IS CLIMATE CHANGE GOOD?

Climate change generally has been perceived as causing adverse impacts upon the earth. For example, assertions of rising global temperatures predict drought in some regions and flooding in others. Climate change believers urge both the public and businesses, including water utilities, to prepare for negative effects from changes to come.

Surprising, a recent published report now suggests that climate change actually may be beneficial.* Based upon excavations of middle Stone Age tools and pigments found in Kenya, scientists have concluded that climate change drove innovation in toolmaking and development of trading networks among Homo sapiens or their close relatives. Presumably, advancement of toolmaking could be viewed as technology of the day and advancement of trading as globalization of the day.

The article states that climate change made food sources unpredictable. People responded by foraging over greater distances and making smaller tools, resulting in meeting and trading with other populations. Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts is quoted as saying, "Social networking during a long period of climate variability was a key to success for early Homo sapiens....Greater mobility encouraged inventive thinking about how to acquire resources."

If climate change led to success of humans, could it now lead to less success? Is innovation and social networking today less likely than it was 320,000 years ago, or is the internet of things just a Stone Age fantasy?

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*Bower, "Changing Climate Drove
Innovation," Science News, April 14,
2018, p.8

© Daniel J. Kucera 2018