harbinger

One day, a hundred or so years from now, someone will write a paper about the absurd statistics and anomalies that, with a century of hindsight, clearly paints a picture of what went wrong. Like how crime rates can be predicted by birth rates twenty years previous. On that day, in the twenty-second century, a studious little environmental ethics major (yes, they will have many of these, if we keep on our current course) will read an obscure report that says " home policy premiums have risen 5 to 20 per cent and that in 2009 almost 41 percent of the claims reported are water-related and that the cost of the average water-related claim is now almost $12,000 – up 25 per cent since 2007. Although not all claims made sought compensation, applying the $12,000 average claim cost to the 113 August 4th flooding claims results in a total cost of $1,356,000." They will read this and think "why didn't anyone see it? A rise in flood claims has got to mean a rise (even if minute) in water levels. Shouldn't they have thought of this as a harbinger of the much worse things to come? Shouldn't they have recognised this as a tipping point?" In a passionate outburst during her seminar, this student will express much of these observations and her colleagues will all shake their heads. Clearly, our ancestors were idiots, they'll think. And as they get ready to head to the pub to discuss ancient Marx theory and the Bush dictatorship, they'll don their masks as much for the oxygen as for the delightful side effect of covering the rank odour of sewage and algae that permeates the campus. After all, that's what happens when everything is at the new sea-level and old infrastructure now floats on top of stagnant sewage water. Yes, poppets, humans really are that dumb.