Global Warming And The Global Overturning
By Milan Djurasovic
15 October, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Collage By Milan Djurasovic
The word “catastrophe” comes from the Greek and it means “an overturning.” It was primarily used to describe the ending of a play, both comedy and tragedy. However, with the humanity’s obsession with its destruction by way of apocalypse, the word catastrophe has become synonymous with the end of human species and its creations.
Everything we’ve ever built and valued will come to an end sooner or later. That’s just the way it is. Even if human species somehow survives the more imminent perils, and then in about four billion years tackles on and gets through the sun’s metamorphosis into a red-giant, the universe will inevitably end in ‘heat-death’ a trillion or so years later with no promise of rebirth.
But the unavoidable end of all intelligence, change, and motion is, as mentioned, a thousand billion years from now and very few people will lose any sleep lamenting over our inevitable ruthless finale. What we should be disturbed about, and to the extent of severe insomnia, ringing in both ears and panic attacks, is the addition of two new colors –deep purple and pink – to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to show temperatures between 122 and 129 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 and 53.8889 degrees Celsius.
While Australia was tormented by the record-pummeling heat wave and wildfires a year ago, in the United States the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration informs that 2012 was the hottest year on record for the continental 48 states. In addition, a bone-chilling, heart palpitations causing report commissioned by the World Bank suggested that the temperatures could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century. The latest study conducted at the University of Hawaii reveals that the average worldwide temperatures around 2047 will be hotter than at any point between 1860 and 2005. To put it simply and scientifically, such an increase in temperature would result in hell.
If no action on global scale takes place in the next couple of years, global warming threatens to render useless the human race and its finest creations and inventions (everything from The Brothers Karamazov to the cardiac pacemaker). In a world that’s two to four degrees warmer than the current one, and considering the countless hardships that will come along with it, to write like Herman Melville or to compose like Richard Wagner will be as useful as speed cup stacking, or possessing a talent of squirting milk out of one’s eyes.
In a forthcoming world which will surely be characterized by violent weather and hysterical human behavior (it also works the other way around), the need for emotional and cognitive growth will slowly assume form of a fossil gene. With disastrous food shortages, cyclones and droughts even the most faithful readers of William Wordsworth will be forced to put down their books and shout over and over again: “food, cave, fire, air, drink, sex if not too tired, sleep and then kill.”
In a foreseeable hot and frantic world, people of United States will cease to enjoy literature and music the way it is supposed to be enjoyed. Instead, future, and most likely today’s younger to younger middle-aged Americans will use Mark Twain’s novels and George Gershwin’s records to fan their sweaty faces and shield their burnt and peeling foreheads from the ultraviolet radiation.
If nothing is promptly done about the human caused global warming, before long we will be inhabitants of a truly catastrophic, ‘overturned’ and tragic world (or a comedic one if we go by the logic that everything will be overturned) in which chickens and pigs will gorge themselves on bacon and eggs.
Milan Djurasovic is a Bosnian American collage artist and a book author. He currently lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia. His educational background is in psychology and history. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1481025155
.He can be reached at https://www.facebook.com/milan.djurasovic
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