Polar Cities Reprised, Tsunami, tsunami, tsunami...

A few years ago, February 22, 2008 to be specific, I posted an article on my now good friend, Danny Bloom (journalist, philosopher, scholar and activist). The article focused on his premise that climate chaos will ensue in the next few centuries and he posited that in the long-term future—several centuries and many generations from now—our planet might look quite different.

In the vein of Lovelock’s “Revenge of Gaia” and Shane Joseph’s “After the Flood”, both based on predictions of an unprecedented rise in water level due to global heating, Bloom believes in being prepared for what may come. He founded the Polar Cities Research Institute, intended to create modular polar cities designed to house post-climate chaos affected communities.

Well, it’s today: March 16th, 2011. And the entire world is focused on the present, horrified, on the immediate wave of perhaps one of the world’s most disastrous natural events—an earthquake and tsunami that took thousands of lives in highly populated Japan—and we remain poised in hushed anticipation of what may yet transpire at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant (a direct result of the earthquake and tsunami).

I woke up that day between 3 and 4 am PST, startled and disturbed by a nightmare of CHAOS. I can’t describe it any better than that. I felt more than saw people in despair, fleeing, frozen in horror as something tossed them into chaos. That was right when the tsunami battered the coast of Japan (at 3: 15 pm their time), scattering buildings like they were doll houses and killing thousands of people. When I was visiting my printer that morning and commented on the inclement weather, he said, “The world is angry.” That was when I first discovered what happened in Japan earlier that morning.

I had another dream once, a dream of a climate change disaster. I pray it doesn’t happen. The dream was clearly a metaphor. But, was it possible that I’d tapped into the larger consciousness, like my friend Paco Mitchel, dream analyst, suggested? Is it a warning about impending climate chaos? Danny talked about it a while ago…

I wanted to update the ongoing dialogue on climate change with some poignant observations and opinions by Danny, three years after his initial promotion of this idea regarding changing our scope and perspective—something we are in dire need of now.

Danny says:

I finally figured out why most people do not want to look at or think about the distant future—say 500 years from now, 30 generations from now—in terms of climate change and AGW, to top what ails the planet and the alleged runaway climate change that COULD lead to climate chaos in 2500....

The reason most people do not even want to engage with me on what I am talking about from my cave in Taiwan is this: most people are heavily invested in the present, and the very near future,iqw/TYJN5-wb6eI/AAAAAAAAETM/tjV01qAycIQ/s320/japan-earthquake-rms of owning property, having a wife or husband, children, grandchildren, inheritors of their DNA and their financial holdings and property, so Most people are so heavily invested materially and financially and property-wise and career-wise [think PHD dept, think job promotion] and also invested so heavily emotionally in their kids and grandchildren and spouses that they simply CANNOT and DO NOT WANT to go where DANNY BLOOM is pointing.

And of course, people like James Lovelock and George Monbiot and Mark Lynas and Fred Pearce and Tim Flannery and James Hansen and Jesse Ausubel simply don't wish to look at my ideas of polar cities for survivors of climate chaos in the year 2500, do not even want to imagine it, so they go into denial. Even good climate activists tell me to piss off.

The reason I can go there is because I myself have no wife, no kids, do not own a home, do not own a car, own nothing, have no financial investments or property holdings, no career, no job promotion wanted, no DNA heirs and no financial heirs and no property heirs. So while I am a sensitive person with a good EQ and an emotional attachment to my life and work and friends and climate acquaintances, there is nothing really holding me my mind back from looking at Lovelock’s future and imagining we might need POLAR CITIES for the 200,000 survivors of climate chaos in 2500, with 15 billion humans perishing in massive die-offs......I can go there and accept this, even as a mere thought exercise, which is, of course, because I am not invested in the present. Most people are heavily invested in the present and very near future so they cannot even hear me.

I realized this yesterday, when speaking with a very smart Indian thinker and urban planner in Singpore with wife and kids and good job and wonderful future ahead of him and great present now in his life, he simply did not want to even think about what I was saying: that India will cease to exist as a nation in 500 years because all Indians will have moved north to polar settlements, he did not even want to imagine this, because he was too emotionally and DNA-invested in the present India to want to go where I wanted to take him—even as a thought experiment. We had a good chat. But he simply would not budge. That is when i realized that I can do this , not because I can see the future, but because I am not invested in any way in the present and therefore can put ALL my mind into poking into future climate scenarios as a warning and wake up call. Interesting insight, no? Thanks, Sanjeev, for leading me there!