I
Finally Believe Global Warming!
Yeah… Some of you should be thinking where
has he been? Well I have been around, I just never subscribed to the idea that
the earth is getting hotter and would eventually reach a point where it was too
hot for humans to survive. Another thought was, I won’t be around for the worst
of it so let me just wing it. Today’s lesson blew all that kind of thinking out
of the water.
The lesson was in a class called Building
Physics, which has very little to do with physics, thank God. Anyway the class
begun at 8am and because of a productive spree last night I arrived in class
just before 9am. Just in case the powers that be are reading this we will leave
the explanation for my lateness as a productive spree. Anyway I arrive in class
and the lecturer is speaking about diseases associated with being in buildings,
I won’t go into that as most of you would not want to relieve that section of
the class. Then it got interesting, but to explain this I have to go back a
little further to my summer vacation. I was having a chat with my Uncle, a
practicing architect in South Africa and he was explaining why certain
materials have to undergo certain process before they can be used in the
construction process. This is not what we would spend hours every day talking
about by the way, that would just be weird. He mentioned how Architecture goes
against the environment. The architect designs something that is unnatural to
the eco system or environment and strictly speaking the environment fights back
and it is that fighting back that we must reduce and if possible prevent. This
struck some chord in me but was silent up until the point in the lecture that
we left off at. That we might not just be fighting the earth, we might actually
be killing it!
The lecturer, who really was a lecturess,
spoke about how much energy is used in the entire process of a buildings life
cycle. All the way from design by the architect, through construction, use and
right down to demolition. She explained at length how much garbage is used up
by a person per year and how all these factors in terms of building
construction and use affect the environment. Now all this I knew as do most of
you and some might be losing interest at this point so I will get to the part
that caught me. It was that we will never be able to get the pollution level to
zero, we can just reduce it. We will always be killing the planet, in short
just as a human has a life span and will eventually die, so does the planet. As
long as we are on the planet the planet too will die. Now don’t worry I am not
suggesting we are completely to blame. Neither am I suggesting we conduct a
mass suicide in order to save the planet, that’s stupid. Why save a planet if
no one will enjoy it. I am also not suggesting we find another planet, though a
zero gravity life on the moon would not be that bad an idea. What I am trying
to bring forward is what I think the real problem is.
I was initially shocked that all the
scientists who are all about global warming have not yet seen that there is a
God somewhere but then I remembered the age old lesson, the heart is sinful and
deceitful… …who can understand it. Everything really is corrupted, even the
earth. The beautiful planet is dying and as noble as it is to try slow down the
inevitable is it not more prudent to think on the life that will expire before
the planet, i.e. yours and mine. All these thoughts hit me mid lecture and I
could not shake it off the whole day, it still sobers me up even now, over 12
hours later. The point is, sin is here, not forever but it is here and its
destructive powers continue to wreak havoc. We can’t just go back to living in
caves, we are passed that, we do what we can to live on and that sometimes
involves building ridiculously shaped buildings that will continue to fight
against the earth but we must keep in mind that this is not it, everything will
come to end when God comes to judge for what we have done with the life and
time we have been given.
The lesson I learned today, was this. Do my
best to reduce the rate at which the planet dies so the next generation
actually has something decent to look at, not something out of a really weird
movie. And don’t put all my hope and faith in this life, because even if I live
to be a million, the earth might be dead long before I get there
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