Sunday Spotlight: Letters from 2030 and A J Gerst

A few weeks back while randomly surfing from one blog to another, I came upon a very interestingly futuristic blog (which I now follow). It is a fictional look at the world after an abrupt climate change, which is a very realistic possibility for our generation. Eco writers and activists Bob Williamson from Australia and Anthony J Gerst from Iowa, USA are jointly working on a fictional book Letters from 2030 and some excerpts are published on their blog by the same name. The very first post on the blog, titled ‘January 2030. A call to hope.’, starts out vividly describing the polluted and dissolute world of future .....

“He stood looking down on the once busy city streets. The sky is dull even though long ago the pollution for the coal fired power stations that pumped electricity to the dependant urban population have ceased to emit their deadly carbon dioxide. He remembered the promises of the pro-coal lobby and the politicians back in the first decade of the 21st century. ‘We can continue with business as usual – we are investing in clean coal technology and carbon capture and storage’ He researched this in depth back in those days and tried to alert people to the absurdity of their claims. The streets below are now deserted, long since flooded by rising sea levels. The assurances of the science community that the risks of sea level rises of several inches by 2100 now in 2030 seemed like a science and political conspiracy. As they waited during those years to present their peer reviewed verifiable reports to policy makers based on observed outcomes of climate change; climate change didn’t wait with the same patience.”

The tone is set for the blog (and the book) very effectively and reader can’t help but read on, from one post to another. I very much enjoy my read of these “letters from 2030”.

Bob Williamson is the founder and Chair of the Greenhouse Neutral Foundation and the author of ZERO Greenhouse Emissions - The Day the Lights Went Out - Our Future World, published by Strategic Book Publishing New York. Anthony J Gerst is a writer and an eco-warrior who is a columnist for the Galesburg Zephyr, an independent newspaper in Illinois. He also belongs to the Care 2 Connect society, a rather substantial online activist site. I thought of sharing (with his permission) his April column from the Galesburg Zephyr, which explores the possibility of accelerated evolution of organisms in face of sudden and abrupt climate changes.

“Climate Mind Shifts:
I belong to the Care 2 Connect society, a rather substantial online activist site. The other day I was reading their quote of the day. It was from a Swedish botanist; the jest of it was nature does not move forward in leaps and bounds. Really! The problem with the scientific community is the double edge sword of their existence, the scientific method.
The scientific method and the U.S. Senate have a lot in common. They both move via a tradition of acceptance based upon linguistical bombast and societal acceptance. Grant it, one deals with norms and mores, primarily, while the other deals with testing and quantifying across multiple disciplines. My primary problem with this is that climate changing events are still accelerating at an exponential rate. Mankind is destined to still be debating in the full flourish of their oratorical skills against the premise of anthropogenic warming, while the maddening onrush of abrupt climate change transforms the ecosystem beyond his doorstep. Now, back to my little
friend, Swedish style.
Science has not proven evolution beyond theory. I am a full believer in this, but they have failed to show any evidence of it occurring as we live and breathe. They claim the process happens so slowly that we cannot see it. While they may be right, they may be wrong. So let’s propose another concept on the premise of evolution today. It is now becoming a very well accepted idea among the scientific community that abrupt climate change has occurred often in the planet’s history. Be it caused from an extraterrestrial impact, rapid tectonic plate shifts, our current anthropogenic activity, dominant species resource taxation or nova orbital eclipses, abrupt climate change is interwoven into the fabric of Gaia’s cyclical patterns.
It is now speculated that the Amazon rainforest if we continue on our current consumeristic consumptive path, will reach a tipping point when the entire system crashes within a 10-15 year period, then transforms itself into a savanna. During these times of abrupt climate change, one thing is clear, extinction rates for the higher life forms leave holes in the evolutionary window. Today’s theory then is a simple one. When an entire ecosystem like the rainforest can crash and reestablish itself anew within a 30-100 year time frame, does it not make sense that lower fauna with shorter generational life expectancies go through an increased biological transformation to match the flora? Could not the natural system of Gaia offer an accelerated window of evolution when the planet’s entire ecosystem is in flux? And stabilizing throughout an epoch until the next planetary ecosystem shift occurs.”

This was a good time to share this article as my blog poll this week asked my readers whether they felt “Evolution is still a valid theory?” The majority have answered ‘Yes’, which reflects the popular opinion. However, there are a few people (increasing in numbers) that have their doubts. And I’m curious to know who was the second person who voted ‘Not applicable to modern humans’ on the poll ... the first was yours truly! :)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Can Captured Carbon Save Coal-Fired Power? (scientificamerican.com)
• Meet Europe's biggest carbon polluter (guardian.co.uk)
• The Age of Stupid Opens Across America 9/21/09 (takepart.com)