The Blue Voice

Monday, November 12, 2007

So, Why Bother?

I always admire my fellow Blue Voicer Tankwoman's ability to write humorously about issues that are serious as a heart attack. So, she can write a piece like Feeling The Cold and Looking on the Bright Side, instead of the gloomy-doomy stuff I send out, and I can even get a little smile when I read it. Although I am pretty sure that Tankwoman knows as well as I do that there is actually no bright side to the issue of global climate change, what it is doing already, and what lies in store for the inhabitants of the planet.

Tanker and I are both products of big 1950's Catholic families, and as such we have lots of siblings, nieces, nephews, and in my case already a little crew of great-nieces and nephews. Because my partner's early history included a marriage that produced two sons, who are now married and have each produced two offspring of their own, we also have four little grandchildren. The next generations in my family include young people ranging from four months to forty years old. It's quite likely most, if not all, of these people will be around when the predicted effects of climate change on the lives of even the privileged will be in full swing.

As a consequence, it's a subject I refer to often - the future our children are likely to face. It haunts me constantly. So I was interested to find, in a new blog on the NYT called DotEarth (Subtitled Nine Billion People, One Planet, and now linked on our blogroll), this post: What Does The Present Owe The Future? The inspiration for the post comes from two DotEarth readers' comments on previous posts, one a voice from the present asking: "So why bother? I don’t have any children of my own, and never will. In your opinion, does it really just boil down to doing it for the sake of other people’s children and their children?" The second is a voice from the future, a very angry young person about to turn twenty-one, realizing that he and all his generation have been handed an insurmountable future of global problems as legacy. It's a thought-provoking piece, and a very welcome new blog in which reporter Andrew C. Revkin intends to examine efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.
Technorati Tags: Andrew Revkin, dotearth, future generations, global climate change, Tankwoman

posted at 5:11:00 PM by marigolds2

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