I know this is a sad and awful way to start a new year but it needs to be said. We have to look forward to an age of increasing and fearsome devastation. I am sorry to be so gloomy but all the evidence is there. Of course, we must seek, and indeed have even more incentive than before, to salvage joy, comfort, interest and achievement in our individual daily lives but, in general, humanity is fated to endure misfortune on a growing scale.
For a start, the impact of global warming and climate change will increasingly visit the earth with natural disasters. Category five, perhaps new Category six, hurricanes – and, in our case, floods like the Great Flood of 2005 – in a decade or two will become the norm. Trends increasingly noticed now – the slow melting of mighty platforms of ice, the gradual changing of ocean currents, the rise of temperatures and sea levels – will reach their tipping points and suddenly unleash unprecedented disasters.
