How fast should we move?

"I don't think it's going to happen fast."

-a student named Amanda (Crowley?) writing about the end of the world, in the Claremont Colleges' literary magazine, Passwords

Earth's climate and biosphere are immensely complex systems, the biosphere especially so.  They have been known to act in a fashion known as "punctuated equilibrium," in which drastic changes can occur suddenly and unexpectedly, sometimes within a period of a few years.  This could be what the immediate future holds, considering the possible consequences of the breakup of ice sheets or the collapse of ecosystems.

On the other hand, the climate could continue to slowly warm and our stock of biodiversity could continue to slowly deplete, with the net result that natural disasters (hurricanes, crop failures) would gradually grow in intensity, overwhelming our disaster preparations one by one.  In this scenario, naysayers could continue to claim that everything is within the natural range of variation and the course of civilization need not be shifted in any real way.  The typical analogy for this scenario is the frog sitting in a pot of water that is slowly brought to a boil; by the time the water is hot enough for the frog to become alarmed, it's too late to escape.

On the other hand, we might yet turn the "slow boil" scenario to our advantage.  After all, as I noted in my first Church of Gaia/Earthseed post, any kind of overly rapid change, including political change, is dangerous.  If we can put alternative-energy riders on the bills funding the reconstruction of New Orleans, for instance, it will be a (gradual) step in the right direction.