Global warmin’? Climate change?” asked the old man, as he dangled his feet from the edge of the dock. “I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
The old woman walked down to the dock, just as the ol’ man was grumblin’. “The fuss is about this dock may be under water and your house, too, in maybe 50 or 60 years, if we don’t do sumpthin’,” she said.
“Aw, heck, what do I care? I ain’t gonna be here in 50 or 60 years,” shot back the ol’ man.
“I dunno,” said the ol’ woman. “As ornery as you are, I don’t know that Heaven or Hell is gonna want you. But that’s beside the point. Your kids and your grandchillins is gonna be here, and if the climate changes like most of the scientists think it will, they’s gonna have a heckuva mess on their hands if we don’t — right now — stop burnin’ so much fossil fuels and puttin’ too much of that carbon dioxide up in the atmosphere. We’ve pumped so much extra carbon dioxide into the air over the past 100 years that our natural system can’t absorb it all and it’s about to turn the planet into one big greenhouse and it don’t function very well that way.”
“Okay, so we learn to live it,” said the ol’ man.
“Ain’t that easy,” replied the ol’ woman.
“First off, you got your potential of ice meltin’ and raisin’ the sea levels,” she said.
“There’s this huge ice shelf down in Antarctica, about the size of Jamaica, that’s just fixin’ to break away from the continent and go floatin’ out into the ocean,” said the ol’ woman.
“Yeah, but who cares?” asked the ol’ man. “That’s already floatin’ in the ocean. It ain’t gonna make sea level rise.”
“No, it won’t on its own,” replied the ol’ woman. “But those ice sheets hold back glaciers on land, and if they break loose and float away, there’ll be nothin’ to hold back the glaciers, and since the temperature in Antarctica has risen about five degrees over the last 50 years, them glaciers are gonna flow into the sea and that will raise sea levels.”
“I don’t understand all this mumbo-jumbo,” said the ol’ man. “Get me some more ice in my tea, will ya?”
“Sure,” said the ol’ woman. “And right here’s why it matters. You poured your sweet tea over that ice a while ago, but the ice melted. Right?”
“Right,” said the ol’ man.
“And your glass didn’t overflow, right?”
“Right, again,” said the ol’ man.
“Well, now, if I put too much ice into your glass, what’s gonna happen?”
“It’ll overflow,” said the ol’ man.
“Exactly right,” said the ol’ woman. “If I add more ice, the glass will overflow and if too much ice that’s now on land melts into the seas, the seas will overflow and you’ll be sitting here in a SCUBA suit.”
“Okay, so what?” asked the ol’ man. “I’ll just buy beachfront property in Sebring.”
“That ain’t the point, either,” said the ol’ woman. “Climate change could lead to all kinds of disasters around the world. Oxfam, a bunch that knows sumpthin’ ‘bout disasters, says there could be as many as 400 million people sufferin’ from natural disasters – all climate related – by 2015.”
“Well,” said the ol’ man. “I reckon if we did this, we can undo it, too?”
“That’s right,” said the ol’ woman. “By changin’ the way we live.”
Steve Hart is a sailor, angler, explorer, raconteur, amateur citrus-grower and semi-professional theologian who masqueraded as a Florida journalist and pundit for the last 25 years. A fifth-generation Floridian, Hart comes from solid cracker stock but revels in the changing face of 21st century Florida and its patchwork quilt of people, their cultures, traditions, shades and ideas. His book, “Tales from Down Yonder, Florida,” is available in local bookstores and on the Web at downyonderflorida.com.
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