Has evidence of climate change become undeniable?
To the Editor:
The combination of extraordinary heat and drought that hit the western United States and Canada during the past two weeks has killed hundreds of millions of marine animals, and continues to threaten untold numbers of species in fresh water, according to a preliminary estimate and interviews with scientists. “It just feels like one of those post-apocalyptic movies,” said a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia who studies the effects of climate change on coastal marine ecosystems. Climatologists tell us that such extreme climatic conditions are part of global warming, a process that scientists say humankind has exacerbated.
The increasing frequency of extreme weather events is making it ever clearer that this process is underway. We may be on the precipice of events that were unimaginable only a few short years ago. If ocean temperatures continue to rise, and the pace of warming continues to accelerate, the creatures of the sea will not have time to adapt: mass extinction of sea life is a remote but real possibility. It would be a “black swan” event, but it is not science fiction. And it would be disastrous for many reasons, one of which is that the animals living in our seas provide almost twenty percent of humanity’s total meat intake, and an even higher percentage of our total protein intake.
We humans have a cognitive bias that causes us to discount or ignore the possibility of vaguely defined future events and focus instead on our present circumstances. Well, now that the effects of global warming are starting to significantly encroach on our present circumstances and affect our wellbeing, just think what they may do to the wellbeing of future generations. We have a chance to bend the curve and potentially avert irreversible disastrous consequences, through changes in our individual behavior and a coordinated worldwide governmental response. We must seize this chance, for the good of all life on planet Earth.
Ken Derow
Swarthmore
