Beyond the Waste Land

Below is a comment (slightly edited) that I posted to the Belmont Club probably late in 2004. Those archives are lost but I found this comment searching for the word tenebrific! The discussion was about Global Warming. In order to provide a more mythical justification to rising up to meet this challenge, I employed a much more poetic approach than I would normally use. I always liked this comment and about six months


Ten thousand years ago, emerging from under his forest’s tenebrific canopy, newly civilized man, lying on his back to rest from the labour of his freshly ploughed fields, was at last face to face with his new rival; the startling immensity of the open sky. Tempests, droughts, and worst of all, lightning replaced the beasts and shadows of his former life amongst the trees. With the nature of his relationship to this pale blue antagonist hanging in the balance, man made a fateful choice. Whether directly or through appointed deities, with all the audacity he could muster our ancestor declared himself sovereign over the forces of nature.

How terrifying the annual ritual of the winter solstice must have been to our distant forbearers. Ever shortening days, the seemingly imminent victory of darkness -- the more mathematically inclined of them may have even calculated to the day the eventual total disappearance of the sun and mankind’s descent into perpetual night. The tales of their heroic efforts to stave off disaster are lost to us forever.

I am not qualified to comment on the science of the Global Warming. However the movement to face up to it -- I do understand. In taking on this challenge one sees what is most noble in man. Standing before a realm, he declares sovereignty; faced with a threat, he takes the initiative. Laugh as we may at our progeny as they overreacted to ward off the disappearance of the sun so many centuries ago; it is man’s choice to react to the challenges posed by nature, it is the beast’s fate to not.

Labels: global warming