The Midnight Sky

What to make of the future?

Some forecasts are incredibly grim.

They've been made by the brightest minds in the business, however, and predict an increasing preponderance of natural disasters.

Judging by the ways in which natural disasters have harrowingly increased in recent decades, and how the planet continues to rapidly warm, it seems likely that they're correct, even if it's rather depressing to consistently think about it.

Steps clearly need to be taken to halt the increasing preponderance of natural disasters (and save koalas), and the last I heard Canada was on track to meet its Paris Accord targets, but what else needs to be done beyond international treaties, and how do we save the planet while keeping people working?

That seems to be the most serious question facing responsible politicians these days, to me anyways, how do we save the planet while keeping people working?, I resolutely want to see the effects of global warming rapidly decrease, but it would also be nice to avoid mass unemployment at the same time.

I don't want to live under totalitarian lockdown conditions until the Earth cools either. I've never experienced anything worse than this necessary lockdown. The sooner vaccinations bring it to an end the better.

Another serious problem we face regards how reliant contemporary infrastructure is on oil. So much of the economy is dependent on oil; how do you suddenly redesign everything?

Factories, cars, toys, houses, industrial equipment, oil, it's mind-boggling how much plastic you take home sometimes when you order takeout, and if you don't like cooking, the problem intensifies.

I personally think industry needs to find a way to transition to an environmentally friendly economy, it has the resources and the means to make such a transition, but seems to uniformly lack the will.

I suppose that will never happen but if it did there would be so much less conflict. And so many people could continue to keep productively working, managing the tectonic shift.

Governments can legislate transitions but it's only a matter of time before the Republicans are elected again. If they miraculously started taking global warming seriously, cultivated hope would significantly increase.

But this is so grim and serious, people still have to go about living and working, and there's a great scene in The Midnight Sky where that's precisely what astronauts do (cool Netflix film).

On one of the coolest spaceships I've ever seen, three astronauts head out into space to fix something, and suddenly find themselves listening to music, to none other than the lively Sweet Caroline. 

At first I was confused by the scene, it seemed bizarre to suddenly take 10 minutes to focus on fixing something, when so many other things were happening, I admit, I was initially skeptical. 

But then I realized it patiently captured the fluid vivacious nature of teamwork, how wonderful it is to work while listening to music, you don't see that focused on too often in film.

Wouldn't industry still own practically everything if it transitioned to a green economy? Is it worried about losing power and influence? Even with all those trillions?

It'll be interesting to see what happens regardless, glad things seem on track in most of Canada anyways.

Even if the vaccinations are taking a while to roll out.

Remember, many countries aren't much bigger than New Brunswick (I imagine).

And how much easier it would be to vaccinate 30-60 million people if they lived together tightly packed into New Brunswick.