The End

The end is at hand by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News Sept. 25, 2006

This week's madness lies in trying to absorb the news on the climate.

Factually, there is nothing really new here, at least for me personally, except for a growing awareness in the population at large of the immensity of the changes that are taking place. I have been following climate science for a couple of decades. For me, and many thoughtful observers I suspect, it has been like watching a tsunami gathering height in the distance as the waters edge raced away from my spot on the beach. What is different,

and maddening now, is the emotional contagion from the crowd as it too, suddenly, becomes aware of its peril.

Who did not expect that pumping vast quantities of carbon dioxide, methane and other infrared absorbing gasses into the atmosphere wouldn't have vast and probably cataclysmic consequences? Apparently a lot of people, including all the major decision makers on the planet. So now we have to adjust to the fact that, as the disheveled man with the sandwich board on the corner proclaims, the end is really, truly at hand, at least for modern technological culture. The good times are over. The age of massive, mindless self indulgence for the few is coming to an end. The rapid, and accelerating onset of climactic changes around the world, some of which are evident to even the least involved, begin to make it clear that it is really all over, except for the shouting of course.

Don't get me wrong. It is more important than ever to take remedial action, to reduce patterns of consumption to the barest minimums in every way possible. Whereas the evidence points to a tipping point having been passed, we can not be so sure about this as to advocate taking no action to mitigate the consequences of run away industrial technology. Maybe we do have a small window left, perhaps ten years or so, as some argue, in which to take decisive action to reverse climate change. The fact that the current world situation seems to indicate that effective action is unlikely to be taken is no excuse for not trying. Sometimes a Hail Mary pass really does win the game.

The power elite seem to be responding in character. Across the world, but especially in the US, we see a rush to more primitive interactions between the haves and the have lesses. Civil standards enshrined in history as far back as the Magna Carta are being abandoned pell mell.

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With the outlines of this fate in their minds, it is understandable that those in privileged situations would indulge in fantasies of using their accumulated wealth to survive while most of the rest of humanity perishes.

By indulging in this kind of thinking the elite have been reduced to the status of village idiots, to be pitied rather than hated, because of their pathetic delusions.

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