Climate catastrophe makes World War 3 look trivial

The Final Judgement on our human stewardship of this dilapidated planet looms. And it looks like we’ll all be found guilty – and given the death sentence.

Phillip Adams: “Climate change is happening everywhere to everyone.”

At the last census astronomers guesstimated that there are 200 billion trillion stars. Astrologers ignore the maths and focus on about a dozen, assigning to them magical powers to influence our daily lives. Voila your horoscope! Think of its predictions as a weather forecast for your personal future.

Experience suggests that these forecasts are not quite as reliable as those provided by the Bureau of Meteorology. Which is why I’ve tended to ignore the horoscopic effects of astrologers published in newspapers and magazines. Nor am I in the habit of messing with the entrails of owls. Truth is I’ve never wanted to peak into my future. On past experience it wouldn’t be too fancy. Better not to know.

Had I read my horoscope a decade or so ago it would have been a horrorscope.

Among the nasty surprises that lay ahead? 1) Deafness. 2) Macular degeneration – needing surgery and monthly eye jabs. 3) Multiple starring appearances in operating theatres for removals and replacements – including artificial hips. 4) Heart troubles requiring the implanting of pacemakers. 5) The Near-Death Experience of cancer. 6) A few painful encounters with gravity and 7) Like so many of us, the vicissitudes of Covid. I could add numbers 8-11 but you get the picture.

This brings me to another horrorscope – involving life and death on the farm. Plagues galore. A Biblical infestation of locusts was the least of our troubles. Far more destructive were mice and rats – the latter munching the wiring in cars and 4WDs. A hurricane ripped off rooves, crushed vehicles and ringbarked a thousand trees. Varroa mites attacked our beloved hives. We lost six much-loved dogs to snake bite. And a continuing onslaught of feral pigs makes rabbits seem welcome.

Disasters of a larger scale – the long-predicted impacts of climate change. Vast droughts, those bushfires in slow motion – that killed everything from cattle to crops – from leaves of grass to giant, century-old trees that once sheltered the Elmswood homestead. Heart-breaking. And as I write these words of woe and worry another drought has commenced. Bushfires? We’ve had our share – and are now scanning the horizon for signs of smoke.

Drought punctuated by floods of unprecedented frequency and scale, wreaking havoc as they wreck the riverbanks and bury the bridge in detritus. If it’s not one damn thing it’s another. Or both.

And climate change is happening everywhere to everyone. Wars raging across the planet, the threat of nuclear weapons has the Doomsday Clock just seconds to midnight. But the climate catastrophe, this self-inflicted war on our planet, makes a Third World War look trivial.

And god knows what other plagues and epidemics will emerge. Certainly there’ll be wars over water as there were once wars over oil. Not merely waves but tsunamis of refugees will soon dwarf any in human history. You don’t need an astrologer to tell you that. Ask your insurance actuaries or statisticians. The writing’s on the wall or in the computer modelling.

Christian fundamentalists believe we’re living in the End Times. The Final Judgement looms with Pentecostalists rapturous about the rapture. And this old atheist? He feels almost fortunate to be heading for the exit.

Yep the Final Judgement on our human stewardship of this dilapidated planet looms. And it looks like we’ll all be found guilty – and given the death sentence.

Hence my reluctance to reads the horrors of the horoscope. Have a nice day.