Meltup
New studies have been released showing that permafrost in the Arctic may disappear in the summer by 2035. Until recently, it was thought we would have till 2050 before reaching that sad state of affairs. Interestingly, climate-related concerns are not the only reaction seen following that news: the prospect of a new potential maritime route is triggering a lot of interest from Russia and Scandinavian countries alike. What else is bad?
Below are a couple of thoughts based on that observation, hoping to shed some light not merely on the facts themselves, but on the way they are being shown and interpreted:
Adopting a somewhat opportunistic approach in an otherwise worldwide environmental crisis, while questionable, is not all that surprising. Donald Trump recently offered to buy Greenland away from Denmark for the same obvious reason. While any strategy chosen by Trump immediately sounds suspicious — with good reason — it is perfectly understandable, and largely predictable, that countries, especially developing ones, would act on this specific one. Russia, for instance, currently has a much weaker economy than it would like the world to know, with a fading currency and great difficulties amidst the sanitary and economic crisis. It is only natural that they would try and leverage global warming if it allows the country to deliver or help deliver goods via a new northern route — for a profit. And, while it will probably worsen the environmental factors at play here, one can hardly prevent them from taking such action.
If we go back to the root cause of the problem — global warming, to be clear — what is interesting is that news journalists tend to focus on depicting an incredibly dark picture of the phenomenon. One in which there will soon be no more polar bears, no more permafrost, no more… the list usually goes on for minutes. And while most recent scientific studies point towards that conclusion, it still does not mean that:
this is the end of the world: talks of a turning point, one after which humanity has no way back to a future with it still existing, have actually been around for centuries. British economic Thomas Robert Malthus once predicted that we would soon become unable to feed the world’s population — in the 19th century. Many theorists, including John Stuart Mill or Karl Marx, predicted that the world’s economy would either collapse on itself, or merely tend towards a stationary state, none of which have happened (so far: one could argue that there is still time, were it not for the other logical mistakes present in these theories). While it is perfectly healthy to be concerned about global warming, and while it is indeed a very grave phenomenon, it still does not mean that we are doomed. At the very least unlikely, since everything is a matter of odds rather than certainty.
there are a lot of things we still don’t know: the main reason Malthus, Stuart Mill or Karl Marx were wrong (besides logical flaws) is because they overlooked one simple, yet critical fact — they were merely taking into account scientific knowledge of their era to try and predict a very distant future. Malthus couldn’t foresee mechanized agriculture, and therefore couldn’t imagine how we could ever feed billions of people — until it happened, and we did. What most prophets of doom fail to realize is that, luckily, humanity’s greatest minds are hard at work on finding actual solutions to the very real problems we are currently facing, global warming being at the top of the list. While it is hard to say when said solutions will exactly appear (for research is by definition an exercise in uncertainty), history shows that we have a strong tendency to get there when we need to as a species. Call it our survival instinct…
In short, while our current issues are in no way fabricated, or even overblown, the key mistake we keep making is forgetting that what we do not know or understand today will hopefully be better known and understood tomorrow. And that, thanks to more science, more innovation, more analysis, we will likely (and hopefully) soon find ever more efficient ways to fight phenomena like climate change. And that our children may get a brand new life-threatening dilemma of their own to face. Having to choose between living on Earth or on Mars, perhaps?