Change
It feels like it is changing. It’s the way we look into the future now. The way visionaries write about it has changed. Visionaries are losing their desire to look too far.
The great sweeping hope of the sci-fi era is becoming even more apocalyptic. The truth is that our future has infinitely more chance of becoming Mad Max than it does of becoming Babylon Five or Utopia. This change is no longer in an unimaginable future. It is possible within the lives of anyone under fifty years old and many beyond.
We have passed well into Orwell’s visions of 1984 although many of us have become too stupefied to realize the danger of that let alone do anything meaningful to stop it. We are becoming hypnotized both by an approaching doom and our absolute inability to change our ways to meet it
The fanciful type of human philosopher that used to dream of the hope and promise of Buck Rogers among the stars is passing into generations that dream of vampires and dragons. Things that will never be are preferable to looking into realty that will be disastrous. The future we face has lost it’s wing and glory. Children no longer dream so much of being an astronaut. Will we escape the planet as a species or more importantly will we become the ark that carries the germ of earth’s life into a survivable future or will we die here, our hopes and the promise of the human species lost in our need to procreate and consume everything.
There are local signs. A scientific group on Brisbane Waters has measured the water within as having risen 10cm over the past few years. The government is finally openly talking of the thousands of homes that will be inundated as the changes happen.
Almost all of Wyong Shire will be drowned. That should be interesting. Will the water just politely climb the beaches and streets and end up lapping at our stairs? In that case it could be a generation or even moreĀ before our homes die.
It could be storm surge. I say it will be. Storms are worse now so it will not not need to be rising waters from global warming but just the greater storm surge off the big storms. That could be as soon as tomorrow.
I feel quite a bit of trepidation about that living as close to the water line as I do. I would move if I was not both ill and broke. I would like to add wooden storm shutters to the things I store in the garage, It’s too late to make them when the storm has entered the living space. This house is a rental and I am not quite well enough to do that. It’s on the list.
Paper memories like photographs are kept a little higher. Chances are the first floods will be low and not much above normal. With any real luck we will not just be swept away, although it is a possibility I guess. Some of the paper memories and documents will be scanned onto disks. I hate CD and DVDs. They are such an unreliable medium to use for important memories. If things should go really pear-shaped and theĀ disks delaminate or there are no computers in a place you need some ID.. well, you know. Maybe I should laminate a few things and seal the originals in air-tight containers.
There are houses all around the waterfront that went up for sale many months ago and are not moving. In some cases they are below the normal flood zone and would have have been difficult to move anyway but a few seem to be hanging about a lot longer than their supposedly fixed high prices would warrant. Investors becoming edgy about investing in the low-lands now that we expect it all to be underwater in the future?
I wish I were fit. I could be happy in a post-apocalyptic world. The words “we told you so” will be of great comfort as as the rooves of our homes become habitats for water fowl and yabbies and we all fight for space on land someone else has paid for in the pre-apocalyptic calm (now).
The entry could go on for many pages if it were to list all of the imminent changes to our world already imposing on it but this will do. One thing we are seeing very starkly is the fact that the people we depend on to make decisions on our behalf have stakes in things which prevent their taking action anytime soon and really, it is too late!
The people who built empires and vaccuumed up all the resources since the nineteen seventies have been creating a debt we would inevitably have to pay. I just hope they are still here and can’t buy their way to high ground if it happens soon