Global warming global schwarming

Like many people I like to pretend to keep my finger on the pulse of the global warming disaster. This is a brilliant disaster because it is happening in a slow motion fashion. The trick to being an effective global disaster, the kind where you can cause epic levels of devastation, the kind that can aspire to destroying half the life on earth and not look silly about its ambitions, is you must happen slowly, you've got to take your time. If a disaster gives people ample time to deal with something, even a dire emergency, especially a dire emergency, they won't. Sure, they might pretend to, but while people are readily fooled by pretending, global disasters aren't so much usually. However, if a global disaster makes any sudden moves we tend to spring into real action. If, for instance, there is a zombie apocalypse, then the zombies massing together in a tidal wave of their numbers is a recipe for the failure of that zombie uprising. Human kind is resourceful, crafty, able to bond into effective units to fight seemingly insurmountable threats. But a zombie invasion playing the long game, going slow, that's the one that will succeed. Let us get used to them gradually, a zombie here, a zombie there.

"I don't like these zombies." We might say "But they're so ridiculously slow and stupid. They can't even open a door!" And so, imperceptibly the zombie population will grow.

"The zombies got Joe out by his garage." We might say "But Joe was a very old man, crippled with arthritis, and he had horrible glaucoma. It's probably a relief for him to be a zombie."

"I saw a few zombies shambling through the neighborhood honey. Make sure you keep the doors closed." How hard is it to close a door? You don't even have to lock it. They're zombies, all they can manage is a bit of light pushing, and, of course, a little teething. Anyone can keep a door closed. I mean, until they don't.

"Harold, I think the zombies got the Jacobsens."

"I never liked the Jacobsens." Mutters Harold under his breath. "Jesus!" He says "What does it take to close your damn doors at night!"

"Well" Louise, Harold's wife, replies "The Jacobsens always were fools."

And so it goes. Housing gets cheaper, resources more plentiful, jobs easy to find. Plus it's fun to run over zombies on the way to work, albeit in a sick sort of a way. Yes, there are zombies absolutely everywhere, but they're as slow and ridiculous as ever.

And then, one day, it's all zombies. A sea of zombies. But only so long as they took 80 years not 80 weeks, or even 80 months. Nice and slow.

"Wow" You might think "I never thought it would be all zombies everywhere. They were so slow!" Except that you won't think that, because you'll be a zombie too, and zombies don't think. If they could think they could open doors, and if they were that much more of a threat then by god we would have had them! We'd have sprung into action.

Of course, global warming is nothing like this inch by inch zombie apocalypse. Sure it's slow and dangerous, theoretically, but we should all be okay if we get to high ground. How hard is it to get to high ground?