Tuesday 23 July 2019

New day, new dawn?

With politics playing a new game, rhetoric stepping up into divisive status and growing temperatures, the tinder box is beginning to look a lot like it's ready to ignite.
Today is deemed to be the "hottest July day on record" here in the UK and, if the computer generated model is to be accepted, which I believe it generally is, these 'unusual' temperatures are to become more 'usual' each year.
We won't travel abroad for the heat, we'll stay here and soak up the sun closer to home, like Bognor, Blackpool, Brighton.
Places we once frequented because of their heritage and weather will become so hot, they will be ghost towns during the day. Siesta will begin earlier and end later with people only coming out at night.
We will cope, but, and this is where rhetoric could become even more divisive; there is only so much water on this planet and it has to go round it's own cycle. We can't get extra from space, we have just what's here.
If the tropics get hotter and turn to desert, then people will migrate towards more polar communities where the rain still falls.
Will these water refugees be welcomed?
The polar ice caps are melting. Great, you say, more water. Agreed, but what happens to that land people need to migrate too?
Migrating to sinking land is somewhat counterproductive.
And the animal populations? What happens to them? Do they become superfluous to demand and are eradicated so as not to compete for space and precious water?
If we all turn veggie, where do the plants put their roots? If water is scarce do we have enough to spare for large hydroponic factories?
I began contemplating these issues many years ago whilst studying population ecology and statistics. I decided then not to bring more people into the world and did not have children.
Now I'm even more relieved. I have no family growing into this new dawn, I have no family to face a very uncertain future. I rest easy knowing the buck stops here and leave it to parents to wake up and realise just how hostile this future world could be.

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