Dave Kearns

Global Warming itself is not a myth: the earth is getting warmer, our climate is changing. Some of the pressures bringing about that change are human-created carbon emissions. But, contrary to what Pacific Gas & Electric would have you believe, we cannot stop global warming! Still, the energy company insists on putting a tag line on it’s TV ads for energy conservation claiming (or, in some cases, alluding to) the consumer’s ability to do just that.

Reducing carbon emissions is a good thing to do. So is conserving energy. But even if we stopped all carbon emissions today, all over the world, climate change would still come.

History shows that those organisms which can survive global climate change are those which are the most adaptable. But to be considered “adaptable,” we’re going to have to either plan for mass migrations as the climate changes, or work to keep our microclimates livable through the use of energy-efficient, low-carbon-emitting changes to our way of life – adding heat or cooling, irrigation, flood-control, and other non-natural impediments to nature. Science fiction talks about humans going to other planets and “terraforming” them – “…deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, or ecology to be similar to those of Earth in order to make it habitable by humans” – but we’re going to have to perfect ways of terraforming the changed Earth first!

UPDATE: I’ve just come across an excellent essay by physicist Freeman Dyson (the inventor of the Dyson Sphere) on this issue. Be sure to read thru to the end where he also tells how he almost set back the course of biology a generation!