I keep running into fascinating quotes. This one is from Glenn Seaborg, who was the chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, and it is from 1966!!

“At the rate we are currently adding carbon dioxide to our atmosphere (six billion tons a year), within the next few decades the heat balance of that atmosphere could be altered enough to produce marked changes in the climate – changes which we might have no means of controlling even if by that time we have made great advances in our programs of weather modification……I for one would prefer to continue to travel toward the equator for my warmer weather rather than run the risk of melting the polar ice and having some of our coastal areas disappear beneath a rising ocean.”

This quote is from pages 14-15 of Rachel Maddow’s 2019 book, Blowout.

I haven’t written much on this blog about climate change or the other catastrophic possibilities we face.

My good high school friend Charlie Goldman, now a retired MD, sent me the piece that he wrote to put in his Yale 60th Reunion book, and said I could share it. Charlie has spent a lot of time in recent years concentrating on climate change and its effects on human life. But in his Yale submission, he seems to have gone beyond that.

I quote: “In the ten years since I last wrote for this class book, I have studied the growing field of existential risk, and tried my hand at environmental activism, leading two local groups. Sadly, my conclusion at this point is that civilization is collapsing like a house of cards (the collapse is labeled by some as “The Great Simplification” or “The Great Unraveling”): scientists describe a rapidly worsening “polycrisis”; gun sales soar with every mass shooting; we could not collectively rally in response to a mild pandemic; we have algorithms that stupefy and AI that powers autonomous weapons; bio-terrorism is probable; facts compete with fakes and fantasy; “forever chemicals” merge with the biosphere; women lost basic human rights; smoke fills the air; nuclear weapons proliferate….The collapse may be global or regional, continual or sporadic, but it is happening…..Interpreting this glass as half full would be delusional. If I were young, how would I cope with this version of the truth?”

As I think I said several days ago, in his interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Elan Musk said that the thought of AI destroying civilization and the world used to keep him up at night (until he realized that seeing the collapse of civilization would be so interesting), and there’s an article this morning on the front page of the Washington Post about a conversation that, some years ago, Musk had with Larry Page, then Google’s CEO, about the good and the bad potentials of AI – with Page taking the half full side, and Musk the almost all empty side.

Looking at the list of horrors Charlie and others have written, there are at least two that are not stated (and probably several more). One is our apparent inability to educate our children and grandchildren for the coming world. There is no so much controversy as to teaching methods and content, so much truancy, and so much disruption caused by the year(s) lost to the pandemic that we wonder if we (at least for the majority of our young people) ever really catch up. And then there is the dangers of social media, leading to depression, suicides and more, which take up so much of everyone’s time – children and adults, but especially children. And there is the danger of overpopulation, not only in Gaza, but elsewhere, exacerbated by climate change and the necessity of mass migration and the potential result of mass starvation.

They say, of course, that every generation feels that theirs is the most dangerous – and it’s true that no one ever knows what tomorrow might bring. And certainly there have been many tomorrow which have brought nothing but horrors.

But there is danger, and then there is danger. And in the situation we all now find ourselves in, there is overwhelming danger, not to one person, one family, one religion, one country. There is overwhelming danger to everyone.

Tomorrow, this blog will be cheerier. I promise. In the meantime, think about all of this, and come up with appropriate responses.

Sincerely yours,

Chicken Little