Letter: Planet becoming inhospitable to humans
Published 1:30 pm Thursday, August 6, 2026
With [climate change] and super El Nino weather, anything could happen, like a west coast hurricane, scientists say.
Imagine inland fires while a hurricane hits the west coast simultaneously. It is not a farfetched scenario. We’re on the road to the planet becoming completely inhospitable to humans. It has been scientifically classified as the Anthropocene Epoch.
Simultaneous foul weather and fires could become common and that seems more likely than not if you look at the data objectively.
We’d welcome the rains to fight fires, but it could be torrential, washing away the burnt out forests into gigantic mudslides, which we’ve seen in South America where entire villages were buried. Yep, tons of fun, eh?
In the meantime people are and will be lashing out in surreal ways with survival anxiety of every imaginable magnitude, even personal gripes. Forest fire smoke alone is an irritant that can affect function of thought, breathing, eye irritation, lung damage, etc.
Those already vulnerable, like with asthma, allergies, and compromised immune systems are in for it. It is not going to be pretty. It is horrible now and it’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Rare moments of good weather will be exploited by [climate change] deniers, as we’ve seen in the past.
“Growth” has become an obscenity. Even amidst what we are seeing, China and the U.S. are pushing for more births to fuel the economy and growth. That’s just obscene to me.
We do not really know what size population the planet can accommodate on an evolutionary scale, especially with the policies we use. As it is, we are already too many.
Daniel Ferreira
North Cowichan