Is The Earth Finished?

RC Sherriff’s 1939 novel The Hopkins Manuscript is a catastrophe novel about the moon crashing into the earth.  It starts in February 1945 with a meeting of scientists who are among the first to learn the terrible fate awaiting the planet. In February 2005 a group of scientists convened by the British Government met in Exeter to discuss the latest findings about climate change. ‘It was the inevitablility of what was going to happen, I think, that for the first time struck us with real force,’ wrote the Independent’s Michael McCarthy in The Tablet. ‘Whatever flapping, floundering efforts humankind eventually makes to try to stop it all, the great ice sheets will melt, the seas will turn acid, and the land will burn...So many environmental scare stories over the years; I never dreamed of such a one as this.’

What had he and the other scientists and journalists heard? On the first day of the Exeter meeting the Director of the British Antarctic Survey had warned that the vast ice sheet covering the western side of the Antarctic may be beginning to break up; were it to collapse into the sea, this sheet would raise global sea levels by at least fifteen feet.

Another group described their research into the acidification of the oceans: carbon dioxide is already beginning to erode the alkaline of the world’s seas and in the end the world’s small marine organisms will not be able to live in this acid sea.

A group of American scientists reviewed the probability of global warming bringing about the collapse of the Gulf Stream and a new ice age in Europe. And some British scientists presented a paper on the Greenland ice-sheet; they believe that it will start to melt once temperatures rise 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels (we are already 0.7 above) and that this in itself will cause sea levels to rise over time by twenty feet. 

In general, wrote McCarthy, there was a strong sense that climate change was proceeding much more quickly than had been anticipated. Even if carbon dioxide emissions stop dead tomorrow, much of the predicted future is inevitable. But in practice, these emissions will go on increasing as, for example, the Chinese and Indian economies continue to flourish, and governments refuse to act to limit air travel.

At the end of the three-day conference Michael McCarthy returned to London with Paul Brown from the Guardian. ‘I said, “The earth is finished.” He said, “It is, yes.” We both shook our heads and gave that half-laugh sparked by incredulity.’

But is the earth finished? Not necessarily, even now. For individuals the answer lies in energy efficiency at home and at work and in reducing travel, and especially air travel. For governments it lies in redesigned cars, in renewable energy (wind, wave, solar), in hydrogen as a source of energy, in redesigning coal-fired power stations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and perhaps in nuclear energy.

By 2050 the UK aims to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 60 per cent, which means reducing our dependence on these emissions by over three- quarters. It may still be possible to do this. What we have to fear is mankind failing to work together to overcome a catastrophe that is so vastly worse than war and famine. We should stop fooling ourselves that re-cycling or getting rid of the gas-guzzler is an adequate response to the potential horrors of global warming.

We have yet to wake up to the reality of the threat that pervaded the Exeter conference.  Could it be that this republication of The Hopkins Manuscript will help someone, somewhere to do so?

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