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Later is Over

“Later” was a luxury for previous generations, eras, civilizations, and epochs. It meant that you could paint the same landscape, see the same animals, eat the same fruit, climb the same trees, fish the same rivers, or rescue the same endangered species that you did when you were a kid–but just do it later, whenever you got around to it. Nature’s bounty seemed infinite and all the threats to it either limited or reversible. In the Energy-Climate Era, given the accelerating rates of extinction and development, “later” is going to be removed from the dictionary. Later is no longer when you get to do all those things in nature you did as a kid–on your own time schedule. Later is when they’re gone–when you won’t get to do any of them ever gain. Later is too late, so whatever we are going to save, we’d better start saving now.

Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat & Crowded, pp. 153

Like a lot of people, I had this plan for my life. I was going to become rich and powerful and then I was going to save the planet. I thought I had time. When I was younger, I wondered about what we would do with nuclear waste. I worried about how, over time, radioactivity and toxicity would build up in our environment. I was afraid of nuclear proliferation. But I saw these problems developing over a period of decades or centuries. As a tail-end baby boomer, I thought that my generation could be part of the solution. Read the rest of this entry »