The Coming Extinction: Land Submergence

dirge (62)in #writing • 6 years ago (edited)

As with most horrific truths, the content presented here is unpleasant. So if you want to be happy, stop reading.

The Coming Extinction: Land Submergence

With rising ocean waters comes the submergence of land. This is already happening. As the waters rise, people are forced to migrate. This is one form of land degradation caused by climate change. The Maldives has raised the issues of its existential predicament to the governments of the world, only to be perfunctory applause then silence. Polite requests only go so far. Polite requests to continue surviving comes off weak and absurd.

The Marshall islands face the same destruction by ocean waves. Meanwhile, resolutions are passed, the whole time knowing that nothing can be done. The Titan cannot be stopped. It will not be stopped.

We would have to stop polluting CO2 today, not in ten or twenty or thirty years. This is an impossible feat under capitalism.

Waters rise from the distorted atmosphere. Land, the basis of terrestrial life, is consumed at its edges. “We’ll curb the pollution,” the UN has said, every year since the 1990’s.

The fact is that no nation, bound by the laws of capital, will harm its immediate profit margins for long term survival. The entirety of the discussion over climate change is in regards to arbitrary numbers of degrees of Celsius. Governments and bourgeoisie alike make the mistake that scientists are certain of how climates work, that they are able to map CO2 production and its effects on the climate to a precise degree, down to the knowing exactly how much we shit we can pump into the air before getting ‘too much’.

But this isn't the case. The meetings over climate change revolve around an assumption: how much longer can we possibly keep things going as they are, in order to keep making as much profit as possible, without fucking everything up too much for us. The actual science behind climate change only continues to be understood, often realizing that our predictions are too conservative. The bourgeoisie are comfortable gambling with the entire planet's life in order to keep capitalism going, on the basis of an assumed certainty. I say this again: there is no certainty.

These meetings become a circus of kings and soothsayers. And of course, the most convenient numbers (two degree Celsius) are chosen to appease the national economic plans of growth, growth, growth.

Capitalism is a beast that consumes the very ground it stands on. Climate change is it's own infantile death-drive.