Darwin Posthumously Comes Out Against Global Climate Change

Now after reading that headline I know what you're probably thinking--'but Icarus, I didn't know you were a necromancer! What other esoteric abilities have you been hiding...' But the truth is today on this blog Darwin will warn us about the perils of global climate change not through his reanimated corpse, but through excerpts from his published works, one of which, namely On Natural Selection (Penguin Great Ideas), I'm currently reading for college next month.
You may ask, why should we listen to Darwin? Well, we should listen to Darwin because a) he's never steered us wrong before, and b) because this is the guy who came up with the theory of natural selection, which is one of humanity's greatest intellectual achievements (and when I say greatest, I mean it's at least in the top five). Simply put, we should pay attention to these prescient words of his because he was a hell of a lot smarter than us.

So, on page 8 of the Penguin edition I linked to, Darwin's in the middle of running down the various challenges nature throws life's way that serve to keep populations in check. Sandwiched in between predators and epidemics, he throws down this nugget of patently-obvious-in-an-alarming-sort-of-way wisdom:

"Climate plays an important part in determing the average numbers of a species, and periodical seasons of extreme cold or drought, I believe to be the most effective of all checks."

In other words, Darwin believed climate-change to be the deadliest force for thinning a specie's population, deadlier than predators, food shortage, drought, disease, and war.

We have a War on Drugs, a War on Terror, and according to the right-wing crazies a War on Christmas; yet according to Darwin, global climate change is a threat which transcends all three.
Maybe the folks who say we should declare a War on Global Climate Change have a point.

"...thenumber of species of all kinds, and therefore of competitors, decreases northwards; hence in going northward, or in ascending a mountain, we far oftener meet with stunted forms, due to the directly injurious action of climate, than we do in proceeding southwards or in descending a mountain. When we reach the Arctic regions, or snow-capped summits, or absolute deserts, the struggle for life is almost exclusively with the elements."

Here Darwin freaks us out even more by reminding us that in climates of extreme heat or cold (which scientstis warn could envelope large swathes of human civilization if global climate change continues), the struggle for survival is so difficult that few living beings manage it, and the ones that do are stunted more often than their brethren living in more hospitable climates. In other words, living in an extremely hot or cold climate makes it extremely hard to stay alive, even for humans.

Stay tuned for more timely Darwin quotes on the environment as I continue to read!

Image by Metrix X via Flickr

Now I don't know about you, but being killed by the weather sounds to me like the lamest death ever. I mean if we're really determined to wipe ourselves out and erase the memory of this much vaunted civilization we've been entrusted with protecting, at least let's do it with a nuclear Armageddon! We'd still be extinct, but at least we'd go out with some flare and be officially badass!

I'd rather we live fast and die young than go out wasting away, dying off one group at a time because we were too lazy and greedy to kick our petroleum habit.

I don't want the aliens to remember us as the "troubled" species that died tragically before it's time because it overdosed on petroleum and couldn't handle the resulting bad weather! And of course the scariest part is that in reality as far as we know, we're the only ones in the universe who care about us, which means if we die out, it will be like we never existed. And if that happens, we will have failed to matter in the grander scheme of things. Now, that's something that I'm paranoid about when it comes to my own life, so imagine how I feel having to worry about that in regards to our entire species! Teens should only have to endure existential crises on a personal level, we're much to selfish to deal well with a species-wide one....

Image via Wikipedia

Sure, humanity has a family, but unfortunately we're the only non-retarded member. To give credit where credit's due, elephants actually do hold funerals for each other and mourn at grave sites, but even if they were morally enlightened enough to extend this courtesy to humans (which our behavior towards the environment and elephants in particular wouldn't exactly incentivize), I doubt they would know how to mourn the lose of humanity itself. When elephants start reading and appreciating poetry, I'll consider them as our potential heirs...

Lol, I bet the crazy dudes who wrote the bible would never see that one coming:

"Blessed are the elephants, for they shall inherit the earth."

But just in case the elephants don't pull through for us and develop a prefrontal cortex

Image via Wikipedia

capable of appreciating the finer points of Rumi in the next few decades, may I suggest we take aggressive and direct action against global climate change and avoid the whole humanity going extinct thing altogether? Well, regardless of whether we decide to take action and live to fight another day, blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust, or let half our number slow-cook like hamsters in a microwave while the rest freeze or drown to death, lol, have a nice week, and I hope everybody had a good 4th of July weekend! Fuck the Redcoats and Basij!

Related articles

• New Climate-Change Report: From Bad to Worse (time.com)
• Climate Change Already Expanding Tropics, Sub-Tropical Arid Zones and Disease (treehugger.com)
• You: Moth turns from black to white as Britain's polluted skies change colour - Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk)
• Climate change is shrinking sheep (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Where's the world's plan of action against climate change? (guardian.co.uk)
• Chinese demand and financial crisis cause surge in Kenya elephant poaching (telegraph.co.uk)