When we Take Over the Weather

I suppose this time of year often sets me thinking down one of my favorite trains of thought.

And it concerns our environment.
We worry a lot about our environment, and with good reason. Though I'm not sure we're perhaps as logical about environmental issues as maybe we should be.

In a sense, our survival and our thriving are linked, of course, to our environment. The survival of any species is linked to its ability to adapt to environments. We, however, have added to that; the potential ability to adapt environments to suit ourselves.

I think sometimes, when I expound my vision of the future the one aspect of it people don't always care for, is that yes, it is a tamed world I look forward to. A world entirely under the control of man. A world where at a fundamental level, everything is under our control.
A world where the weather itself is controlled so that no extremes of climate exist, every portion of the globe is perpetually temperate. There are no real wildernesses, just large areas of artificial wildernesses which exist as parks, where nature can be allowed to exist, tamed, under our control. The numbers of all species will be under our control. No species can become a problem, but no species can go extinct either.

And some look at this concept with horror.

A world where the entire atmosphere and weather are controlled by satellites, almost like a kind of air conditioning system. That one day the UN will actually have responsibility for controlling and maintaining the artificial environment of Earth as one of its functions.

The thing is, of course, the logic that one day this should be so, is overwhelming.

The first point is that organic life has always changed the chemical composition of the environment since time began. The soil our world is built on was created by millions of years or organic life, all of the Oxygen we breathe represents the Oxygen surplus created by the burying under the ground of the Carbon extracted by plants over millions of years in the form of fossil fuels. Animals evolved to survive on a waste product of plants not present before life existed. We live in a world sculpted by life.
And yet, of course, our very existence changes that.

And our overwhelming success as a species, also affects every other life form on the planet. We are only starting to come to terms with what our existence means for every other species, but let's look at the fact.

Large mammals. If you're a member of the Orders Carnivora, Perrisodactyla, or Cetartiodactyla, you're either one of the most successful species ever, or you verge on extinction. And what has been the determining factor in deciding that?

Utility to man.

Pigs, Cows, Sheep, Dogs, Cats, are successful species. Horses, verging on extinction just ten thousand years ago, markedly so.

Tapirs, Tigers, Pandas, in trouble.



Life generally, has taken a new turn. The determining factor in the survival of species now is whether they are useful to man, or at least, don't get in his way.

One can debate the ethics of this forever, but ultimately, it will still remain true that whatever approach we adopt, the facts will be the same. It will depend on our choice.

And one could argue that in fact, the best approach of all, is to maintain an environment most suitable for preserving the conditions in which we ourselves evolved and allows us to fully adopt the role of guardians of life on Earth.

In other words, we cannot help BUT alter the world. What we can do, is use our technology to control that. In other words, rather than asking the question what can we do NOT to affect things, we should ask whether it is possible to counteract those effects. Can we control the Earth's atmosphere. And the answer to that, undoubtedly, is yes. We could regulate the whole thing by satellites. And of course, if we did, there would be the temptation to improve it. To turn the whole world into a temperate zone. No more Sahara, no more Kalahari.
Why would we do that?

Well, pressure. People would start to demand that we did, once they had got used to the idea that the weather was controlled by Man. And besides, once we'd started terraforming our neighbours, people would wonder we held back in doing on Earth, what we did to far fuller effects elsewhere. People would wonder why it was only Earth that had areas that now were uninhabitable for humans.

But there is another, deeper reason why one day we will opt to have the environment of our planet artificially controlled.

Because it could very well happen tomorrow, that the environment we have now- goes.

The last ten thousand years, have been a blip.

We sit here worrying about how our activities are causing global warming, when in fact that's not really what we should be worrying about. In fact, we should be thinking very hard about trying to keep this planet warmer than it would be if left to nature.

We talk about the last Ice Age, as if it was a far off period, a temporary cooling in which Mammoths and Woolly Rhinos roamed and we think of it as another time. And there were other Ice Ages before that, most people dimly know. Periods of extreme cold, between the warm periods.

Not quite.

Since the start of the Pliocene, five million years ago, the world has essentially been in one long Ice Age. The reason for this is unclear. But the NORMAL condition of Earth for the last five million years, has been what most people see, as Ice Age conditions. It's just that every fifty thousand to a hundred thousand years, there's been a little warm spell, lasting on average, five thousand years.

We're in such a warm spell.

And it lasted long enough for agriculture to get off the ground. Indeed we were lucky, it lasted much longer than the average warm spell, we're still in it, and we've built an amazing global civilisation.

But six billion of us exist and we have got used to a world in which large parts of the continental landmasses aren't icesheets or tundra.

What happens when Mother Earth calls time on our Indian Summer and Earth returns to being Planet Narnia?

Because it's long overdue.

Because this won't be manmade change. This will be the world returning to it's NORMAL weather system. And the NORMAL weather system of Earth, is not the one that has existed in recorded human history.



To keep the world the way mankind has got used to it being, will mean defying nature and artificially keeping the Earth warm.
Because it will actually be true, that even on Earth, mankind's civilisation cannot exist in natural conditions.

I must admit, I do look forward to the effect that will have on human culture. Because obviously, we'll opt to go against nature. To preserve ourselves. But from that point on, it will have come to pass that all human environments, are artificial ones. And that will change how we see ourselves.

The day planning the weather for next year, becomes like the annual budget.