A vast majority of us seem to agree that human-induced climate change is real. But it’s been difficult for us to reach consensus on the gravity of the issue.
This is an effort at drawing a comparison between the recent travel bans and climate change, so that we all get a sense at how bad things can become.
One or two days after the travel ban came into effect, I woke up to a newspaper heading ’30 killed in US bombings in Yemen’. I’m going to use Yemen for my analogy here.
Yemen is one of the countries on the blacklist, and what’s happening there is just pure horror. I’d bet that the average person over there did nothing wrong to deserve this reality. Bombs could drop on them at any given moment, and leaving the country is increasingly becoming the only viable option, whether they like it or not.
While the US’ travel ban on Yemenis is not a step toward their brighter future, they have the options of other countries to turn to. Others might not be as good an option as the US, but they’re not Yemen at least. And of course, there is a hope for international relations getting better in the future, and peace restored in Yemen. With foreign intervention, most probably.
Now, consider a reality where every single country said no to them. They can’t cross their border at all, and they’re locked in 100%. And the bombings continue.
But there are international aid groups working in Yemen, doing all they can to help the injured and the sick, to reduce the suffering. But then those groups cease to function all of a sudden due to some international law. Yemenis are the only people left in Yemen as other nationals return to their home country.
Now the foreign air forces fall back as well, but there’s still fighting going on between different factions inside the country. Bombings and firings are happening at one place or the other on a daily basis. And the fight is getting fiercer.
Something very interesting happens now. For every four or five bombs they blast, there’s one or two extra bombs that’s exploding. Mother Nature has joined in on the fun.
Over time, the rate of these ‘natural bombs’ exploding increases so much so that all the factions abandon their fights, and are joined together. They seek the help of other countries to tackle the issue, but not one country comes to their aid. They still can’t get out of the country.
The rate of the explosions and sufferings continue to rise, and there’s nothing the Yemenis can do about it. They’re past the point of no return. Every single one of Yemen’s population is wiped out brutally as the whole country is turned to one big, continuous explosion.
This could become our species’ story.
This could be us, if we don’t think and act now.
As countries, we all have allies to turn to in a moment of crisis, and refugees, while it is extremely painful, have one country or the other to migrate to.
But not for us as a species.
There won’t be any force from outside the planet coming to our rescue. There’s no other species that can jump in as middlemen as we fight out our differences. We’re locked inside the biosphere of Earth. There’s no other place in the universe that we could go, at least with the technologies we possess at the moment. There’s no ally we could turn to.
If we don’t reign in on climate change now, we might get past the point of no return. Mother Nature might get into the driver’s seat, damning us forever.
Nature doesn’t care whether we as a species survive or not. The climatic conditions we are used to can change drastically, and the majority of macro-organisms might perish. Evolution will eventually lead to organisms that can survive whichever conditions that exist at the time. Only, we won’t be there to see it.
When we ask each other ‘what’s the best thing that’s happened to you?’ none of us ever think of our existence as ‘the thing that happened to you’.
But without our existence, there’s nothing at all.
While we can be very grateful to have been born into a somewhat-healthy planet (from our perspective, that is), we all must at least give the future generations a fighting chance.
The least we can give them is the gift of existence.
Image source: Dailymail