When the "unsinkable" Titanic went down, some rich people died. History.com noted "Of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 lost their lives in the disaster." Among the drowned was "the wealthiest passenger [ . . .] John Jacob Astor IV, heir to the Astor family fortune." Businessinsider.com reported wealthy victims included John Thayer, "railroad executive," Isidor Straus, "co-owner of Macy's— and his wife Ida," Benjamin Guggenheim, "mining magnate," George Dennick Wick, "steel magnate," and Charles Melville Hays, "railroad executive." I'm guessing it will be the same with climate crisis as insulated countries become more vulnerable with each passing year.
Titanic has become a cliche for climate change. In an earlier post, I wrote "Barry McGuire's protest song "Eve of Destruction" written by P. F. Sloan in 1964 is a good COP25 theme song." In tribute to failed COP25, I now offer the term "Titanicene." I chose this partly because of Dave Borlace's report "A team of climate scientists has released a new study in the journal Nature showing that the Greenland ice sheet is now melting seven times faster than it was back in 1992. [. . . and] a similar study back in June that revealed Antarctica is losing 200 billion tonnes of ice a year representing a threefold rate of loss compared to 2012."
Sometimes asking politicians to see truth is like Kabir wrote: "people won't wake up -- Not until they feel death's club inside their skulls." In a related matter, my post PLAYA Climate Change Discussion July 7, 2016 received over 600 views, maybe because of Jason Box's comment "out of the ten possible scenarios on climate change, nine result in loss of society as we know it." Since the climate crisis is much worse now, I'm guessing our odds are less. I recall David Suzuki said in his Dec. 16, 2018 video Why it’s time to think about human extinction "We've got a 5% chance of keeping temperature below 2 degrees [Celsius global average above year 1850 preindustrial]" [32:27 on timeline] but "We don't know enough to say it's too late [35:14 on timeline] [. . . .] Now, the hope I cling to [. . . is] based on reality. [. . . .] The biggest run of sockeye [salmon] in the world is in the Fraser River here in British Columbia, and we like to get 20 to 30 million sockeye coming back in their run. In 2009 we got just over one million sockeye [. . .] and I vividly remember turning to my wife and I said 'That's it. [. . . .] The sockeye are gone.' One year later we got the biggest run of sockeye in a hundred years [36:04 on timeline] [. . . .] Nature shocked us, and I believe that nature has many many more surprises, some of them not so great, but I think she will be far more generous than we deserve. We've got to pull back. We've got to protect every bit of nature we've got left, and work like hell to cut our ecological footprint. [ . . . .] But it's a very narrow window. [. . . .] I say that we need new technology but it's got to be technology done with great humility and care, and I believe the guiding principle of technology has got to be what's called biomimicry" [38:30 on timeline].
Suzuki asked "Who do we look to if our own politicians we elect to high office don't even care about our children? What the hell? What kind of a species are we? You're damn right it's doom and gloom" [28:27 on timeline].
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