I wonder if you will ever get this letter. I feel like someone stuffing a message into a bottle, corking it up tightly, and dropping it overboard.
I think you are doing an amazing, valiant, and most creditable job, in drawing the world’s attention to the global climate crisis. To an intelligent person it clearly seems nigh unbelievable that so little is happening to cut carbon emissions so long after it became clear that the global temperature was indeed rising. But I want to make two points.
Do not burn yourself out too young; keep something for the ‘long-haul’. The world has had the message for a decade now, and that message is getting heeded in a few areas of hyper-intelligence (e.g. Scandinavia?). Perhaps another decade and we shall start to see the beginning of a massive change in habits, and countries vying with each other to be front-runners, instead of watching each other so as not to be first to flinch.
And do not let us exaggerate the crisis. It is not as though the world were spirally rapidly into the sun with disaster expected on a 20 year timescale. I am a committed believer in the man-made origin of the global temperature-rise, and believe the finger points largely at our carbon dioxide blanket as the main cause. I am very impressed at the scientists's prediction of this ‘green-house’ effect so many years ago, and at the great mountain of data that now exists to substantiate it. But I understand that this has happened many times before. The laying down of layer after layer of coal suggests that periods of high atmospheric carbon dioxide lead to massive deposition of plant remains. Another great store of carbon dioxide exists in chalk and limestones deposits, going back hundreds of millions of years. Of course the sea level and global temperature has risen and fallen massively over that time scale. And it is no recompense to the burned and drowned to know that probably, on the basis of current evidence, the world and its more successful species will survive. Still, it is some consolation.
Look after yourself. We shall need your intelligence, and clarity, in ten years time just as much as we do now. If each of your converts themselves converted 2 others, we would get the message across in time. For me, the way out seems to be increased use of solar energy, decreased use of fossil fuels, planting trees, and reducing the human population intentionally and voluntarily. (So much better than the reduction in human population unintentionally and involuntarily.)
If you get this and would like to comment, please send a message to me at cawstein@gmail.com. I would be glad to hear, be it only of my errors.
