IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK.
‘In the beginning”.
That’s how the Bible starts. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Then, untold many millions of years ago, everything was there in principle, ready to be deployed at the correct minute or hour, year or millennium.
However, after a glorious start in Paradise, we became impatient, and made a deal with the devil to speed development. That development has now taken its full course, and has resulted in degradation and dissolution, because what has a beginning, has an end, unlike God who has neither.
In a sense, we are on a voyage; every voyage has a starting point, and a destination. How this adventure began is the concern of many a scientist, who will forever remain puzzled about ‘the beginning’ while offering plausible suppositions. They do agree that there is a beginning. The how and what remains a mystery to them.
The law of logic.
The law of logic suggests that whatever has an origin, also has an ending. That applies to individuals like me and you, it applies to everything we observe, and consequently, it applies to the world we live in. “In the beginning” indicates that there also is ‘the end’. And, it is my guts, my feeling, my intuition, my conviction, that THE END is much nearer than statistics or news reports or TV or politicians – who still push ‘growth’ – suggest, if they mention it at all.
Enter Arctic News,
There is one exception, however: ARCTIC NEWS. It concludes that the Arctic’s terrestrial permafrost now emits more greenhouse gases than it stores, and the trend is likely to accelerate as temperatures keep rising, especially, in the Arctic.
The highest carbon dioxide emissions over the 2000-2020 period came from inland waters and wildfires. Then the non-permafrost wetlands exhaled the most methane, and the dry tundra released the most nitrous oxide.
A drastic change is coming.
The prospect of further toxic releases looks dire. It is estimated that the upper three meters of the permafrost-tundra region stores 1,000 Giga tons– a Giga ton equals a billion tons – of soil organic carbon, while deeper deposits could store an additional amount of 1,000 Giga tons. The analysis concludes that the permafrost region is the largest carbon and nitrogen pool on Earth. Self-amplifying feedbacks and crossing of tipping points, as well as the loss of the aerosol masking effect and sunspots reaching a peak, could contribute to cause a further temperature rise from, say AD 1800, of over 10°C, in the process causing the cloud tipping points to get crossed that can push up the temperature rise by a further 8°C.
We all die when it rises by 5°C.
A sudden melting in the Far North where heat has accelerated beyond anywhere else on earth, that alone could do the trick. Out of sight, out of mind, but remember the first law of Ecology: Everything is connected to everything else. It may happen silently and gradual, and, just as collapse, it may happen suddenly. Altogether, the temperature rise may exceed 18°C by as early as 2026: as early as 2026! I believe: it’s later than you think!
Already a world in turmoil.
Economic anxieties are adding to divisions between rural and urban dwellers, unskilled and college educated workers, religious traditionalists and secularists. In France, Italy, Germany and Sweden, far-right politicians have seized on this dissatisfaction to promote nationalist, anti-immigrant agendas, while growth is slowing worldwide, making it harder to find solutions.
THE DAY OF THE LORD.
Don’t be surprised: 2,000 years ago, the Bible told us so.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (2 PETER 3: 10)
Enter Jesus and John.
That the end will come unexpected, is re-confirmed multiple times in the Bible. Jesus, in Matthew 24 – that terrible chapter – also points out its suddenness: verse 36: “No one knows the day or the hour, only the father.” A thought goes through my mind: if creation and the creator are identical, as Bonhoeffer suggests, then creation herself knows the tipping point, just as a person, about to die, feels it coming.
And then there is John’s Revelation. It too reveals a detail about the ‘when and how’. Here’s another quote: Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: “Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon! In one hour your doom has come!’
Revelation 18 describes the present moment, 2024, when a surplus of luxury goods, thanks to cheap slaves, finds no market any more, and the system collapses.
Believe me: IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK.