If you’re my generation you’ll remember how the world was going to end in one big nuclear war between the USSR and the US. Everyone and everything would die except for cockroaches who would then evolve, gain sentience and become politicians. And even if by some miracle you did survive, then the nuclear winter, caused by all the smoke in the air, would get you.
Remind you of the “Climate crisis”? Hell, we even had our own version of An Inconvenient Truth called The Day After, but at least we didn’t pretend it was real. School marches, definitely. We even had stickers. The only thing we didn’t have was a Greta Thunberg, but then again social media wasn’t even a thing then. Actually, the internet wasn’t even a thing, except maybe in the basement of some university.
Actually, if I remember correctly, there was one kid who went all “Give peace a chance” who got told by the Yanks to piss off but was welcomed by the Russians, who at least recognised a good PR opportunity.
And of course you had those who believed so strongly that the world was going to end that they acted as if the world was going to end.
I was one of those who didn’t believe the world was going to end.
And the reason I didn’t believe is because, contrary to popular opinion, I knew that MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction, worked. In fact, nuclear weapons kept the peace.
And as history showed, I was right. The US ended up out-spending the USSR, who couldn’t keep up and this forced the USSR to open up, leading to its collapse.
No nuclear war.
And we’re going to see the same kind of thing happen with the “climate crisis”. Except it’s going to end, and is ending, with people realising that we can’t do anything to stop the world getting warmer. The best thing we can do is learn to adapt.
And that’s what the recent floods, as others have pointed out, have shown. Anyone with at least one brain cell can see that even if there’s a connection between Cyclone Gabrielle and the world getting warmer, the damage would have been much less if money had been spent on preparation.
So from nuclear war to global warming. And before nuclear war, if I remember correctly, we were all going to freeze in a new Ice Age. Before that, or maybe after, we were all going to starve because there was going to be too many people to feed. And let’s not forget how we were going to run out of oil.
The next existential crisis? Who knows. But I bet the Greens and their ilk, especially if they can blame capitalism, will be the first to jump on board.
Poor James Shaw is going to have to think of a new schtick.