BANGOR DAILY NEWS • June 1, 2020
None of us has prior experience of a genuine climate crisis, and although we have known enough about what’s going to happen to justify urgent action for 30 years now, we have done nothing decisive about it. We have lots of “clean” technology, but total demand for energy has grown so fast that we are still getting a steady 80 percent of our energy from fossil fuels. Realistically, this is not going to change much. We are who we are, shaped by millions of years of evolution, and our ancestors didn’t do long-term planning; they had to concentrate on acute short-term problems. A truly serious response to the climate threat will therefore come only when it is actually starting to hurt. Unfortunately, by then it will probably be too late. ~ Gwynne Dyer