Holy crap, did anyone else watch last week’s episode of PBS’s Nova, “Dimming the Sun”? The premise: “New evidence that air pollution has masked the full impact of global warming suggests the world may soon face a heightened climate crisis.” The three unexpected days of clear skies after 9/11, when all aircraft were grounded, showed that the artificial clouds that are airplane contrails are having a dramatic effect on how much sunlight reaches the surface of the planet, part of the overall impact that pollution is having on the environment, and it is scary as hell. Basically, we’re fucked, and it doesn’t even require secret government conspiracies to douse us unsuspecting Americans with aerosols via airplane exhaust.
Meanwhile, deliberate willingness to discard the scientific method for religious reasons as well as the willful ignorance of a scientifically illiterate populace continue to keep issues of global climate change from the forefront.
Meanwhile meanwhile, the BP gas station on the corner near me has seen shocking rises in prices over the last week. When I left for work one morning last week, the “cheap” gas -- which had been at $2.49 for quite a while -- was $3.04 a gallon. When I returned home that evening, it was $3.09. Tonight, it was $3.13 (premium was $3.33). I don’t own a car anymore, but I can’t help but check out the price board at the BP to see what’s going on. The local evening Eyewitless News is full of man-in-the-street interviews with people complaining about how much it’s costing to top up their SUVs, but is there any analysis of why the price has been jumping so dramatically lately, or any commentary on all the idiots who insist in driving SUVs in urban environments? Not a bit.
No one’s paying attention... which is part of the thesis of my latest essay up at the Internet Review of Science Fiction, about how human-caused ecological disaster has been depicted by Hollywood. I focus a lot on Soylent Green, partly because that flick, cheesy as it may be, scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, and still does... and also because even as the realities of ecological meltdown edge ever closer to our reality, Hollywood simply is not confronting the topic like it did 30 years ago.
And it’s not just Hollywood, of course -- it’s our entire culture with its head in the sand... in the tar sands, maybe. As Jim Kunstler at the Peak Oil blog Clusterfuck Nation writes today:
The right wing still pretends we can still drill our way out of this, if only the nature freaks would allow them to. The "green" folks thinks that we can devote crops to the production of gasoline substitutes, even though a scarcity of fossil fuel-based fertilizers will sharply cut crop yields for human food. Nobody, it seems, can imagine an American life not centered on cars....
But the problem is not going away. It's not five or ten years down the road -- it's here, now. We're in the zone. We're entering a world of hurt. The pain will ebb and flow, as the pain of a fatal illness ebbs and flows over the days. The price of oil and gasoline will ratchet up and down, but along a discernable upward trendline.
...
This morning's electronic edition of The New York Times displays not one home page headline about oil or gasoline prices, despite the trauma of the week just passed.
Geek philosophy -- rational, scientific, goal-oriented -- hasn’t yet infiltrated our society enough to get our heads out of the sand.
Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, I just bought my soylent green T-shirt, and shall wear it with a smirk till I break down and cry.
2 Comments
Leave a comment