A few months ago, I was reading Steve Brusatte’s excellent The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, and it dawned to me that perhaps we are going about this business of climate change all wrong.
We are told that we need to be responsible, to protect Mother Nature. That we need to take pollution down to zero, for the sake of the Planet. That we can all play a role to help save the Environment.
But what if the real ones we need to save are… ourselves?
Think about it: even in the aftermath of that deadly meteorite crash that put an end to the age of the dinosaurs, Life still prevailed. The dinosaurs went extinct, and the mammals – small enough and plucky enough to survive the devastation – came into their own.
Species come and go, but Life itself is resilient enough to survive cataclysm.
So if we persist in how we live, and how we consume resources on this planet, what will likely occur is that surface temperatures and sea levels will rise to the point when human habitation will be deleteriously affected. Like the dinosaurs, we might not survive the fire next time. But Life as we know it is a complex and resilient thing. If Humanity were to work ourselves out of the existence, some other species will likely take our place.
O believers! Whoever among you abandons their faith, Allah will replace them with others who love Him and are loved by Him. [Q5:54]
The Planet will take care of itself. We need to look out for our own survival – as a species.