So, Where Do You Think We'll Be in Five or Ten Years From Now?

Ten years ago very few of us imagined the world would be in the state it's in today. The four hottest years on record have been the last four. We're already seeing climate changes that, just ten years ago, we were told might befall us by 2100 if we didn't change our ways and damned smartly. Oh well we were only out by eighty years.

Now they're talking about "wet bulb 35," a combination of high heat and high humidity that even a young, healthy person at rest in the shade will not survive for more than six hours.  People will literally bake from the inside out. Bet that won't be pleasant. One of the first to be hit will be China where it will make the country's main agricultural region uninhabitable. That'll send a rocket up the arse for the Boys from Beijing.

Climate scientists from the University of Hawaii, led by Camilo Mora, are sticking to their prediction that "climate departure" will be on us, or at least the unluckiest of us, within the next couple of years.

"One can think of this year [2020] as a kind of threshold into a hot new world from which one never goes back," said Carnegie Institution climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the study. "This is really dramatic." 

Mora forecasts that the unprecedented heat starts in 2020 with Manokwari, Indonesia. Then Kingston, Jamaica. Within the next two decades, 59 cities will be living in what is essentially a new climate, including Singapore, Havana, Kuala Lumpur and Mexico City. 

By 2043, 147 cities — more than half of those studied — will have shifted to a hotter temperature regime that is beyond historical records.

We're going to have a front row seat to watch a lot of change that we just a decade ago would have thought scarcely imaginable.  But what we see is going to have different significance according to personal factors, especially age. Those middle age and over will doubtless find this horrifying but they know that they'll probably be embracing the eternal dirt nap before they have to experience anything really nasty. For the young, however, there will be a different reality. What they see on the evening news is something they, in turn, will eventually endure.

What would happen if today's teenagers came to grips with what their elders - their federal and provincial politicians - are doing and the damage their avarice and dereliction is going to inflict on our young people in the decades ahead?

If our young people really saw these supposed leaders as the greed-driven predators that they are, sacrificing their future for our short-term affluence, how would they react?

Would they place their trust in the same electoral system that brought them this catastrophe to rectify it and magically restore to them the future that ought to be theirs? Could they possibly be that stupid?

It won't take them long to realize we have pillaged their future. We, their elders, have taken our full share and every scrap of their share that we could get our hands on. To them we bequeath the shit end of the stick.

We've already got a problem with social cohesion. We're a divided people, not nearly as bad as Americans, but there's a gap and it's vulnerable to widening. We're split - left and right - rich and just getting by - privilege and precariat. Is it really unlikely that we'll fracture along some generational divide?

My opinion, and it's only an opinion, is that we could be experiencing some degree of generational discord within ten years. The fact is I wouldn't blame the young for seeking some sort of redress from us and it will probably be an involuntary process. I only hope they focus their attention on those who held power and could have done so much but chose to benefit the present at the direct and lasting expense of the future.