Somewhere in the universe, the human race is passed out on a lounge, eyes glazed over, remote control still in the hand, slimed in popcorn butter. Climate change continues to flicker it’s tongue across our eyeballs. Polar bears serve drinks in bikinis. A dwarf (of course) whispers a reminder: “The house is on fire, your fridge is melting.”
Snowflake Disco
“If the melting continues, as many Arctic experts expect, the mass of floating ice that has crowned the planet for millions of years may largely disappear for entire summers this century.”
– recent New York Times story about the Arctic melting more rapidly than previously expected.
( NYT log-in required, see also bugmenot.com )
Bob Dylan once sang ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’, and sure enough, up towards the North pole, the local fishermen don’t need to be told about melting ice by weathermen. Count enough drowned polar bears on their shores ( because there is less ice, spread further apart and the polar bears can’t swim that far ), and you start to get an idea. Human induced climate change is real, something even the U.S. seems to be finally admitting after decades of denial.
Like any good nation with a frontier mentality, the U.S. also smells opportunity with the melting Arctic. New cruise ship destinations, new commercial fishery areas, oil and gas explorations – the list is endless for the right entrepreneurial spirit, and all of the above are being chased right now. At any rate the melting Arctic should make for interesting sea levels / body surfing weather along the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. ( and the Netherlands, Bangledesh & other low lying coastal areas). Not to mention more of the extreme weather patterns enjoyed lately. Of course, much of this extremity can be avoided – but who ya gonna call?
Hollywood Gallops In
If a few natural disasters and melting icebergs can’t grab our attention, then maybe the movie-makers will have better luck in helping steer the 6,477,480,338 humans (at time of writing) away from heating up the planet too much. They seemed to have moved on from robot and machine-take overs for the time being anyway ( they’ll be back ), to framing the climate itself as the bigger scary enemy. Long familiar with farming the goo of our deepest fears ( or popping them like a gruesome pimple) Hollywood is now grappling with the giant question marks we have shaped in the sky.
First we had Dennis Quaid leaping across melting glaciers, outrunning tidal waves(!) and even outrunning the freezing over of New York City in the spectacularly woeful ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. ‘Syriana’ is next, a political thriller starring George Clooney and set within the global oil industry. Apparently the film explores the back room deals within the pursuit of wealth and power, but ultimately forces a focus on our oil-dependence, a now climate defining trait of ours. Alongside the film, the makers have released a website tackling oil dependency and encouraging action and education around renewable energies and hybrid cars. www.participate.net/oilchange.