The Coming Age of Climate Regret. Our Future Selves Will Ask Our ... - Eudaimonia and Co

The Coming Age of Climate Regret. Our Future Selves Will Ask Our Present… | by umair haque | Jul, 2023 | Eudaimonia and Co

The Coming Age of Climate Regret

Our Future Selves Will Ask Our Present Selves: Why Didn’t You Do More To Stop This?
Marcio Jose Sanchez

Red alerts across Italy. The Acropolis, closed — because of the heat. In America, a heat dome stretching from coast to coast has arrived. Temperatures are soaring. That’s after the Northeast just flooded. Canada — still on fire. Ocean surface temperatures continue to climb off the charts.

This is the summer climate change arrived, with a vengeance. But next? Next will be the coming age of climate regret. Why didn’t we act fast enough to stop this? Why were seduced by nonsense instead — like far right politics, which turned right around and only made the problem worse? Why did we let things get this bad? This bad won’t mean: as bad as things are now. It’ll mean much worse.

Imagine just three summers ago. Now imagine another three summers from now. Now five. Now ten. The speed and scale and fury with which our climate is undergoing profound transformations is leaving even scientists shocked and bewildered — and the average person is squarely in the crosshairs. So go ahead, imagine ten summers from now. How much worse will things be if all that happened this summer’s already happening, and just…goes on…intensifying?

Let me make that concrete. Canada burning: those are megafires that stretch the width of an entire continent. Think about that for a second, and then think about this: we have no idea, really, how to put them out. The heat dome settling over the United States, meanwhile, is also going to span the the width of an entire continent — reaching from California through Texas across to the Gulf Coast and to Florida. Now you know what I mean when I say “mega-scale impacts” of climate change — on continental scales.

This is — just — 2023. Imagine 2033. Can you? Is it hard to even try to understand how much worse things could get?

We are headed towards a coming age of climate regret. Let me give you a quick model for it.

Look at poor beleaguered Britain. It’s hard to overstate how much trouble it’s in. It has a collapsing water system, healthcare system, retirement system, a shrinking economy, and a seemingly fatally broken politics, inured to it all. The cause of all this…