03 september 2021
The weather is finally cooling off. Thank god. The heat here was killing me. I live in the American West, which is basically a desert. We humans refuse to let it go quietly into the night, and we squabble over what little water we manage to glean from the earth. From the aquifers that we've sucked almost dry, and from the rivers, which come from the snowmelt, which comes from the mountain snow, which becomes less and less every year. I don't think we can hold off the desert for much longer.
I say "we" because I think by existing here I'm at least somewhat culpable, even though I don't participate directly in the ravaging. But I do think the days are numbered. The overall state of the world's climate isn't great, and we see it here. People want too much from the land, and there's only so much it can give. I don't really have a solution. I think it's a little silly to suggest that we go back to the land, to lives of more physical labor. With cultural changes there might be a chance to distribute resources more equitably, but I suspect the results would be more akin to feudalism. And even that is probably optimistic. But obviously we can't continue on as we are.
The utopian Star Trek vision has always been my favorite, one where human beings resolve their differences by using technology to limit scarcity of necessary resources. But we are so far from there.