On average, each year appears to be hotter than the last. According to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), last month was the hottest February on record, as temperatures reached 1.77°C (3.2°F) hotter than “pre-industrial" times. Every month since June 2023 has become the hottest ever for that time of year. There are, indeed, consequences. I’ve blogged about many, including our raging wildfires, drought in some areas and elsewhere horrendous flooding, devastating tropical storms and tornados, coastal loss, glacial and polar ice melting, extinction of species, migration of everything from disease carrying insects into areas unprepared for their arrival to migration of people from now desertified farms, conflicts over vaporizing resources, decimated coral reefs and sea life, intolerable summer heat… and the battles between greedy or ignorant climate change deniers/marginalizers and those who understand how dangerous our future is… much sooner than many expected.
Yet people still clearcut or burn off carbon dioxide-absorbing forests or the leavings from a harvest, burn coal for fuel, buy gas guzzling trucks, cars, ships and planes, burn trash and use fossil fuel energy like there’s no tomorrow. The world doesn’t even look the same anymore. Oh, we’ve dealt with losing extraordinary ancient architectural ruins, like when China dammed up the Yangtze River – the Three Gorges Dam displaced almost two million people, and over 1,200 ancient statues, buildings and other structures and was completed over several decades. It was fully operational by 2012, but history was lost.
We’ve lost other “wonders of the world” before. The lighthouse at Alexandria Egypt, the Colossus at Rhodes, the Hanging Garden at Babylon were gone a long time ago. The natural wonders of the world also are now fading fast, and that at spurred a new form of high-end travel: Last Chance Tourism, as people want to see natural beauty and species that are rapidly disappearing. We’re told that summer ice will be mostly gone within a decade. That Northwest Passage will be open for predictable sea traffic, already setting off claims from Russia challenging US, Canadian, Finnish and Dutch (via Greenland) claims to some of that waterway.
Around the world, tourists are signing on for tours across mountain ranges and fjords where glaciers are disappearing, rainforests to visit disappearing foliage and the wildlife that has depended on these masses of trees, coral reefs slowly being bleached into oblivion, Arctic and Antarctic regions that are rapidly contracting and island nations disappearing into the sea. This new “last chance travel” is also heightening awareness of exactly how pronounced changes to Earth have become from accelerating climate change. How much has changed… permanently? New York Times writer Paige McClanahan, on March 3rd, notes: “It’s a question that many travelers are asking themselves, as climate change threatens a growing number of tourist destinations — from glaciers to coral reefs, ski slopes to low-lying islands. For thousands of years, humans have raced to be the first to scale a peak, cross a frontier, or document a new species or landscape… Now, in some cases, we’re racing to be the last.
“The term last-chance tourism, which has gained traction in the past two decades, describes the impulse to visit threatened places before they disappear. Studies have found that the appeal of the disappearing can be a powerful motivator. But in many cases, the presence of tourists at a fragile site can accelerate the place’s demise.
“There is some evidence that a visit to a threatened place can inspire meaningful behavioral change in visitors, potentially helping to offset the negative impacts of a trip. But research is still in its early stages, and results are mixed.
“In a place like Chamonix (a French mountain town with a once massive glacier) — where tourism is the mainstay of the economy, and where climate change is already having palpable effects on tourist offerings — such tensions are playing out in real time. The shift to a new way of interacting with the landscape may be slow to come, as many jobs — as well as tourist habits — are built into the old way of doing things. But some are already pioneering a new approach, and with the effects of global warming accelerating, change will have to come quickly.”
Those who take that last chance travel understand the scope and intensity of the changes. Those do not have enough money for such journeys at least know the truth from their revised daily lives … to witness, perhaps not as clearly as these world travelers. But some will continue to deny, ignore or marginalize climate change… but Mother Nature, deploying the immutable laws of physics, doesn’t care. It may be harsh, expensive to counter, but it will not stop itself.
I’m Peter Dekom, and even if some want to keep government climate change related spending down so that rich can maintain their luxurious lifestyles, can they really be that callous toward their own children and grandchildren?
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