There’s a pretty good article to be read in the latest Atlantic Monthly. It’s about who the winners and losers will be as global warming makes its presence increasingly felt over the next few generations. You’d think that the fossil fuel energy companies (the big oil and coal companies) wouldn’t do so well, since their main product is causing the problem. Besides, by 2040 or so, some analysts think that world oil production will level off and even start going down, no matter what the market demands. But guess what? Global warming will probably open up new coal and oil fields in areas now covered by snow and ice, including Siberia, Greenland, and Antarctica (and will make undersea oil in the Arctic Sea accessible). So, the supply of oil and coal might actually increase, and drive the production cost of these fuels down, for a few decades anyway.

Will the world (and especially the industrialized nations) have the discipline to use this “last hurrah” for fossil fuels wisely (and at greater expense), applying carbon sequestering technologies and maintaining economic supports for alternative energy sources? (Those should include, for better and for worse, improved nuclear power; but only as a part of a bigger mixture including wind, solar, hydro, local generation, improved efficiency, conservation, etc.) Or, as I suspect, will Russia, India, the US, Europe and China throw caution to the wind and go for one last blast of polluting prosperity, before the approaching dark ages really take hold?

Sorry, but I’m a pessimist. I’d like to think that the next generation will learn from my generation’s mistakes. We listened to lovely songs about global brotherhood (remember “We Are The World” from 1985 — you don’t hear that one much anymore, probably as much because of embarrassment as musical mediocrity). But in the end, we allowed the big moneymen to define and shape our world. The problem for the future is that global warming is going to have different affects, based on where you now live and how much you now have. Other than Europe, where things might get very cold very quickly (strangely enough — global warming will have some surprising effects), the farther north you are and the more you now have, the better you will do.

As Greg Easterbrook points out in the Atlantic, some people (or even relatively large populations) are actually going to be better off because of global warming (while most people on this planet today, or their children, are going to be worse off — mostly those who are pretty marginal already). A lot of the people who could do the most to control greenhouse gasses are not going to have much personal incentive to make the needed sacrifices. Just the opposite, actually. You will certainly see plenty of public relations on the part of the big, mostly northern-based world conglomerates about how they are addressing famine, rising sea levels, and increasingly powerful storms lashing the central and southern parts of the planet. But it sounds to me like a formula for more of the same of what we’ve had here in the USA over the past 30 years. More free-market capitalism, more Republicanism, more “too bad if you’re not rich” social policy, more lottery tickets and rags-to-riches stories to keep the disenfranchised hopeful. Things will get worse and worse for them on average, but a handful of struggling families will be given a ticket to the good life. Just enough to keep the masses hoping that they will be next; just enough to keep them from getting crazy or going Bolshevik on us.

Oh, speaking of dark futures, I was watching Jericho last night, and it brought back a memory from the 1980s. The fictional little town of Jericho, isolated out there on the Great Plains after a terrorist nuclear apocalypse, thought that the Calvary was finally coming to its rescue. A band of grifters somehow got some Marine uniforms and an M-1 tank, and were looting towns like Jericho by pretending to be the vanguard of a federal re-building effort. One character, Mimi (an IRS agent on business in Jericho when the bombs went off), was extremely happy to think that her former employer was back in business. She looked forward to getting back to New York City — which, according to the plot of Jericho, was one of the few major cities that somehow escaped the nukes. She swelled with pleasure at the thought that she would soon walk Central Park instead of the cornfields of Kansas.

Central Park in Manhattan – I’ve been there, at least on the south end. And to be honest, I wasn’t impressed. Back in the mid-80s when I was married (when “We Are The World” first came out), I used to go to Manhattan a lot, because my wife felt at home there (even though she never lived there). What do I remember most about Central Park? The rats. They were bold critters, sneaking in and out of shadowy zones to recover whatever food dropped from the humans eating on the benches. Amazing just how close they would get to people. You’d see some young or middle aged parents, well-off and educated kinds of people, enjoying a sunny afternoon with their kids in the park. And the rats would sneak up to within 3 feet or so of they and their kinder. Yet I never saw anyone notice those furry little things with the long tails, or get panicky about having their kids so close to carriers of rabies. I couldn’t figure out whether New Yorkers, even the hip and well-off crowd from 68th Street or whatever, weren’t very observant, or whether they just took rats in stride as a cost of being part of “the big Apple”. Unlike Mimi, I just never caught Manhattan fever. If rats would make her feel more at home, I’m sure she could find them sneaking around the corn silos out in the heartland. Jericho must certainly have that in common with Central Park.