Torrential inundation: wrath of God?
Or merely climate change in rampant form?
If we are to be spared His righteous rod
Could we assuage this mighty, raging storm?
Or maybe Mankind’s fate is truly sealed
The planet’s payback cannot be repealed!
On Climate Change and Human Survival
A few months ago, I was reading Steve Brusatte’s excellent The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, and it dawned to me that perhaps we are going about this business of climate change all wrong.
We are told that we need to be responsible, to protect Mother Nature. That we need to take pollution down to zero, for the sake of the Planet. That we can all play a role to help save the Environment.
But what if the real ones we need to save are… ourselves?
Think about it: even in the aftermath of that deadly meteorite crash that put an end to the age of the dinosaurs, Life still prevailed. The dinosaurs went extinct, and the mammals – small enough and plucky enough to survive the devastation – came into their own.
Species come and go, but Life itself is resilient enough to survive cataclysm.
So if we persist in how we live, and how we consume resources on this planet, what will likely occur is that surface temperatures and sea levels will rise to the point when human habitation will be deleteriously affected. Like the dinosaurs, we might not survive the fire next time. But Life as we know it is a complex and resilient thing. If Humanity were to work ourselves out of the existence, some other species will likely take our place.
O believers! Whoever among you abandons their faith, Allah will replace them with others who love Him and are loved by Him. [Q5:54]
The Planet will take care of itself. We need to look out for our own survival – as a species.
Today’s Reads VIII – Wordle, Reification, and Climate Change
- Sometimes, all it takes is a shared passion to reconnect with the ones we love…
- This is a profound opinion piece that I think every Malaysian policymaker needs to read. The words “reification” and “medicalisation” are what I wish I had in my vocabulary when I was assigned to monitor the Anti-Corruption initiatives under the Government Transformation Programme. I was butting my head against the wall for weeks, constantly feeling frustrated by the lack of progress, and it took deep reflection over the experience in a Leadership course at graduate school, many years later, for me to finally realise that my team and I were essentially collateral damage for a technical approach of ostentatious initiatives (“let’s have anti corruption pledges!” “let’s appoint Chief Integrity Officers!”) aimed at simulating “seriousness” in tackling corruption, when in the other room, billions of public money were being siphoned off thanks to Najib and Jho Low. There needs to be more conversations in Malaysia about how we skirt around our dysfunctional politics, spinning our wheels around make-busy work while Rome continues to burn.
- The UN secretary-general just called for a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies. Can we afford to ignore climate change any longer? And what would this mean for Petronas, which has long been the white knight of last resort for Malaysia (cf. Bank Bumiputra, Proton, KLCC, MISC, GST refunds)?