Ant Man and the Dilbertocene

Last Saturday I looked out on the patio to see a huge seething mass of ants. They do this every year late in June for some reason. Earlier in May, they show up in our living room foraging for crumbs under our easy chairs to feed baby ants so they are ready to swarm in June. 

You have heard that this era has been dubbed the anthropocene because human activity is modifying the biosphere. That's a spelling error. It's the ant-ropocene. There are an estimated 1,000,000,000,000,000 ants on the planet feeding on crumbs under easy chairs and nibbling on people when crumbs run out. The global biomass of ants is approximately the same as the biomass of humans. The ants are busy converting crumbs and human mass into ant mass with the release of carbon dioxide. This results in a lot of human griping (hot air) and scratching (hot skin). So naturally, it's getting hotter here on Earth. Climate change is natural and it's caused by ants. 

Please don't let this nonsense loose on Facebook. I'm just making the point that people will believe anything to deflect the scary evidence that we are in deep trouble and it's our fault, we humans, each of us. 

You have, no doubt, heard the argument that Canada accounts for only 1.6% of global GHG emissions. It is easy to shrug off responsibility when you see that number. You might think that nothing Canada can do will make much difference. However, Canadians don't get to be virtuous by having a small population. Annual Per-capita emissions in Canada are 14 tonnes compared to 8 tonnes for a person living in China or Norway. So we can't shed blame by claiming membership in a smaller group. (See other data sources listed below.)

When I say WE, I mean you and I individually in any sized group you want to name. Being one ant in 1,000,000,000,000,000 ants leaves that ant fully responsible for an ants-worth of GHG emissions contributing to the ant-ropocene. 

Similarly, there aren't many Dilberts living in Canada. Dilberts can't make much of a difference, but one Dilbert at a time they do more than their share of damage because they drive 30 minutes to work, spend the working day in a climate controlled office, drive home another 30 minutes all alone in their climate controlled SUV, spend the rest of the day and night in a climate controlled home eating food trucked in from California, and fly to Vegas for the weekend (1.2 tonnes CO2 round trip from Toronto). Welcome to the Dilbertocene.

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See also:
Per capita GHG emissions by country: Wikipedia.

Global GHG Emissions Per Capita: Government of Canada