Chasing Sólheimajökull About a year ago the United Nations issued yet another alarming report on climate change. This one stipulated that the scientific consensus to limit the increase in global average temperature to two degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels) in order to avoid significantly bad effects was a bit off. Two degrees, it turned out, would very much suck; keep it under 1.5 degrees, the new report advised, in order to avoid the most severe climactic effects. (We've now passed one degree Celsius.) Then in November of 2018 I traveled to Iceland and hiked across the rocky, muddy debris of a receding glacier. When I returned from that marvelous island, I had an awkward conversation with a smart person who failed to grasp (refused to grasp?) the fact that global warming is effectively permanent. The warmed-up atmosphere won't begin to cool down for thousands of years. Yes, we could reverse climate change if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases and reforested the planet and deployed millions of yet-to-be-invented devices sucking CO2 from the sky -- but what's the chance of all that? The chemical dynamic of climate change is absolutely unlike what happened in Los Angeles when the sulfurous smog dissipated within a generation after measures to control industrial and vehicular pollutants were enforced. Realistically, we're stuck with the global warming that we generate. No do-overs.
Finally, that autumn, I had several friendly sidewalk interactions with my Millennial neighbors and their cute babies and toddlers, and I couldn't help thinking: In twenty years, what are those kids going to think if the global warming monster isn't caged, if not slayed? If the temps soar past 1.5, then two, then 2.5, then three and beyond? Will the children blame the parents?
Finally, that autumn, I had several friendly sidewalk interactions with my Millennial neighbors and their cute babies and toddlers, and I couldn't help thinking: In twenty years, what are those kids going to think if the global warming monster isn't caged, if not slayed? If the temps soar past 1.5, then two, then 2.5, then three and beyond? Will the children blame the parents?
Bernie and Larry from Room 222 Put all that together and the result was an opinion piece that I couldn't get published in major newspapers because, one, I'm a relative nobody, and two, who wants to read a piece warning you that your children may grow up to hate you? So I converted the op-ed into a longer, more relaxed essay, added photos of that Icelandic glacier trek, and here's the result. This link actually brings you crab-sideways on this website to the heading Generation Chasm -- a reference to the Generation Gap that was a catchphrase in the '60s and '70s when I was a youngster collecting bugs and frogs in shoe boxes, reading Vietnam War casualty reports in The Hartford Courant and watching Room 222 to get a sense of what high school would be like (but wasn't).
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