In all our collective complaining about the heat and humidity last week, an anniversary passed by without a sound (although it may have been drowned out by the whirl of air conditioners) -- that of the great Northeastern Blackout of 2003.
The blackout, caused by overloaded and faulty powerlines, helped spark interest in energy conservation and all things green; in the few years following, many believed a green sea change was truly underway when it came to how we used and abused our resources -- especially in the wake of global warming, or, more accurately put, climate change.
But, less than 10 years later, little has truly change. While our cars may be a bit smaller, we’re more inclined to complain about the high cost of supporting an environmentally conscious lifestyle than do truly do something about it (granted, the revised microFIT rates are a good start). Perhaps it has to do with some researchers casting a pall over just how much man has affected his environment -- or maybe it’s due to the fact that going green just got too expensive.
After a cool summer last year, Southwestern Ontario is again in the grips of a good old-fashioned stifler of a summer. And while there’s been fewer smog days this year (thanks to polluting industries cutting down south of the border, and the still-sluggish economy), we can’t ignore all the weather calamities going on in the world around us. From floods in Pakistan, to forest fires in British Columbia and Russia, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Association, while shying away from calling it global warming per se, has said that these kinds of dramatic shifts in weather are here to stay. If behaviour won’t change, governments need to better react to these shifts via improved infrastructure and emergency management.
But, maybe there is another option out there. World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking recently suggested that the human race has become greedy -- to the point where living out our days on the third rock from the sun is no longer a viable option. The natural resources we use are almost exploited, Hawking says; if we don’t become extinct ourselves as a result, we’ll surely blow ourselves up in a nuclear war in the next few hundred years.
Rather than have all our eggs in the planet Earth basket, Hawking suggests space as a surrogate home -- and we should start planning now, as we’ll have to travel light years to get there.
A little far out, yes, but we’ve seen other species go extinct for far less than air conditioning. There has to be a better option than travelling so far to save ourselves.
--A.M.