HMS Titanic again?

Recently, I had a chat with my brother who's now settled in Boston. He's planning to get married end of this year. Not exactly a springtime wedding but there were just too many logistics complications, his fiancee's job and my dad's activity schedule being a couple.

Anyway, we got to talking about his plan for a family and that's when I learnt that he and his fiancee aren't sure if they want to have one. It caught me by surprise so I asked why.

His answer was quite blunt. With all the things going on in the world, he's not sure if the kids will have a future.

At the root of his pessimism are a few things. He thinks the world will be in a state of war for another 2-3 generations and it will have a very unpleasant ending. What if his kids get drafted to war, he worries. (We have one friend drafted to Iraq and another to Israel plus a few still serving in the US National Guard.)

He also thinks that in 50 years time, the climate will arrive at a life-threatening point. And because of climate change, in as short as a couple of hundred years, instead of fighting wars over territory and ideology, people will fight over food and water. And it will be nastier because its driven by desperation and not ideals, aided by new age weapons.

All in all, he doesn't believe humans can last another 4-5 generations and feels that bringing more bodies will only create needless suffering.

I told him his doomsday predictions aren't new. Even during the time of the Pharaohs and Chinese emperors, amidst the intense brutality, many people didn't expect that we (humans) would last another millenia. Yet here we are.

But what he said next did strike home a point. Those eras didn't have to grapple with the greatest game changer of all - the cataclysm caused by an overheated planet.

I can sympathize. When I look at the IPCC data on climate change and the planet's climate history, I too have a bad feeling at the pit of my stomach. Naturally the league of nations will be all positive about it. You can't say there isn't much we can do without creating massive global chaos.

But I had the last say of course - my good old Butterfly effect theory. What if one of his kids becomes the savior that man had been waiting for? Not a savior of the religious variety but maybe as an inventor of a technology that can save the world?

Even Einstein's parents never thought that far when they raised him up. Is he so sure that his kid - or any kid born in the next 100 years for that matter - won't be the one that might change the course of history?

Yeah, its a long shot I know. I guess the good news is, he and his fiancee are still unsure. I do understand where he's coming from but I also know that not having a family would also remove one big reason why people get married. Maybe they found a way around that. I really hope so.

I guess I now understand why visions of the HMS Titanic come to mind whenever I watch the news these days.

p.s. Smile and take it easy. I dunno about you but I got plenty to be happy about, Titanic or not.

How bad is bad?

Likely worse than the Great Depression according to this opinion piece from Salon.com.

In a nutshell, here's what it forecasts.

• Skyrocketing hydrocarbon prices
• Skyrocketing food prices
• Stillborn newly industrialized economies
• Massive unemployment
• Massive poverty and starvation
• Massive civil unrest
• Regime threatening instability

Add global climate gone haywire, something the Great Depression didn't suffer from, where we'll be enjoying all this under 50-degree heatwaves and super hurricanes, and we might just witness the beginnings of a great die-off that'll bring world population back to a manageable level of oooh... maybe a billion people, give or take.

Call me pessimistic but I think Salon might just be on to something here for a couple of reasons.

One, that most of us have been conditioned to place personal gratification and conformity over the consequences of our actions. I remember the food fights we used to have at school, the gas guzzlers we drove around in, the number of cellphones and gadgets we would have by the time we were 18, and how we're shunned if we didn't look or act like everyone else.

The story of the resulting environmental and economic collapse, while intriguing as a good scary novel, never really moved us to do much. There's always a reason not to do it. Something about hanging on to our thick wallets, frail egos and stubborn beliefs no matter the cost. We have a name for it. "Reality."

Two, most of us underestimate the power of greed and how it fans the flames of our own demise. Even as things are disintegrating today, the opportunist in us is still abuzz out how to make a killing from stocks and property. Yes, when markets are frightened, get greedy. This is the golden opportunity to be the next Warren Buffet. Never mind that all we've got left is the shirts on our backs.

Clearly we have no desire to change. The good life is too ... good to give up.

If you loved Alien vs. Predator, you're gonna love Humans vs. Mother Earth. One armed with its Wall-Street smarts, the other with her natural resources, ecosystem and time. Guess who will win.

What goes around comes around.

If only we humans actually believed in what we said.

The Butterfly Effect: Redux

"More than 90 percent of major armed conflicts — those resulting in more than 1,000 deaths — occurred in countries that contain one of the 34 biodiversity hotspots, while 81 percent took place within specific hotspots. A total of 23 hotspots experienced warfare over the half-century studied."

"...the hotspots are home to a majority of the world's 1.2 billion poorest people who rely on the resources and services provided by natural ecosystems for their daily survival."

- Livescience.

Sounds logical.

1. Biodiversity due to climate and geological conditions attract more living things
2. Living things attract predators
3. More predators mean less food
4. Less food means more potential conflict
5. More potential conflict means more real wars
6. War in dense population centers mean more casualties

Since predatory behavior plays a significant role in the scenario, I must distinguish between a human and wild predator. A lion, as ferocious as it is, stops eating when its full. Humans on the other hand have no circuit breakers. When they are full, they hoard. When they've hoarded too much, they trade. When they trade, the natural supply and demand system is forced to change and so on.

But doesn't the same cycle of life happen, say, in the ancient frozen Viking lands?

Sure it does, but freezing Scandinavia isn't exactly a mecca of biodiversity. The human population is sparse and a war that breaks out won't see millions dead, unlike in the heavily populated Indus Valley or coastal areas of China.

So it does seem logical that your chances of becoming a casualty of war would be much higher if you were born in a biologically lush place like China, Cambodia or India than a desert or an ice-locked nation, for the simple reason that when a place is teeming with life, a swing of the blade kills a lot more.

Conservation

Must be nice to swim all day.

Pic source: www.whale-images.com