Commanding Hope, on the 77th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima
By chance, last evening, August 6, the 77th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, I got to p. 33 in my reading of Commanding Hope by Thomas Homer-Dixon. I was stunned, overwhelmed, to read his explanation
that he can better convey the peril we face [due to climate destabilization] by emphasizing less how we're warming the planet and more how we're altering the energy flows around our planet. He went on to explain that when we calculate the amount of extra heat now being trapped in our atmosphere and oceans, it is roughly equivalent to the amount of energy that would be released in the detonation of some five hundred thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs in our shared atmosphere each day. With a note that each one release the amount of explosive power contained in fifteen thousand tons of TNT.
When I read and hear about the suffering caused by the bombing of Hiroshima, I am numbed with sorrow.
How can I comprehend the idea of injecting the heat of five hundred thousand Hiroshima bombs into our shared energy flow, in one day, daily ? But daily news is a conveyor belt of heat domes, drought, forest fires, floods, human migration, species extinctions, disease migration, super charged storms, galloping growing zones, ecosystems collapsing, evaporating lakes and rivers....
Is this the future we leave our children and companion species?
It's time to interview Thomas Homer-Dixon and to begin to understand the complexities we face, and what actions we are called upon.
Catch the July 13'22 interview with him on CBC's The Current:
