"Polar Cities" Video Conference Message (5 minutes)

Text: [Video on demand] [Soon released on YouTube.]

Hello my friends, and thank you for your kind invitation to speak
today at this conference on global warming and the future. I cannot be
there with you in person today because of time and scheduling conflicts, so this video is coming to you from my home office.

That said, let me get right to the theme of my short speech today: the
need for polar cities in the future to house survivors of global
warming in the year 2500 or so -- maybe sooner -- probably sooner --
if worst comes to worst as things progress here on Planet Earth.

These polar cities, which I have also dubbed "Lovelock retreats," in
honor of the great insights of James Lovelock, those polar cities will
NOT be at the poles per se, but rather in northern regions of the
world -- Alaska, Canada, Russia, Iceland, Greenland, Norway. Southern
extremes too -- New Zealand, Tasmania, Patagonia, Antarctica. Maybe
southern regions of South Africa, too. Table Mountain, for example.

Why will we need polar cities in the year 2500? Because climate
migrants, mass migrations of people from Mexico, the Lower 48 states, Africa, India, Asia, southern and central Europe -- will lead to millions of people, billions of people perhaps -- climigrants they might be called -- moving north in search of food, fuel, shelter, and habitable climes. James Lovelock has spoken of all this before. Nothing new here. "Sustainable retreat" Dr Lovelock called it.

So these polar cities, these Lovelock retreats, will be out lifeboats, our fire exits, our lifelines. In the future. We don't need them now. But we do need to plan for them now. We need to start thinking -- thinking -- about the unthinkable -- now!

What will these Lovelock retreats look like? Will they be underground or inside mountain caverns, or bunkers deep inside Homeland Security defenses? And where will they be situated? Use your imagination. But think northern regions, and think New Zealand and Tasmania as well. There is lots of room there, too. Patagonia, also. And yes, Antarctica as well.

Most importantly, and I cannot stress this enough: prepare your mind for what is coming down the road of time. It won't be a pretty picture, and in some cases it might even look like scenes from those Mad Max movies or that new movie The Road. But I do believe that the human species will survive, will endure, will come out of those Lovelock Retreats in those dark times ahead -- and after a long period of residency in those retreats, perhaps for several or many generations, 100 years or even a thousand years, from 2500 to 3500 perhaps -- but humanity will come out intact, we shall survive the hardships, we shall endure -- and humans will come out and move back down south when the time is right.

For now I have only three words to say: Prepare, Plan, Pray.

We shall endure. Polar cities, Lovelock retreats, will save us. Our descedants, that is. We will be long gone from the scene, those of us here today.

I say to you today that the time to think about all this is -- now. Slowly. Step by step, we need to think about the unthinkable.

Thank you for hearing me out today. And I do hope that someone is listening. If not, there will be others soon making the same case as I have made here today, so I am not worried. But if you have heard me today, please make your voices heard in the global conversation that is going on outside these walls. Persevere!