In the blaring heat I had a panic attack. We were headed home in our
small city car, without AC. Saw the trees, saw the grass, and all I
could think of "glad I didn't light a cigarette".
There was this report recently: 70% of the global forests are in
immediate danger, with essential tipping points racing towards of us. I
could see it happen. I could feel it. And fell silent. She had to watch
the road.
“I’m having a panic attack”.
We were headed home, headlights in rear view mirrors.
Almost naked, lying on the bed. Sleepy but never asleep. Tired, but wide
awake. Can’t sleep.
“We’re fucked”, I say. Holding sweaty hands. I start to ramble,
semi-coherent utterances of meaningless vibrations. A thing I
do.
“You know, most trees will be dead by the end of our lifetime?”. They can’t
keep up, they’ll burn, fall dead. All twisted wood stretching upwards.
“It’s the water, in the heat it evaporates and in a lot of places the
ground cannot buffer it in periods of extreme heat”. “It’s why you see
the water pressure drop right now”. We have no solutions to this. “There are
delicate limits to ecosystems, and we’re pushing far and wide beyond
them”. As I try to formulate a coherent story in my head.
Picking dots from an ocean of points. Graphs, even. It’s all
connected. *You see, you pompous semi-intellectual, can’t even keep away
from the platitudes; keep your mouth shut. With your Bayesian statistics, directed graphs, ontologies, differential equations, harmonic functions, philosophy, musings: just shut the fuck up.*
“This will be normal soon, what’s 8 days of tropics will become 16, 32, 64, 128”. That exponential growth curve we’ve learned to hate. "Better get used to it". I know that's a half-truth, "it's complicated". Of course it is. It's always complicated, but so far we have underestimated all of the effects. It cuts both ways, that 16 could become 1024 in a heartbeat. "The glass will be half full before it's full".
“You know what I think is going to happen. It’s all fucked”
Summers will get warmer. Sometimes you will see contrarians “I don’t
mind if the Netherlands becomes southern-France in terms of climate”. A
projection not too far into the future, 2050? Maybe. But they’re wrong:
long before we have that climate, forests will have burned, cities will
be flooded, economies will have no meaning, nations: gone.
Social structures will have collapsed from the billions of immigrants, showing no compassion.
Strained economies will default. Even if we could theoretically feed the hungry, we won't.
“Death by a thousand cuts” I utter: you see we think of drought and
flooding somehow as opposite; that’s wrong. The Netherlands is in for a
treat. We’ll have that “once in a thousand years” event, like the
Randstad being flooded, the Antwerp and Rotterdam harbor. “That can’t
happen again”. And just as we realized the simmering shrubs from the
drought fires have died, we’ll have another. And another, and another.
To the point where it is no longer economically viable to rebuild the
infrastructure: where will we go? This is basically Florida right now. And
California, Bangladesh.
In an offhand remark earlier that day discussing stock plays, I said:
“oh but I’ve already written off Dutch agriculture, it’s all gone”. As
if that is something ‘normal’ to say. Yet I did: progressively drier
weather with higher chances of extreme weather events like torrential rain, mud
slides, and so forth will erode and eventually destroy whatever arable land we
have. Ironically the greenhouses will just suffer glass damage, until
it’s no longer viable to rebuild. This is happening right
now. Give it another 3 years or so, I say to myself.
“Tipping points”, ever drifting further. “as the polar caps, the Arctic
and Antarctic, melt their albedo reduces: how much energy they radiate
back into space”. As the ice melts, it exposes the darker sea underneath
thus heating up the surrounding waters. Compounding the effects. There
is methane trapped there, for thousands of years, millions even. Gasses
that when the Arctic melts will be released, and they will be. It will trigger
effects so large it’s hard to comprehend them. 10-15+°C, as if that is meaningful to anyone. We'll all be dead.
It’s happening, Siberia is on fire. It means total collapse of our food chains, and thus our "economies". Billions will flee, billions will be dead.
“I know”, she whispers barely awake.
We all know, we all know that this happening: extreme weather will
compound, more than half the world population is at risk of the
immediate effects of heat waves. We all know: that the ice melting. That
meters of sea level rise are not unheard of, even likely, in the history
of things. Cities will flood, people will go hungry, forests will
burn. Economies will collapse, proxy wars will be fought. Real wars will
be fought.
“You know where I hid the potassium-iodine?” I ask, suddenly feeling a
rush of all the things in my head. “It’s where we keep the plastic bags”.
Potassium-iodine, anyone who has lived next to a nuclear power plants
knows what those are. They were almost out of stock at my local
pharmacy, I grabbed the last two. “Do we need those?” she asked, “you
never in know this world” I say in a louder voice than I intended. The
cashier added them to bill without questions, sun spray, deodorant, and
potassium-iodine.
“You just hope someone doesn't push the wrong buttons”.
“You know what’s coming right?” summers will get hotter, extreme weather
will happen more frequently, economies will struggle to keep up with
damages, crash. Fill a bathtub with water, as the trees collapse around
you. Apply for immigration, as borders around you shut down or become
meaningless. Watch the prices rise, and so will the riots.
“What worries me, is that it might already be too late”. Non-linear
dynamics, chaotic systems, words without meaning. Imaginary things in my
head, bifurcations. Things not IPCC reports. “Fuck”.
She’s asleep now, she has heard this before. Everyone has. Heavy
breathing, almost jealous.
I grab a beer. Sleep is more important than my ramblings. My sleep is
more important than my ramblings.
You want to see what I see? I see a world descending into chaos.
Holding on to threads. I see a world with palm trees in Greenland. I see
a world where I can grow wine in places where the sun never sets. I see
a world; I see a world. In flames.
We’ll think it’s all normal. But at what point will “once in a lifetime”
become “every year”. At what point, will we think: “fuck, we need to fix
this”. And it will already be too late. It might already be. Systems
thinking, a curse in disguise.
It does something with a person, it hurts me. It’s all very basic, high
school science stuff. As the Earth heats, patterns will shift. If it
heats too much: we’re dead. We’re dead. Can’t you see it?
And I take my beer, sit down behind my screen. And I sit down. In the
blaring heat, watching stock tickers. I mutter to myself: this can’t be.
I look at the mess around me, “oh right, I should take a picture of the
moon”.