Opinion: Lack of climate mitigation could seal fate

If you ask me, history is speeding up.

Used to be, things didn’t change much from one generation to another, but with the onset of the 20th century, it all began to accelerate. And, now that we’re a couple of decades into the 21st century, we’re living as if the past doesn’t matter anymore.

But of course, it does. History is how we got here, and it portends where we’re going.

My baby-boomer generation has been through some incredible history. We were raised during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, which led our nation in a march toward equal rights for all.

Blacks, women, gays and lesbians, people with handicaps and other marginalized Americans found their voices, with some of the loudest coming out of an up-and-coming generation of boomers ready to embrace, in their own way, a more pluralistic, futuristic America.

The Vietnam War also defined my generation, and not in a good way. We lost that war, in more ways than one, and it has haunted us ever since. Count the number of Vietnam veterans who fell through the cracks when they returned home, then compare them to the World War II veterans who returned, and you get a glimpse of how hard Vietnam was on us.

Of course, it was electronics that really changed the world during my generation’s time on Earth.

Electronic calculators gave way to desktop computers, then the World Wide Web was invented and released for public use, and handheld connectivity became the norm as the world entered into a new hyperconnected digital reality.

Which gave way to virtual reality. Videos games may have been our introduction into this imaginary new world, but now Pacman is but a sentimental novelty from another millennia.

Nowadays, it’s difficult to distinguish between what’s real and what’s computer generated. And soon enough, with the dawn of artificial intelligence, it will be virtually impossible.

Today’s young people face some incredible challenges, just as we older folks did. Only now, I’d say it’s technology and climate change that will define their future more than anything else.

Global warming is a biproduct of how we got here. We had to have energy and fossil fuels was our ticket to modern-day prosperity. Now it’s our path to self-destruction.

Fortunately, however, technology now has the ability to shift us toward clean-energy sources. Wind, solar, hydro, even carbon capture, are all within our grasp.

We’re not moving fast enough to mitigate the effects of changing climate conditions, but our economy is moving in that direction — ever so slowly, but it’s moving.

What we lack is the political will — another great challenge for today’s young Americans. This year, democratic decision-making, the rule of law and the future of our nation are all at stake, but our younger generations aren’t in control. Instead, we’ve got a couple of dinosaurs running for president — and one of them thinks mass extinction is a hoax.

I don’t want to believe the science either, but it’s there, coming right at us. If we don’t take steps to mitigate the coming climate catastrophe, history will record our inaction as the great missed opportunity that sealed our collective fate.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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