Twilight World
Vault Of The Ages
The Shield
the Maurai History
However, There Will Be Time reveals that the nuclear war in the Maurai timeline was caused by pollution:
"He thought [the War of Judgment] was less ideological than ecological.
"'I have this nightmare notion that it came not just as a result of huge areas turning into deserts, but came barely in time. Did you know the oceans supply half our oxygen? By 1970, insecticide was in the plankton. By 1990, every ocean was scummy, and stank, and you didn't dare swim in it.'
"'But this must have been predicted,' I said.
"He leered. 'Yeah. "Environment" was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men - cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke...'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), V, p. 53.
Apart from the timescale for the destruction of the oceans, this is accurate.
In Anderson's Technic History, space saves the environment:
"New space technologies ease Earth's demand for resources and energy..."
-CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION COMPILED BY SANDRA MIESEL IN Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 611-619 AT p. 611.
"...they, from orbit, launched Earthward the beneficiated minerals of Phobos that they did not need for their own purposes."
-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 1-73 AT II, p. 6.
But what is happening in reality? We are in soft climate change denial. The Chatham House 2021 Report states that there is just a 5% chance of staying under a 2 degree C rise in global temperature. 2C average means 7C on land which will mean that 1000 million people will have to move or die in the 2030s. Southern Europe, most of Africa, Southern US, Central America, India and Australia will become Saharan deserts that soon.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And it's too late for the kind of drastic changes you advocate. Countries like India and China are not going to stop the kind of drastic pollution which is driving this problem any time soon enough to matter. Other countries, like Botswana, are not going to stop selling the coal which drives this pollution. Other countries, like the UK or US, afflicted with left wing idiots, are not going to switch to cleaner energy sources like nuclear power, soon enough to matter. And so on!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well, I didn't advocate any changes in this post. But I did cite a report to the effect that we face a global catastrophe about a decade from now. That is worrying.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
If worse comes to worse, I'm reminded of the grim scenarios seen in "Murphy's Hall" and "In Memoriam."
Ad astra! Sean
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