There is a reason to emphasize the Paris attack beyond any other recent atrocity, but it sure as hell isn’t what you would expect.

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Why Everyone Actually Should be talking about Paris more than anything else. It has to do with 2 numbers: “21” and “400” and two words: ‘feedback loops.”

In the aftermath of the recent terrorist attack in Paris, everyone is trying to figure out how best to respond. There is much that is chilling about the attack; the coordination of multiple assailants striking at multiple sites, the targeting of random civilians, the timing of a Friday night.

This attack seems clearly calculated to remind Westerners going about their lives that they are not safe from the turmoil or violence that plagues so many other parts of the world.

A surprising amount of ire was directed at Facebook and other media sources that covered the event. The general complaint was that their concerned coverage was an illustration of inequity; how dare these news outlets place so much focus on this attack when they all but ignored recent comparable atrocities in Beruit, Kenya, Baghdad, etc. Social Activists all over bemoaned the discrepancy that Facebook offers the opportunity to change a profile picture to the colors of the French flag, while giving no such homage to any other place recently struck by senseless violence.

 Any honest answer Facebook could give to explain this double treatment would almost certainly just add fuel to the fire of righteous indignation.

“But those other places have violence all the time. In France, it’s surprising.”

Yeah, that’s not going to make people happy.

“Tragedies happen all the time. We have to only respond to the really bad ones.”

No way to make that sound good.

“Most Americans have no idea, which country Beirut is in, let alone the colors of the Lebanese flag.”

Let’s be serious. Before last week, the average American on the street couldn’t tell you what colors are on the French Flag. Since the Red, White and Blue France style has been spread widely lately, I thought I would balance the scales a bit by showing the Lebanon (that's where Beirut is) Flag. 

The Lebanon flag is basically a perpendicular version of the Canadian Flag, with an upgrade of the Maple Leaf for a Cedar Tree.

Ironically, the old Lebanon flag looked like this:

So maybe Facebook briefly considered claiming that their flag profile option WAS a homage to old-school Lebanon but they just removed the tree so as not to obscure the all important profile picture.

Doubtful though. That second one was that old school Flag of Lebanon during the French Mandate in the decades before WWII, so bringing up that time period isn’t really going to give them any points for equity. 

In reality of course, displaying any flag tint over your Facebook profile doesn't really do much. At best it indicates someone is thinking about a place, it matters for them. 

Flags and Facebook Tints aside, Paris really should be the place most on everybody's mind for the next two week. Paris does especially matter and should be on everyone’s mind more than any other attack site for a very simple reason.

It has nothing to do with Paris’s demographics, history or even the nature of the attack. Instead,  it has to do with what is about to happen there.

Next Week, leaders from around the world converge on Paris to try, yet again, to tackle the greatest threat of our time.

The 21^st Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) kicks off on Monday and will run for 12 days.

For those unfamiliar, this is the  UN organization that is trying to get the nations of the World to come to an agreement that will place clear limits the amount on the amount of greenhouse gases that will be released into the atmosphere in the coming decades. This is a convoluted, flawed process, but it is still the best hope we have at working towards a goal that we so desperately need.

Recently, I’ve been writing a comic. In it, the villain seeks to inflame the world into war by attacking a peace conference at a critical moment, distracting people with terror when it is most important for them to work together.

Now I highly doubt that ISIS was thinking about the 21st UNFCCC meeting when it choose  Paris as it's target. But for a group that thrives on chaos, and the subjugation of women, it would be difficult to imagine a more important and devastating meeting for them to disrupt. 

           You see, the next two weeks are a critical time for our world. A battle for the future is being waged. The location is Paris. The stakes may well be the survival of our civilization. That's not an exaggeration; the Pope himself agrees with me.        

"We've been hearing about the dangers of climate change for decades. What makes this time especially important?"

             "You mean, aside from the fact that we as a global community haven't responded sufficiently to earlier warnings, and thus we're deeper into what was perhaps an avoidable crisis?"

              "Yes, besides that."

               Well, a big part of the issue is the severity of the problem. This week, the atmosphere passed an ominous milestone of 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. This is a very objective measure of the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and it means that last week was the last time anyone alive will be alive in a world below 400 ppm; i.e. a world with atmospheric conditions at all like what they have been for the entirety of human history. That's a big sentence. Take it all in. That's the second important number: 400. 

            The bigger problem of course is not just where we are now, but where we are heading. This is where feedback loops come in. The word feedback refers to that awful screech that happens when you move a mic to close to a speaker. 

            In Environmental Science, it refers to a conditions that become self-perpetuating. It's a fairly innocuous phrase for the thing that is most likely to kill us all. The best way I can describe the danger of a feedback loop is with a simple story that took place right here: 

The House I lived in my senior year of college.

          I once had a real obnoxious roommate: Eli. One day, I was standing on the porch and noticed E trying to push his stalled car, in neutral back out the driveway. It looked pretty obvious that the procedure was a bit tricky given the slope, so I called out and offered to help him. 

        "I got it." Eli growled back in a surly way. He was indeed finally able to get the car moving backwoods. It quickly picked up speed. For several steps, he ran with it, trying to keep pace as it rapidly accelerated. He couldn't, and had to ultimately dive clear. His car picked up speed as it crossed 7th, bounced across our neighbor's lawn, clipped the fire hydrant, and crashed into the row of trees behind the stop sign at the bottom. The whole thing only took a few seconds, and cost thousands in damage. Pure luck that it wasn't worse. 

           In this metaphor, we are all Eli. The car is our climate. The gradually increasing slope is defined by feedback loops. The point is, as the climate shifts due to human action, we cause certain things to happen that accelerate the changes. 

           Here's a classic example: Greenland is covered in ice. Ice reflects sunlight away from the earth, lessening the amount of heat that is retained in our planet. However, as the ice sheet melts, there is less ice to reflect, and more heat stays here. 

           For those hungry for more information, here's an example of 19 other feedback loops.  Any one or two of these would be extremely concerning, because they indicate that we are on the edge of loosing any ability to control the extent and devastation of climate change. 19 feedback loops is extremely worrying and depressing. 

          However, this article leaves out  a critical one. The most basic and lethal feedback loop is Human Desperation. 

         Yep. That's the kill shot. That's the thing that rips our global civilization apart at the seams and decimates humanity. The feedback loop of climate change and human desperation is our most clear and present existential threat as a species and it should be the prime problem that we are all working to avoid. 

        What does this mean?

        Put simply, reaching a climate deal in Paris requires cooperation, compromise, attention to detail and forward planning at an almost unprecedented level. Human beings are capable of all these things, but only when we are at our best. 

         If we are worried about being shot, or starving, we simply don't have the capacity to make long-term plans for big picture problems. We get caught up in the immediate need to survive. 

         As climate change sweeps the globe, it will shift the ecological foundations of more and more areas. The people who live in these areas will be forced to move, and the tensions these mass migrations make will not be pretty. The longer we wait to truly address greenhouse gases as a planet, to make it our top priority, the greater the number of people who are pushed to desperation, and the harder it will be to get the mass coordination we need to address this problems. At a certain point, it will become impossible, and the peoples of our world will become caught up in increasingly violent struggles over increasingly meager scraps. Think about the current debate we are seeing over Syrian refugees;  now multiply it by 100. Imagine what will happen when drought really does revert most of CA to a desert, and LA decides it has to invade Oregon to get water. 

          In human history, the most horrific mass die-off of human beings we have ever seen was the combination of microbial and colonial invasion of the new world 500 years ago. Armies of avarice and new diseases burned through two continents, killing tens of millions and wiping out civilizations. If we don't get a handle on climate change, this next century may set a new record. 

         Paris may well be one of the last clear opportunities we have to jump back into the driver's seat of the car and control its descent. I believe we can do this. 

       When you really consider the scale of what's at stake here, it makes all other political issues seem to be pretty marginal. 

* Some people say #blacklivesmatter; some say #alllivesmatter. Both sides hurl invectives at the other and accuse racism. 

But if you think lives of any sort matter, you should probably be thinking about Paris right now, and hoping the leaders of the world can stop thinking about the political games of the most recent shooting incident, and focus on the big picture threat.   

* Some people say gay marriage is the civili rights movement of our generation. Others say it is a threat to the 'sanctity of marriage' whatever that means. But marriage of any sort is a construct of society. It's not much of a thing in a Hobbesian jungle. And that's the state of nature we are heading towards if we don't pull our heads out of our assess and demand that the leaders meeting in Paris this week come to an agreement that actually has a chance of adequately responding to the science. 

* Patriarchal microagressions are still way too prevalent in our society, and they are a problem. But so is the macro aggression of major scale climate change. 

         I'm not saying that any of the above issues are unimportant. They are really, really important. What I am saying is that people kvetching about these things and not focusing even more on climate change kind of remind me of a group of mentally slow children sitting in a burning school bus arguing over who has the bigger paper cut. 

"Yes, that looks painful. It could become infected, and that would be even worse. Why don't we figure out who's right and what to do about that after we make sure we all don't get burned alive." 

            So what does our world needs to survive? We need to reach a climate deal that the US, China, India and every other major emitter in the world can agree to and take on serious and binding commitments. We need that ASAP. And then we need a major global push towards improved educational systems and empowerment of women across the face of the earth. Those are the aspects most needed to reduce future increases in atmospheric carbon pollution and the resulting increases in human misery. 

             
          That's is why I am praying for Paris; not for the scores of people who died, but for the billions on Earth that want to live. Beyond prayer, let's work to hold our leaders accountable. Let's spread this message.  For the next two weeks, voices from around the world should be echoing to our representatives in Paris. We are not going to live in fear of random violence, or avoid the hard decisions. Let's join together to ensure the survival of our species; let's build a better and more sustainable tomorrow; let's live.