Fire, Ice or Malaria?

John F. Kennedy’s poet laureate Robert Frost wrote:
Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.

I don't know if Frost was speaking figuratively. I never met the guy. Maybe he was just really into fire and ice. It is a well known fact that poets laureate are often pyromaniacs. As for the ice obsession, maybe he meant " ice" as in meth. It's an even better known fact that most poets laureate are junkies. I know for a fact that Maya Angelou used to be heavy into narcotics, but her Wikipedia entry doesn't mention which ones she liked. My money is on heroine. And probably Chips Ahoy. But let's say for the sake of argument that Frost was not chasing the dragon when he wrote this poem. If he was prophesying, then maybe he was predicting how humans would inevitably destroying our home planet.

It all started with Prometheus. In Greek mythology, he is the God who gave man fire. Ever since that fateful moment, we have been doing our damnedest to burn everything we can get our greasy little opposable thumbs around. Some random caveman in some ancient ice age must have seen a lightning strike cause a forest fire and think, "Ooga ooga! Fire good! Me like fire." Shortly thereafter, proto-man harnessed mother nature's most primitive force and created the very first carbon footprint. Sure, that caveman's footprint may have been more troll like than yours or mine, or most likely mine, but it was from that point that humans started adding harmful carbon back into our atmosphere at increasingly alarming rates. It is the nature of our society to burn things. We use fire to bake our bread, heat our homes, and fuel our Fords. Even if we aren't completely aware of it, burning fossil fuels accounts for the vast majority of our energy use worldwide.

So, like Billy Joel said, 'we didn't start the fire -it was always burning since the world’s been turning.’ Is our environment too fubar to fix? I don't know. I'm no psychic. But I do watch movies. If they are any prediction of how our time on earth will end, then mankind is officially boned.

So how will it end? I’m taking bets! Global warming is melting the icecaps. So will we end up like Kevin Costner in Waterworld? Will our world, too, be a featureless sphere with a handful of human outposts floating in an unlimited ocean? I'm not a strong swimmer, and I'm super pasty, so I'm not super keen on that idea. No one wants to see my sun-burned waterlogged corpse floating up to the side of his dinghy.

Or maybe ice is the way we’ll go out. According to my scientist friends (Bill Nye the Science Guy is on my speed dial, right after Stephen Hawking) after the ice caps do melt (and they will, I assure you) we’ll be in for another ice age. Sure, it’s going to get hotter before it gets cooler. Much hotter. Hot enough to, well, melt polar ice caps. When all the cool, fresh water from those glaciers and icebergs joins with the salty, warm waters of the Gulf Stream all currents will weaken and eventually subside. Currents, other than being sea turtle interstates, drive the mixing of hot and cold water across the planet and warm most of North America and Europe. It’s the warm water that currents bring to places like England and New York that prevents those places from being snowbound year round.

With no currents, the oceans will stagnate. Just like when you don’t rinse out your dog’s water dish and you leave it outside for a week, microorganisms will multiply and spread infectious diseases. Mosquitos will travel in packs of billions and pick cows clean in under five minutes. They’ll be more lethal than those shadow beasts in Pitch Black. You know you all saw that and loved Vin Diesel! But as far as disaster movie parallels, it would be more like Outbreak, but on a global scale. Think of Dawn of the Dead, but instead of zombies, masses of lepers, swaying crowds of malaria and bubonic plague infested refugees coughing all over you every time you leave your house.

Then, just when you think things can’t get worse, you realize that it is now getting colder. The ice age has begun. Everything freezes, but c’est la vie. This is a back-and-forth process that has been cycling for millions of years. Yes, we did hasten it this time. All those fossil fuels were good while they lasted. Now we’re in The Day After Tomorrow. The world is a flash-frozen T.V. dinner, except instead of peas, french fries and fried chicken, it’s small bands of humans clinging desperately to the shear edge of life in an infinite frozen tundra. So yeah, exactly like a T.V. dinner.

I abstain from betting on how humanity will go in the end– fire, ice, malaria… I know it will all end, and that’s enough. Ignorance is bliss. I’m just going to stock up on thermal underwear. And OFF!™. And sunblock–just in case.