By Frank Ledwidge
There are some very disturbing developments in science these days.. Theories and ideas that, just a few years ago would have been dismissed as belonging in the world of science fiction, are now commonplace. The driver for these ideas is of course climate change. There is a growing acceptance that the consequences for the world of climate change could be far more serious than previously thought. For Albania in particular, as for all Mediterranean countries could be virtually terminal.
The idea is that climate change will result in an increase in mean temperature of about 5 degrees. This does not simply mean hotter summers. This will mean the melting of the icecaps, flooding of lowland areas by a sea level increased by up to 80 metres (yes, 80 metres), and the dessication, acute drying of latitudes South of the Baltic. The consequences for humanity will be utterly radical. Population will, or could be entirely relocated, with the vast social consequences that will . Siberia will no longer be a barren freezing wasteland. It may be the bread basket of what remains of the human world. Countries like Britain will be crowded with high rise cities, which will also throng in Canada and once again, Siberia. Because there will be too little land for the cultivation of animals, humanity will become an essentially vegetarian species. The wholesale death of the Ocean Algae, at the bottom of the maritime food chain, will mean that the seas will be essentially dead. There will be little or no fish.
These ideas, as I have hinted, are not confined now to Kooks and eccentrics. This is the vision of James Lovelock. the originator of the now largely accepted idea that the Earth is what amounts to a self-regulating organism. This is the so-called Gaia theory. It posits that humanity has proved itself unhealthy for this organism, the life-system and the Earth is doing something about it. It is making itself no longer welcoming for us. Lovelock believes that in as little as a hundred years, there could be as few as ten thousand people. Yes, a few thousand people. More optimistic scientists take the view that there may be a billion. An article in the leading British magazine New Scientist stated however, that some scientists refused to comment on the consequences of climate change on the scale now envisaged, as it might make them seem scaremongers.
Jmkes Locelock is not afraid to comment. In his most recent book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009), he says that “There is only a small chance that… we could reverse climate change.” The consequences of this are that now we should be thinking not about planning to reduce carbon emissions, any reduction would not be effective. They would be irrelevant, like shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic. Its too late for that. We need rather to be thinking of how to cope with the consequences. Those consequences are terrifying.
Lets hope that these are indeed distopian visions and only that. The trouble is that many serious scientists now believe that these predictions may be accurate. If they are, the only people alive in Albania in 100 years time, will be living, if at all, in the highest mountain valleys. There will be no water anywhere else.
