Message #263140

[Pax Unum]

Something similar likely took place in the New World, where the first monumental buildings and cities sprang up along the Pacific coast of Peru 3,000 years ago, not long after the modern El Niño weather pattern began. The onset of that periodic phenomenon—the same weather pattern that is due to deliver floods and mudslides this winter from Chile to California—may have prompted ancient Peruvians to join together in a novel way to deal with the recurring destruction.
Epic of Gilgamesh.
Partially broken tablet V of the epic of Gilgamesh. The tablet dates back to the old Babylonian period, 2003–1595 B.C., Mesopotamia, Iraq.

Courtesy of Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin/The Sulaymaniyah Museum/Creative Commons

Historians and archaeologists no longer see civilization as a forced evolutionary march from farming to factory to Facebook. Instead, they see individuals and groups grasping for creative ways to overcome immediate perils. The results, as in Mesopotamia, can transform not only their society, but those around them and those that come after. Stress and strain make us stretch.
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Humans, of course, don’t always triumph. Terrible droughts 4,000 years ago may have played a central role in the dramatic collapse of the first Mesopotamian cities, along with Egypt’s Old Kingdom and the Indus civilization in what is now Pakistan and India. The changes were too deep or fast or tenacious for societies to cope. Warfare, famine, and disease stalked the Near East for centuries.

If history is our guide, then, an effective response to today’s changing climate—which is shifting more rapidly than at any time since Homo sapiens evolved—requires a major retooling of our economy, institutions, infrastructure, and even our beliefs.

The scope of such transformation is so daunting that the climate debate seems mired either in head-in-the-sand denial or a call-in-hospice fatalism. Jonathan Franzen wrote recently in the New Yorker that “the Earth as we now know it resembles a patient whose terminal cancer we can choose to treat either with disfiguring aggression or with palliation and sympathy.”

It is true that the challenges dwarf those faced by the scattered bands of ancient Iraqis. Large parts of the heavily populated Nile Delta and much of the lowlands of Bangladesh, where some of the world’s most vulnerable people live, may slip under the waves in coming decades. Tens of millions of people could soon be in danger.

Southern Iraq may again face inundation, only this time there is not enough high ground for the growing population in the region. And then there are the storms and droughts and shifting weather patterns that threaten to impact everyone everywhere, from the Arctic to the Amazon.

All the while, we continue to build more coal-fired power plants, drive more cars, fly more planes, and consume more electricity as more of us gain access to an energy-intensive life once reserved for the privileged few. Whatever happens in Paris, our species has raised the stakes by providing nature with ever-greater opportunities to smash our increasingly urban world.

Yet our civilization is not a doomed Atlantis. Satellites, ocean buoys, and terrestrial weather stations give us the real-time pulse of the planet that the ancients lacked. Our ability to respond to emergencies has grown by leaps and bounds. We can prepare for and evacuate from hurricanes, in stark contrast to the horror at Galveston. And we can choose the greater good over narrow interests, as politicians did in 1985 when they banned chemicals that harm the ozone layer.

Unless we burn enough carbon to turn the Earth into a hellish Venus, we have a good shot not only at preventing global catastrophe but at reshaping our world in ways that tackle not just rising seas but increasing inequality, intolerance, and injustice—some of the institutionalized social ills that stem from the invention of the city itself.

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 “There is this idea that cities happen because somebody invented irrigation,” says Pournelle. “My argument is that irrigation happened because you had cities.” Irrigation doesn't even give you any food bonus until you discover Monarchy or Republic.  More...

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There is no natural law that says we can’t come up with new approaches to address those issues in more humane ways. The threat of global climate change may be just the kick in the pants that we need. “In every crisis there is a message,” says Susan L. Taylor, editor in chief emerita of Essence magazine “Crises are nature’s way of forcing change—breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place,”

There’s no guarantee of a rainbow in the aftermath. Our humanity will be sorely tested as the most vulnerable suffer while those with resources grab the higher ground. But our ancestors’ accomplishments, laid bare by archaeologists in the nick of time, can inspire us to change the world rather than just its climate.

Andrew Lawler is a contributing writer for Science and Archaeology magazines, and author of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World: The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization.