The Global Warming Conspiracy
We take a little detour from our common talk of tech gadgets and companies today, and venture into the environmental impact of technology on the world. Yes, technology of late has been focused towards building more sustainable substitutes to the consumption of energy and resources. But we reached this point at great costs, costs that are still very widely spent by nations trailing the flock leaders of the world.
I attended a talk by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a legendary economist alongside my idol Joseph Stiglitz, where he talked about the alternative visions for the world economy in the coming decade. One of the major concerns, obviously, was environmental. While giving us the fact of the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emission level projected by scientists throughout the history of the the Earth, he presented a graph similar to the one below:
For those who don't understand the graph above, let me explain. The vertical axis on the left shows the amount of CO2 detected in the world's atmosphere. The horizontal axis running from left to right refer to years, in hundreds of thousands. The yellow/orange graph plotted using these two axes shows how much CO2 was present from 400,000 years ago until today.
The Assumption
Of course there was never someone present 400,000 years ago to calculate the CO2 level. Instead this graph shows what would have been the most possible outcome based on all their findings to date. At the peak of the CO2 levels where the yellow/orange graph saw spikes, the world was also at its warmest state. Naturally then the lowest would reflect the ice ages. Because this looped a few times before today, we can safely assume that the warm and ice states of the world go in recurring cycles.
Then at the far right end of the graph we have a massive spike in the CO2 level, one scientists claim have never been seen in this world before. When I say never seen in this world before I meant in the entire lifespan of the world, not mankind. This theory probably came from having a formula to calculate the residual CO2 from the previous ice age which proved that even at its warmest the world never saw CO2 levels any higher than the usual. But of course, the basis of this findings was that all else being equal. No extra terrestrial interventions were accounted for.
The Conspiracy
What if, at every peak of the graph's CO2 level prior to this, there was an intelligent civilization? This civilization lived out the same amount of millenia and went through the same amount of advancements as we are going through. They may have gone further than us, or may not.
The conspiracy here is that no matter how we try to destroy this world, it will have a reboot button that will completely eradicate every single living creature in the world and start from scratch again. If this is true it really doesn't matter if we managed to fixed the greenhouse effect because in the long run we're all dead anyway (thanks, Keynes).
Imagine us running our ignorant lives evolving from sticks and stones, to nuclear wars, to financial crises, to environmental technology advancements, and at the brink of the major reset we finally realized there's a bigger problem than anything we've ever faced. And by the time we figure it out, it would have been too late.
Although the purpose for Sach's talk was to present economic complications we are facing worldwide and how we can plan for an alternative future for humanity, but I couldn't help but imagine an alternative past instead.
