

Because of that immense vision, the period we are in now is not a
singular event; it has been here before, some number of times.  We
are now in an inter-glacial, a period between glaciations or ice
ages.  Ice will return.  Childs claims that deserts will return.
It's likely that periods of cold and periods of heat and periods of
long-term drought and periods of deserts etc will come and go any
number of times in the future.

And, due to that expanded vision, we can appreciate that we are
living in an ideal, felicitous moment in our planet's life, one that
is especially agreeable and supportive.  Our planet was not always
like this.  It will be at some time in the future, likely at any
number of times in the future very unlike the conditions we are now
in and very disagreeable to life that is anything like us or the
plants and animals we are familiar with.

The system we live in is chaotic; it is best described at some
levels by the concepts of chaos theory.  Our earth and its
geological mechanics, our weather system, our oceans and their
currents, the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica now (but
who knows for how long) all are
nonlinear, chaotic, and unpredictable, if they are deterministic at
all.  That means that, depending on your level of pessimism or
optimism, you can view our world as being in a short-term period of
balance in a favorable condition.  It's in balance now, but it may
be that it is unstable, i.e. that some possible nudge may send it
veering out of that favorable period.  So, if you are as dystopian as
I and you want something to keep you awake at night, remind yourself
that we (humans, our civilization, our economic and political
systems) are doing everything we can to give that balanced but
unstable system as many nudges and pokes as we can.  We are living
in a time period that is a very pleasant anomaly.  Those pleasant
conditions could go away due to any number of complex, interacting
forces that are outside of our control.  And, we are doing
everything possible that is in our control to change those current
conditions.

What makes "Apocalyptic planet" fascinating is that in between all
the stories about the places he visits (deserts, ice sheets in
Greenland, glaciers in South America, etc) and the stories about the
people he is there with, are perspectives and perceptions about all
manner of possible pasts and possible futures and how and why we
might get to any one of more of those possible futures.  It's a book
that is about as mind-expanding as you could ask for.  The
perspectives from "Apocalyptic planet" make the point of view of
Elizabeth Kolbert's "The sixth extinction" (which I very much
encourage you to read) seem small, self-centered, and local by
comparison.

And, yet another even more pessimistic point of view.  In spite of
all our talk about doing something to stop the trend toward global
warming, we are *not* going to do anything even remotely effective
to stop it.  Our present system (capitalism, liberal democracy,
whatever) including its massive use of resources and burning of
fossil fuels has raised the standard of living of so many people in
the last hundred years, so that we will *not* change that.  So much
wealth is in the hands of and controlled by powerful interests,
interests whose wealth and power is tied up in those resources and
fuels and their exploitation that we (they) will *not* voluntarily
give that wealth up.  It does not even make sense to suggest that it
would happen.

Imagine, Childs prompts, that in the near future we make the
technological break-throughs needed to enable us to control the
climate and its trends.  That possibility might be more frightening
yet.  Remember, we are discussing a dynamic, non-linear, chaotic
system.  It's a system whose future we cannot predict, and so, it's
even more likely that we would not be able to predict the effects of
any forces we apply to it.  We are as likely to over-shoot as not.
Our actions are capable of having totally unexpected consequences.
The idea that we might try is truly scary.  But, fear not, we are
likely take those kinds of actions only if someone believes that
they can make a huge profit by doing so.

Childs is in some sense a travel writer and an extremely lyrical
one.  Listening to him describe the places he visits, whether
deserts or dramatic mountains or mono-culture farming in mid-west
U.S. is a delight.

"Apocalyptic planet" is not your "normal" environmental apocalyptic
book, but it is apocalyptic, and very fascinating.

08/17/2014

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