CHARMAIN NAIDOO: I'm no dinosaur, kid. I'm adapting to a changing world
'Most people my age – somewhere between babyboomer and millennial – have had to adapt at a rate that has made our heads spin'
EXTRACT
The group of climate specialists who worked in Stockholm found that there is the risk of earth entering what they call “hothouse Earth” conditions.
And this has nothing to do with the special greenhouse that my friend Andrew built to house and protect his orchids from the harsh Highveld winter.
A “hothouse Earth” climate, apparently, will settle at a global average of four to five degrees higher that temperatures from a few centuries ago – before our factories started spewing muck into the atmosphere, before we bred too many farting cows whose methane gases damage the ozone layer and are shockingly bad for the planet …
Someone called me a dinosaur the other day. He was 19, and came very close to losing a limb. Referring to me as a dinosaur is entirely inappropriate and untrue since those magnificent beasts were wiped out 65-million years ago because, apparently, they could not adapt. And I can adapt. Boy, have I had to in the last 30 years of disruption and meteoric technical advancement.There are countless possible reasons given for the dying out of the dinos, including the earth being struck by an asteroid, or the eruption of numerous volcanoes that, in either event, woud have resulted in an ash cloud that would block the sun, trap greenhouse gases and make it too hot to surive. Sort of like what scientist say is happening now. A tale of foreboding – detailing the scenario of “the end of the world as we know it” happening sooner, rather than later – appeared in a Science Daily story this week. The Stockholm Resilience Centre (you’d think the name would provide a modicum of hope, right?) believe ...
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