Fiddling While Earth Burns

Many of us heard about the time in ancient Rome when the Emperor Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned.

Of course it isn't completely true, fiddles weren't invented yet but the essence of the story has some validity since the fire cleared out an area of Rome which he wanted for a Palace and was effectively a slum before the fire.

In the end it was blamed on the Christians who were then martyred but eventually Nero was killed and replaced.

By this time Rome was already master of the known world but its was generally at its peak leading to power struggles and eventual decline.

Today we see much of the world effectively fiddling while the Earth burns.

Climate change is real and getting worse.  The changes it makes to the Earth accelerate the changes to come.

It may in fact already be too late to stop it as some of the effects take a situation initiated by human behavior but which after a tipping point is accelerated by natural ones.

Take the simple fact that ice reflects heat while bare earth tends to absorb it.  So when a glacier recedes exposing earth, the warming accelerates.

Further a lot of methane trapped in the permafrost starts to be released as the permafrost melts.

We need to reduce our contribution to this process and possibly find ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere instead of increasing it.

If we care about the future.