Something for the human-created global warming crowd to remember

My one and only experience on a cruise ship was some 20 years ago, when I went on a fairly neat Caribbean cruise.  I’m not much of a “lie on the beach” person, so I opted for a cruise that would take me to places that offered something to see.  Aside from some pretty white beaches, I also got to see Curacao (which looks like a staid Dutch town on speed), the two Eastern-most locks of the Panama Canal, and Cartagena (an important setting in the War of Jenkin’s Ear).  It was the last that most impressed me, although not in a nice way.  The town, although a fairly major one and with quite lovely colonial architecture, was on the edge of the jungle, and the jungle was winning.  The place was kind of like a Gothic nightmare, with frail humans vainly pressing back against the encroaching deep green.  These amazing photos of “feral” houses give some indication of what I mean.  (h/t  Thought You’d Never Ask)

In the years since that trip, Global Warming — pardon me, man-made Global Warming — has become a dominant theme, especially on the Left.  I realize that part of why I’ve never bought into it is because it is so anthropocentric.  In my mind, it gives humans vastly more power than I can easily accept.  I know that when we harness atoms we do have exceptional power, at least as to that moment in time, but the fact remains that nature always comes back.  That’s true in Chernobyl, it’s true in Hiroshima, it’s true in Cartagena, and it’s true wherever the kudzu vines grow.  We can dominate for a moment, a year, a decade, a millenium, but nature will always win.

This does not mean I believe we should trash the world we live in.  And as you know, from a purely political standpoint, I can’t think of anything nicer than being able to thumb our collective noses at the Saudis and Iranians and Venezuelans who sit on the worlds operative oil supplies (as opposed to Americans, who continue to sit on inoperative supplies).  But let’s change our usage for the right reason — cleaner air and water, which are under our immediate control; greater efficiency; the husbanding of finite resources; and the bankrupting of evil governments.  Let’s not pretend, however, that we are Gods.