Civilization’s Last Chance
The Planet Is Nearing a Tipping Point on Climate Change, and It Gets Much Worse, Fast.
Even for Americans — who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now.
It’s not just the economy: We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it helps send the price of a loaf of bread shooting upward and helps ignite food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem … how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.
There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, NASA’s chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — that “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”
Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
So it’s a tough diagnosis. It’s like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don’t bring it down right away, you’re going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you’re lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It’s like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.
In this case, though, it’s worse than that because we’re not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas — hard. Instead of slowing down, we’re pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year — two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.
And suddenly the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. It appears that we’ve managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost, and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.
And don’t forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car; and Americans are buying TVs the size of windshields, which suck juice ever faster.
Here’s the thing. Hansen didn’t just say that if we didn’t act, there was trouble coming. He didn’t just say that if we didn’t yet know what was best for us, we’d certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
His phrase was: “if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever-more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada’s efforts to comply with the Kyoto protocol, which was already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta’s tar sands.)
We’re the ones who kicked the warming off; now the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun’s heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind.
And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them — to reverse course. Here’s the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto accord (which, for the record, has never been approved by the United States — the only industrial nation that has failed to do so). When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty — a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2.
If we did everything right, Hansen says, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out, we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.
More likely, though, we’re the coyote — because “doing everything right” means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they’re supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way U.S. automakers made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.
It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal.
It’s possible. The United States launched a Marshall Plan once, and could do it again, this time in relation to carbon. But at a time when the president has, once more, urged drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it seems unlikely. At a time when the alluring phrase “gas tax holiday” — which would actually encourage more driving and more energy consumption — has danced into our vocabulary, it’s hard to see. And if it’s hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as Americans do.
Still, as long as it’s not impossible, we’ve got a duty to try to push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality. In fact, it’s about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced.
After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can’t do this one lightbulb at a time.
We do have one thing going for us — the Web — which at least allows you to imagine something like a grass-roots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that “350″ stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.
Hansen’s words were well-chosen: “a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not.
Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won’t exist, at least not for long, as long as we remain on the wrong side of 350. That’s the limit we face.
Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author, most recently, of “The Bill McKibben Reader,” is the co-founder of Project 350, devoted to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. A longer version of this article appears at Tomdispatch.com.
© 2008 Los Angeles Times
Bill McKibben’s plea is to preserve the GREATEST mother of all, Mother Nature, whose resources are intended to sustain us all.
Imagine if our president was not an oil man, the bulk of his administration cronies in the realm of a vanishing resource. Imagine if the US car makers had recognized a way to sustain profit while engineering more fuel efficient vehicles. Imagine if a “gotta have it” consumer-oriented society and the media that fashions the false stream of “needs,” had instad been teaching respect for life, conservation, and a sense of the sacred gifts we so often take for granted.
It is NOT too late to begin to turn around the engine that otherwise speeds towards its own invented bases for Armageddon, war in the Middle East an aspect of that delusion.
Not to sound like Daniel David, but we can only hope better leadership–and it could well shape up by and through Obama–will set the way to implementing the NECESSARY changes that Americans are otherwise too deceived to recognize the need for. Corporate capitalism has done such a good job mistaking money for worth that the vast majority presume their transactions in the form of paper dollars cover whatever desire it is they wish to covet.
The fact our paper dollars have lost value will soon be realized by citizens… in this age, the End of the Piscean Age in synch with the end of oil (as Michael Klare terms it), the cost of gas is the motivational device to turn lots of presumed values & beliefs around. Perhaps, we hope, in the nick of time!
I’m much more concerned about the survival of Mother Nature than I am about our so-called Civilization, which today is watching its spokesperson-designate mug for the cameras in Crawford Texas while tens of thousands of people die of disease and starvation in Burma because “Civilization” can not find the wherewithal to get food aid past their tin pot dictator. The Buddhist in me takes a certain grim satisfaction in the disappearance of all the things Civilization has taken for real. Money, of course, which was never more than paper standing for shiny metal standing for the sun standing for warmth and light, and which is now vanishing like a reductive algebra from our Rube Goldberg marketplace economies into the zero from which it was contrived. “Real” estate, an appropriate word for the way homo proprietus views his world, is becoming increasingly delusional as we convert and package more and more things that can’t be owned - intellectual properties, configurations and structures, air, water, the weather, intervals of time, arrangements of words - into commodities. Security, a pleasant dream from which Americans are beginning to awake, is going the way of the Dodo. Our health care system is a complete simulacrum, and we neglected to fortify ourselves inside a concrete egg before seeding the earth with plutonium and rental trucks. When “our” oceans begin to inundate “our” beaches, it might be a good idea for Civilization to climb back into the trees from which it came. And stay there.
Very well said ~Siouxrose~.
___~METHANRE GAS~ __ ~METHANE GAS~___
Those two words are the most important words and issue for ALL of humanity. The Arctic perma-frost is thawing far more quickly than any scientists had ever estimated. There are (400 gigatons) of methane gas locked up in that perma-frost and it has been safely locked up there for the past five million years.
I am going to post a link here and the article in it can be read and understood in about two or three minutes time. Take that two minutes time to read what the author wrote in 2004. The man is a world renouned geologist and he knows what he’s talking about. I am not about to argue with him.
One sentence he wrote should get all of our attention, it is;
“Once it starts, there is no turning back, no do-overs, once the methane begins to burp out into the atmosphere, it will likely play itself out.”
We humans have TWO choices. One is, we continue to burn coal to produce electrical power and continue to burn gasoline to power our vehicles. ___ The second choice is to have a world-wide, massive effort to develop clean and green energy and also manufacture electrical powered vehicles.
That’s it. __(Two choices), __ or within as few as fifty years we’ll be extinct. Within ten years we may have run out of time to do anything at all about it. It will be too late.
Please read this article also, it’s fits right in perfectly with this fine article ~Bill McKibben~ has penned for us.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
We passed the tipping point in 1980 when ‘merkins chose Reagan over Carter, Consumption over Conservation.
Too late now.
It’s gonna crash.
The best we can do now is plan for a post-apocalyptic future on planet Earth.
Some of our grandchildren may live to see it.
Here’s hoping this article generates more action today than the endless back-and-forths about the presidential candidates.
And here’s hoping that the action generated on this thread is about actions we are taking. Anybody installing solar panels this weekend? Who’s giving up their car? Moving closer to work so you don’t have to drive? Buying a bicycle? Killing some lawn and starting a garden? Etc etc etc.
Who here has been tracking our own household use of energy? Who will commit to a 50% cut in fossil-fuel energy use within 12 months?
Politics matters a lot, and i agree with the first post above that Obama is more likely to be open to real action on atmospheric carbon. But my actions, and your actions, and all of our actions also matter tremendously, both in themselves and in creating movement toward new economic and political directions.
What actions are we taking? Today? Whether we make big changes now, or wait until the planet forces us to make big changes, we will make them. If we grab our lives now and remake them, at least we have a chance of surfing through the changes that are coming. If we do not remake our lives, and make hard choices, and do hard things now, then we will simply be swept away.
This week i opened up a big new garden bed in our back yard. This year we will install solar panels in our house.
Pledges anyone?
The best hope for the rest of the planet is a sudden extermination of the human species.
Pretending that there’s some chance of a crash program to save the planet…
It’s just a political fairy tale, when what we really need is more like science fiction.
Isn’t it time for wise aliens to float down from the stars and burn the cancer of humanity off the skin of the planet?
Mother Nature will survive.
Nature isnt fragile–humans are.
They just like to forget it or think they are more important(or indeed, as important) as worms and bees.
“HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA HILLARY OBAMA..!”
Historically, it would be VERY unusual if the USA pulled its head out of its ass in time. Much more likely we sink under our own weight, and other countries rise. Suppose we DID turn things around - what are we going to do with a nation of consumers who can’t be trained to produce? What are we going to do with a nation of bureaucrats with nothing to administer? What are we going to do with an entire infrastructure that’s obsolete, toxic, and irrelevant?
There is a way out, which historically has worked well throughout the twentieth century. We just need to get invaded by another country, have our obsolete infrastructure destroyed and then replaced on their dime. I only hope it’s Canada and not China.
@kelmer: EXACTLY RIGHT!
Unfortunately, our self-extinction is likely to have drastic consequences for many other species, but the planet will survive and its life forms will re-evolve over geological time. One can only hope that the next “intelligent” species may incorporate some greater awareness of their true place in the overall scheme of things. At least they’re unlikely to have quite so much fossil fuel to misuse.
Stop producing cows and pigs.
I think Webwalk is on the right path. All we have control of is our own actions or failures to act. Individually we probably won’t have much impact on the situation, but at least we will know that we did the right thing. I can hope that “the powers that be” do the right things, but I’m not putting any eggs in that basket. The solution to this problem is not going to be delivered to us with a big ribbon or fanfare. All we have is each other within our own communities.
Though I wish that the “powers that be” throughout the world would find solutions and programs to avert the planetary catastrophy that we all see coming. But I don’t think that realistically that is going to happen. So all we can do is prepare for what we see coming. And that means living NOW the way we are going to be forced to live in the not so distant future. And that means getting off the “grid” of consumerism. That means learning (and living) what is truely important in life. What to value and what to let go of. It means learning how to happy with less stuff.
And not all of us can afford those PV panels. Many don’t have a roof to put them on anyway. Driving less is definately doable for most of us. And growing our own food is an absolute must. Cooperation with our neighbors is the only path that will make survival even remotely possible.
The trick in all this is to not become discouraged. Even if the worst happens, there is always an opportunity to be part of a solution. Though we will never be able to return to life as we have always known it, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe I personally may not make it to the “other side”, I’m going to know that someone will because of my efforts. And the efforts of all of those that saw this one coming.
“There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
A much more important number is 100 million. That is the number of animals slaughtered in the US each day.
And that number has more to do with environmental decline than any other.
The reasons for this have been amply explored in numbers of places beginning with John Robbins book, Diet for a New America which was published over two decades ago.
That there are still people refusing to look at the root causes of ecological destruction, is scary. That these people are featured on Common Dreams is far scarier.
‘Civilization’ as we have come to understand it rests upon a number of gargantuan fallacies. The first of which is that human life is a matter of struggle and almost impossible to avoid inequity; poor people and those who have fared better.
The facts of the matter are quite otherwise. Poverty is a controlled outcome of supremacist policies. And these policies have been the stuff of government since the earliest temple societies, Egyptian, Incan, etc.
Furthermore, since these are ‘desirable’ outcomes of the control interests of the elite, destruction of indigenous communities and the habitats that support them have been continuous since the emergence of dominator societies.
The attacks on the forests of the world that can be traced from recent history to the present are sufficient to drive this point home.
And, even the oil based economy that furthers the economic centralization interests of the elite, is a matter of monopoly policy driven by a desire to control access to energy, including how much and for whom. Many other energy possibilities have existed and like alternative food possibilities have been effectively opposed by the powers that be and /or eradicated.
Finally, the ONLY solution is to STOP embracing a sense of being ‘civilized’ while being insanely destructive. Humans must recover their place in nature. They will not be well nor their policies and systems of governance sane until they do. Humans must realize that ALL present economic, military and government systems today are based upon fallacies that are unhealthy for them and every other living thing.
If we want any natural world to exist, we must become a part of it rather than its destroyer by virtue of insisting upon being its exception. We must lose our vanity and recover our natural wisdom. And we MUST embrace the most fundamental truth about ourselves; we are human herbivore monkeys.
Our place was naturally rich. Now it is all but vanquished. But, if we hope to continue upon this planet and hope for any natural life to continue, we must respect nature, and respect our own nature.
Humans practicing their natural herbivore natures require approximately 1/50th of the land that present day meatarians require for their diet… and meat-eating is the single most important factor in desertification and nearly every other catastrophic environmental tragedy engulfing us today.
“When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores. “
William C. Roberts, M.D., editor, American Journal of Cardiology
________________
What do these things have in common?
* Wars (like the ‘liberation’ of Iraq)
* Environmentally insensitive behavior (like clear-cutting forests)
* Animal abuse ( e.g. torturing them in ‘research’ facilities)
* Child abuse
* Obesity and nutritional deprivation including starvation
* Heart disease and cancer
* Social and economic exclusivity and elitism
Answer: They are endemic to meat-eating (dominator) cultures.
The Herbivore Awareness Project http://allinharmony.org
____________________
From “The Comparative Anatomy of Eating”, by Milton R. Mills, MD
Facial Muscles
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HUMAN: Well-developed
Jaw Type
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle
Jaw Joint Location
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars
Jaw Motion
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
Major Jaw Muscles
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids
Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small
Teeth: Incisors
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
Teeth: Canines
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted
Teeth: Molars
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps
Chewing
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary
Saliva
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
Stomach Type
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple
Stomach Acidity
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
Stomach Capacity
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract
Length of Small Intestine
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length
Colon
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated
Liver
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
Kidney
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine
Nails
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails
go breeder reactors.
What good will “I told you so” or “who knew?” be when it is too late? We have to reduce our burning of fossil fuels NOW! I do not care what you believe in, this is just the right thing to do.
Do you want to be held hostage by some country or group that can yank your chain whenever they feel like it? I to not call that National Security.
Why do environmentalists, even a hero like McKibben, use the mantra “sacrifice”? Why doesn’t someone suggest that by consuming less, even much less, we can actually improve our quality of life? Example: the economic, aesthetic and health benefits of getting out of an SUV and on to a bicycle?
White Stones In Our Garden
Can we return to the garden with a mirror?
Is our reflection remiss without a glance at the abyss?
Is scarcity a stealthy hiss… or a bit more shared like bliss?
Much like Kelmer - I hold that Mother Nature will be just fine, but only when our species is gone. I take comfort in that, but then, partly for the planet, I long ago decided not to have kids. My sister just had a grandchild. I wonder.
“Do you want to be held hostage by some country or group that can yank your chain whenever they feel like it? I to not call that National Security.”
The security of the people of the US is quite a different matter than the interests of those who speak of ‘National Security’. This is a term of the war-makers whose only interests are control… over resources and the peoples of all nations.
The oil fields of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia are and have always been under the control of the world’s ruling elite and administered by loyal proxies.
The fear scenarios that are generated are to disguise this fact from the common person, principally in the West, for few in Third World countries are unaware of these facts.
Through a combination of banking, military, commercial and secret service activities, we all come under the rule of the same interests… who divvy up access to privilege according to their perceived self-interests.
The ’supra’-class of the US has absolutley NO interest in ‘National Security’. Their communtiy is internatinal and elite and that is the only community that is of concern to them.
I have an idea: Is there somebody out there who is pretty good about using alternative transportation, but currently eats a lot of meat and is willing to make a committed effort to reduce your meat consumption?
In return, I will drive my car less and ride my bike/walk/bus more. I already eat a vegetarian diet.
We can encourage each other, and as a bonus, I bet we both end up healthier too!
It depends what you mean by civilisation. It seems to me that what we mean by it - free market capitalism designed to enrich a small elite and yoke the cast majority to relentless consumerism - is not “civilisation” in any other meaning of the word than living in cities. With luck our “civilisation” will collapse in ruins and whatever comes next will learn from our mistakes. Except that human beings never learn from mistakes…
Rebel Farmer:
Beautifully written post. My sentiments exactly.
webwalk:
I talk the talk and walk the walk. My wife and I live in a 400 sq ft apt. in San Francisco, she walks 5 minutes to work, and I am at home developing a green product http://www.iplanretirement.com that could have a positive effect on society and the planet.
Mark Cramer:
You are right. You will not convince people with the message of sacrifice. Green is good for you, financially, physically, and spirtually, that needs to become the message.
Governments aren’t serious about taking serious action. Environmental organizations have turned into money making schemes. It is really up to the individual to take action.
We are not killing Mother Earth, she will abide…though perhaps without most of us. I am reminded of the words of a Peruvian Shaman when told ‘We are killing Mother Earth.’ He laughed long and then said, ‘No one can kill Pachamama, we are only killing ourselves’.
Far as I am concerned, it will be good riddance to a nasty bunch of folks. But then, I don’t have any children to be concerned with. 50 years ago in high school, I deceided there were already too many of us to need any more to feed my ego.
I think 350 may be an important number but it is a number relating to symptom rather than a root number. The root
number is 6.7 billion, estimated to be 12 billion by 2050 though i don’t believe we’ll reach that
number. Our immense population at the moment is a direct result of our world population which
is showing no sign of slowing down because too few are paying any attention to it. We,
as a species, rely on war, famine, and other disasters to keep this number down but unfortunately,
these old standbys are not keeping up because of the availability of cheap, fossil derived energy.
This is why we need better, larger and more weapons of mass destruction with more
bang for the buck. Let’s just quit beating around the bush and just bomb everyone who doesn’t
agree that US security and prosperity are all that counts. This will reduce the world population,
stimulate the war economy making even more trillions for the already fabulously rich, and we’ll all,
well, some of us, will live happily ever after. All the exploding will probably give us a few
years of nuclear winter but what the hey, we’re smarter than the dinosaurs, i think we’ll survive.
It is very clear we have come to a crossroads. We have a choice to make.
We can choose Empire
OR
We can choose Earth Community.
We can choose to continue to be slaves to the Empire or we can choose to build on a new Earth Community.
If you choose Earth Community then let’s start by choosing a symbol that EVERYONE could easily obtain. Nothing fancy just something that anyone has in their drawer and can identify with the simplicity of Earth community.
Let’s start the revolution. The Bandana Revolution. Wear it, tie it, wave it. Let us see how many of us there are.
WHY?
Simply put, Americans we are each responsible for about 22 tons of CO2 a year. If we want to stabilize the climate, each person needs to produce only 2 tons a year.
A third of US carbon emissions come from transportation so,
Start with driving only when necessary.
Then:
Stop using disposable plastic cups
Unplug your computer every night for one month. Unless it’s unplugged, your idle PC still uses electricity.
Cut out the number of catalogs jamming your mailbox this year
Cut down on new wrapping paper. Wrap 6 of your holiday gifts in reused material like newspaper.
Avoid using plastic shopping bags. Decline fancy shopping bags from stores. Get in the habit of carrying a canvas bag or mesh net bag.
Pick one day this week to leave your car at home and use another way to commute to work or school.
Replace just 3 of the regular light bulbs in your home with Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs.
Instead of creeping your car along in the drive-thru lane, park it. Go inside to order your food or make your bank deposit.
Do you sit in the car and keep it running when you pick the kids up from school? Make it a school wide initiative. Talk to the school and see how they can plan to get everyone to shut off their cars!
Wipe the bottom of a tea kettle free from water before heating
Shower one less minute
Properly inflate your automobile tires.
Eat local organic foods
Speaking out to your local politicians. Go to city hall meetings. Speak out as to how your money is being spent on unsustainable decision making.
Press for a local infrastructure for the proper recycling of products if there is none already.
NOW THE HARD ONES……
Stop flying. Period.
Turn off the TV, game consoles, dishwashers, washing machines, cellphones, and all of the power consuming devices that make our lives what they are.
Give up our daily feast of fresh meats and move toward a more vegetable-oriented diet that requires less industrial power to support
Eat what is in season and only those things that are produced somewhere nearby where we live.
Consume less, MUCH LESS, of every single thing we take for granted today. Less clothes, less shopping, less food, less soap, less water, less plastic, less gasoline, less electricity, less heat, less air conditioning, less empty space, less entertainment, less driving, less, less, less of everything.
People must begin to choose to have fewer children
We cannot have 3000 square foot homes with vaulted ceilings and walls of windows for families of 4 people.
Half of us will be giving up our vehicle altogether and the other half driving 75% less than they do now.
This is a likely scenario for achieving 80% reduction of carbon by 2050…..if we even have that amount of time.
So?
What will it be?
Empire or Earth Community?
We have been silent for too long.
We have played the game politely thinking it was i our best interest and we have played by the rules.
We have been screwed, people. We have screwed ourselves.
Are we going to let them win?
I’ve tied my bandana onto my bike. And you?
Read think cry despair dance! it’s ECOAPOCALYPSO TIME!
All is not lost. A plan exists and it’s called PLAN B. A lot of the heavy lifting has been done. Please check out:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PlanB_contents.htm
and push it blatantly on everyone you meet. Be rude about it.
what amazes me is the fact these ‘heads of state’ take so long to come up with new agreements. this is an urgent subject and therefore requires urgent attention. why wait till december 2009? what’s wrong with june or july 2008? and anyway, there would be a revolution if everyone was told to cut back on certain things………n’est pas?
Great commentary and suggestions by everyone. I am just getting the finishing touches on a rainwater harvesting system at home. I installed gutters and piped them into a underground 6,000 gallon cistern I built. We’ve hardly any snow (south-central NM) this year, and it has not rained since last year. I do have a good aquifer 120′ below me, but I do not know how long it will last if the snow pack does in get better.
Wildfires have started early, and have been more intense than usual for this time of year. I’m afraid it will be a loooong summer.
It’s this thing called life… it’s at our doorstep. So is death. So many of us choose life and we must now sweep away those from power who see the same old ways of ego-driven games and polarized framings of all things. The pad of luxury is now thin and promises at best — a prolonged pain for even the best of survivors among ruling classes. The opportunity before us is as great as the disasters that now knock at our door. Perhaps, the greatest teaching is the greatest practice — learning to share and to see a future. Either we come to live in simple accordance to the interconnection of all things of which we are a part — or we perish in the useless pile of stuff and folly we thought would save us.
Hey Civil Behavior - I LOVE your bandanna idea. (Now watch as surge in bandanna production creates eco-havoc in some unforseen way…)
I bought ten bandannas about 14 years ago and got in the habit of carrying a fresh(ish) one every day. I don’t need or use napkins or tissues or paper towels anymore and I always have a sling; a tie-up bag, a bandage, a hat, a cooling neckerchief, a headband, a tourniquet and a crying towel. The bandanna makes a great symbol of a personal pledge to cut consumption.
“Either we come to live in simple accordance to the interconnection of all things of which we are a part — or we perish in the useless pile of stuff and folly we thought would save us.”
Thank you, Jeffrey.
Historically, local, national and international governments and corporations have colluded in PREVENTING alternative transportation and energy solutions.
When I first became involved in these issues while working for an AFSC offshoot, the Mid-Peninsula Conversion Project, I thought the solution was to develop reasonable alternatives in transportation, urban planning, solar energies, etc.
And, it was in pursuit of these goals that I finally realized that our economic model was a centralized one and that it was so because of concerted and syndicated efforts to keep it that way.
Indeed, individuals will not only have to take matters into their own hands, they will have to try hard to understand the processes whereby we arrived at this point.
Bicycling is important… and would have been so much easier to embrace in a bike friendly world… and that must still be implemented just as solar technologies that are not artificially delayed and re-scripted to fit yet again a centralized economic (and eco-system destroying) paradigm.
Many proven technologies were not developed, others that were promising went unfunded, so many helpful systems were not implemented or not adequately implemented.
Solutions have been in hand. The willingness of governments and major corporations to champion (or consider, even allow) those solutions is and has always been the only problem.
Problem is, there are so many greedy human dinosaurs still walking around or should I say, driving around in gas-guzzlers! There are still too many corporations that think only of profit and to hell with the consequences. There are still too many politicians that are in love with the idea of imperialism and being Commanders in Chief.
Humans are dumb! We don’t deserve a place on this planet.
P.S. For a laugh, read ‘Israeli Nacbah in Texas’ on my blog. It’ll cheer you up.
Yes, Mother Earth will survive us, but to clean up the mess of plastic disposables we’ll be leaving behind may take her eons.
If the biosphere only just survived the previous great mass extinctions associated with global warming events, then this could be the last big one. The earth is somewhat older, its atmosphere a little thinner, and its daily rotation has slowed, and the sun is a bit hotter than those ancient times. Mr James Lovelock, an originator of the Gaia hypothesis, would have us warned that the margin capacity for the earth to recover from such unprecedented forcings of CO2 and methane may be more limited than we think. Also the recovery period, presuming all the positive feedbacks eventually end, is in millions of years, and may be far beyond the time periods that human civilizations capacity for technological adaption can sustain.
Do you think we could have a self sustaining civilization on Venus or Mars? That is the magnitude of the level of hostility that the climate may reach, since our comfort zones are much more limited, if biological supports and controls are wiped out. It is Gaia, the living biosphere, which keeps this planet habitable. Wipe this out in our frenzied fossil fools hubris, and nothing may bring it back this time, to the way it was. Humans will be extinct long before the death of Gaia, so there will be no one around to care at the end. Thats the way everything appears to be going right now, as there appears to be very few around to care enough right now.
WTF May 11th, 2008 4:42 pm
“Great commentary and suggestions by everyone. I am just getting the finishing touches on a rainwater harvesting system at home. I installed gutters and piped them into a underground 6,000 gallon cistern I built.”
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.
I’m setting myself on the permaculture path and doing as many things as I know to be as sustainable as I can possibly be. Don’t know if it will be enough or even if it will matter - I’ll do it anyway because I believe it’s the right thing to do. Oh, it’s also a lot of fun!
“Problem is, there are so many greedy human dinosaurs still walking around or should I say, driving around in gas-guzzlers!”
My brother, the guy who works for a defense contractor and doesn’t have a green bone in his body, just bought a Prius. Granted, it was the cost of gas that drove him (no pun intended) to buy it, but the tide is changing…for whatever reason.
There are early adapters and late adapters to new technologies and life styles. Most people need to see that others are successfully implementing those things before they change. That’s where I come in. I bought a Prius first, and I’m greening my life first. My brother will follow.
The production and comsumption of meat has got to be one of the most energy wasting and vile sources of pollution. Check out this video, it will help to encourage people to limit their intake of meat:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3176184587819334935&q=documentary&ei=kLIiSIfVG5HCqAP6-fjMBA
I see a lot of denial going on here among the suburban/exurban CD readership. What does a water cistern have to do with GHG emissions? Assuming it isn’t build from dry-stack local fieldstone, didn’t the materials that went into it emit a lot of GHG to produce? And, sorry, but buying a Prius, (which is largely a gimmick, many ordinary cars in Europe get better fuel economy and use fewer resources to build than a Prius) buys you few indulgences, unless you are also deeply cutting the miles you are driving that Prius, in which case, what’s the point of owning one.
The facts are that few here are willing to give up the fossil-fuel intensive suburban lifestyles, or their aversion to a car-free, walking and public transit based city living. When I moved to the city, my fossil fuel usage plummeted 500%, because I didn’t need a car for daily use at all.
And as someone else wrote, there is nothing to “give up” anyway. The luxuries of suburban/exurban life are largely illusory anyway.
OldRascal said: We passed the tipping point in 1980 when ‘merkins chose Reagan over Carter, Consumption over Conservation.
Too late now.
It’s gonna crash.
The best we can do now is plan for a post-apocalyptic future on planet Earth.
Some of our grandchildren may live to see it.”
Exactly. And not to be too much of a doomer, but technology is not energy. I bring this up because although I see how things like buying a more fuel-efficient car seem to be steps in the right direction, they are really just token gestures aimed mainly at sustaining the existing, and deeply flawed way of living. They are conscience palliatives, not viable solutions. It is the narcotic equivalent of replacement of heroin with methadone.
What McKibben is really advocating is something more akin to a return to the stone age. He might not want to say those words and scare the bejezus out of folks, but that’s what the numbers mean. The only way to get there is no more cars, no more planes, no more coal power plants, no electric grid, no more food transported 1000+ miles to your supermarket. Probably no more supermarkets. Oh, and no 6.7 billion people. War has to go too - talk about a supreme waste of energy. Something has to give, and it will.
“Press for a local infrastructure for the proper recycling of products if there is none already.”
Below is an excerpt that was offered to a community of Humboldt County, CA. (At the time, they were petitioning the state government to give them 100 million dollars to widen the freeway into Humboldt and also considering funding a very expensive and polluting project to burn garbage).
So our proposal was an idea for which funds could likely have been made available. And, we did receive a few acknowledgments from officials for the proposal and also a ‘heads up’ that most people preferred to buy cheap consumables from the corporate discount stores… so, though it was interesting, not likely to be taken seriously…
From our proposal:
Garbage is material of many sorts. It can be refashioned into any number of artifacts including furnishings, home decorations, toys, structural members, craft items and clothing. Building a plant and infrastructure to do this requires government investment but the returns would be enormous.
First, let’s collect our precious garbage. All garbage has value and can be reused; even food stuffs can become fertilizers. With the support of Humboldt County residents, cursory separations would be done before collection. Then, garbage would be taken to a re-materials plant where it would be re-processed.
Our re-materials plant would employ market researchers to determine the consumption patterns of the community. They would develop a list of goods that could be provided based upon our garbage (reclaimed materials) analysis. Material engineers and operations engineers would delineate and implement procedures to reprocess and produce those materials.
And there we have it — our own renewable treasure (materials) plant — in goes the garbage and out-comes the materials to make and re-make according to our local consumption patterns.
But it doesn’t end here. Who is going to utilize our reclaimed treasure? It would provision and encourage any number of local industries from home construction to home decorating. It can encourage Humboldt County creativity while enabling better jobs. Let’s unbury the garbage. It’s a Humboldt County treasure waiting to be re-discovered.
______
Finally, there was a local college from which many were graduating with little prospects for interesting jobs or careers… and here was at least one way to absorb that developing talent and the talents of so many others in the community that were under-employed and/or rarely working on projects that tapped their personal creative abilities.
Dammit, there aren’t noticeably more bikes out on the trail at commuting time than there were 10 years ago. What’s on teevee?
I have read all of the comments and only four of the very decent and sensible people who have blogged here, appear to honestly understand just how serious the Arctic’s “methane gas” issue actually is.
It isn’t just a problem for or about the citizens of the United States for one thing, it’s a ‘critically’ important world-wide problem. I’d bet that not three here bothered to read the article in the link I posted. ___ It says it all and the author knows exactly what he is talking about. We are rapidly running out of time.
Now it’s easy for anyone to write things like ___”It doesn’t matter, the Earth will survive if every human dies.” ____ Okay, tell that to every chlld from age five up to the age of 17. Tell them we honest and sensible adults had the opportunity to prevent the extinction of ALL life on this planet but decided it was too late to do anything about it.
Or, tell the children in ten to twenty years from now that the intelligent and sensible adults and the world’s leaders, decided that if we put solar panels on our roof and stopped eating meat, drove Prius vehicles and tended our gardens, recycled plastic bags, etc, it was enough for each of us to do.
Should we do those type of things? __ Yes indeed, we absolutely should. ___ Will it help at all to prevent the Arctic’s methane gas from billowing out into our atmosphere and thereby kill ALL life on the planet within a matter of hours, save perhaps some bacteria and deep sea creatures.___ NO! None of those personal actions will prevent that looming ‘methane gas’ disaster.
Those are not MY dire opinions. I’m not a scientist or a geologist. I am repeating the opinions and words of scientists who state that coming disaster is how it is and SOON WILL BE, unless we initiate a MASSIVE-WORLD WIDE progrmam to stop burnng all coal and covert to clean energy and we HAVE TO do so withnin the next few years time.
Those who say the Earth will survive are really only guessing and not at all well informed on the subject, because the Earth could very easily become another Venus or Mars as ~HEDOLOGY~ stated so well here.
Now that’s how it is, so do any here believe it is fair or honest to give that disaster to our children and to their children? If any think it cannot happen wihtin the next twenty years, they are sadly mistaken. It certainly can, maybe less than twenty.
Read this article if you actualy do care. Here it is again if any care to know the score. And if any don’t agree, say why, tell us why the author is wrong.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
Tell it to China where our oh-so-representative government politicians shipped all the manufacturing industry and jobs where there are no standards. Until then, I don’t care.
Utah legislature just passed a new 80 mph speed limit.
Damn $4 gas and warming Full Speed Ahead say the Mormons–and for God’s sake make many, many more children.
Kem, I definitely understand the permafrost methane release issue. It is a monster that the media would rather ignore. They must think that global-scale positive feedback mechanisms are too complex for their delicate little consumers’ minds.
WTF, what’s the material you used in your cistern?
@KEM PATRICK
Hey Kem, our resident methane guru, can methane be economically extractable from air? If not now, maybe in 5-10 years time? If that is possible, what would be the benefits of using methane for energy production?
This concept can only be viewed as a short-term solution, because it does not solve the underlying issue of global warming, BUT it might reduce excess methane, AND provide a source of energy from a material that we NEED to remove from the environment.
“…Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world…”
I’m with voxclamantus: Civilization is the problem, NOT what needs to be saved from itself. Humans are not the problem, it’s the culture of civilization that is the problem and the sooner it collapses, the better off all humans and nonhumans will be. McKibben makes the same pathetic mistake the dominant culture of emrpire makes: Holding civilization up as the thing to save, rather than LIFE being what we need to save.
McKibben has the definition of civilization wrong. Civilization is what has destroyed the natural world, and when it collapses, as it surely will, the world will thrive, with humans who know how to live together sustainably with one another and with other nonhumans. Those who know this already are those who do NOT live in civilization–They are those who’ve lived in cultures “non-civilized” for millenia… Those who’ve not been destroyed already by the extraction, exploitation, and appropriation by civilization…
Let it collapse, or help bring the collapse on, and start focusing on __what’s left__, post-collapse of a very bad 200- 12,000 yrs…
WFF:can methane be economically extractable from air? If not now, maybe in 5-10 years time? If that is possible, what would be the benefits of using methane for energy production?
WTF, all I can say is entropy is a bitch….
One major problem with the “methane gas” issue is, people do not like to hear __ “the sky is falling”. __ Most people tend to ignore those types of scary words, as it is human nature to do so and dismiss it as the rants of a “dommsayer”.
Well in this instance it is not ranting by a doomsayer. That author is highly qualified to state his opinions. What is about to happen once again within a few short years, has occurred twice previously in Earth’s long history and one time it was almost the end of Earth as a live water planet.
Hi ~CULICOMORPHA~ Actually we do not have to revert back to the stone age to prevent the disaster,___ not at all. In fact, we can have our cake and eat it too. We humans have the option of preventing the coming disaster or ignoring it. ___ Two options.
There is only ONE WAY to prevent it and if we take that option, we will actually have a much better life and a much cleaner atmosphere and enviroment than we presenty have and as the years go on it will only become better.
All of the World leaders MUST meet together, lay down their swords and decide to work together in peace to have totally clean energy ____ and by that I do not mean by using nuclear power.
With a world-wide massive effort to develop solar, wind, geo-thermal, wave and tidal enegy, there will be millions of good paying jobs. We will eleminate all coal burning wihtin four years time and the auto manufactures will have to develop decent electrically powered vehicles.
All of that is viable, technically possible and can be done. But ONLY if the world leaders decide it is necessary to so so. ___ Well,____it is not only necessary, it is imperative.
“The facts are that few here are willing to give up the fossil-fuel intensive suburban lifestyles, or their aversion to a car-free, walking and public transit based city living. When I moved to the city, my fossil fuel usage plummeted 500%, because I didn’t need a car for daily use at all.”
The Yanomamo of the central Brazilian Amazon have it on all of us, yet declaring all as lost because we aren’t like them is a lost cause.
My driving a Prius does matter because it influences others. That Europe has more fuel efficient cars is great, but it does me and other USAns little good if we can’t get them. We use the tools we have in the best ways we can.
I am driving much less than I used to as my commute is 50 miles a day shorter. I will be asking my employer to allow me to work 4 days a week, and will try to bike at least one of those. Living in the city may be greener, but you really don’t want all of us suburbanites to move there - we put our pants on one leg at a time and some of us have dirt under our fingernails from our gardens.
Sorry for dissing the Mormons, they’re scarcely more responsible for this mess than any of the rest of us. It is just that I carried away with this latest piece of insanity. And thanks for all the incredible posts everyone.
“It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem … how best to put it, right”
It’s what you call a self fulfilling prophecy. They pulled the plug on nuclear power, jacked up oil prices, and made zero effort for cleaner alternative fuels. They allowed food to be taken over by agri-business cartels, and bullied nations under WTO, and credit access, to open their markets to the vulture capitalists, and thus become dependent on food imports, when previously many were self sufficient.
They allowed oil to increase in price from 20-30 dollars a barrel to 125 dollars a barrel in 7 years (doubled since last June yet gas has only went up 22% over last may), for no reason other than to make fuel too expensive for the developing world, and make them dependent on loans that will come with all kinds of strings attached.
As for global warming, yes there is global warming. But it is not man made, that is a myth. The warming thats happening is due to the Sun is hotter, even Mars is seeing it’s polar ice caps shrinking. Maybe we should tell the martians to stop consuming so much oil, I mean, they are green after all.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Its all a hoax to get those who can not think for themselves to support globalization and population reduction, and lower standards of living which will come with reduced consumption.
Looked at another way, it is global terrorism, using food, oil, weapons (even weather) and climate change to scare you into accepting global government. Essentially they are putting a gun to Mother Earths head and saying give me global government or I will shoot. Their vision is a planet populated by no more than 600 million people. Do you really trust your government that much, let alone a global government, to determine which of you will live or die, or who can have children and who can not.
It is not that I don’t care about Mother Earth. In fact, I trust Mother Earth to do what must be done to protect her health. If we are a virus, as Prince Philips considered us, and we are giving Mother Earth a fever, do you really think she has no immune system to protect herself. She will cull the herd, be it famine, virus, climate change. Let her be the judge and jury. I trust Mother Earth to cull the herd more than the neo malthusian psychopaths ruling this global pathocracy.
If it were not for these SOB’s, our industry and technology would have been allowed to innovate and develop the planet in an environmentally friendly way that would easily support 20 billion. Instead, they have withheld the technology and inhibited science for over 30 years, eliminated competition and replaced it with monopoly cpaitalism, allowed the most corrupt financial system to become more corrupt to place limits on development by the greatest hoax of all, telling you that your government must borrow and tax for the money it spends, when it could just create the money needed. So today, most developing nations have better infrastructure than in the US. Our infrastructure is decaying and crumbling. Pathetic.
Yet the myth and the lie are so pervasive, that people are no longer able to see the truth.
~MiMiCS~ is another serious problem, a denyer, who writes that “man made” global warming is a myth. There are far too many of them and they cause so much damage by voicing their false opinions and those of a few “scientists” who are well paid to corrupt the issue for the benefit of oil companies.
Over a thousand decent scientists have proven beyond any doubt, that the current global warming IS without any doubt, __man made__ and it began about 200 years ago from our burning coal and oil.
Can our world leaders come together in peace to fight a battle that must be fought and won? The war against ‘global warming’ is a battle that we either fight and win or we ignore and lose. Again, two choices. And we do not have the luxury of debating the issue for a year two, time is short and time never stops.
Today the New York Philharmonic Orchestra will perform in North Korea. They have an opportuntiy to repair a brige that has been broken for 60 years. There is an opportunity to illustrate that we humans really are all the same and can live and work together in peace to accomplish a common and necessary goal.
We’ll soon see how it turns out and see if North Korea’s leader and our leaders can meet in peace. If so,____ all of the world leaders can.
Actual photo of your Mom cutting the cheese! Worse, a scientist lights the gaseous emission on fire. Wildly obscene! An environmental must-see.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025174618.htm
“As for global warming, yes there is global warming. But it is not man made, that is a myth. The warming thats happening is due to the Sun is hotter, even Mars is seeing it’s polar ice caps shrinking.”
MiMiCcS,
Due to your post, I did a little research. In a nutshell, what I found is that you are correct - the sun plays a role in global warming. However, the role it plays is minor. The major role is in greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation. The sun has little to do with the greenhouse gases on Earth. So, something else has raised these gases here at a very high rate that is trapping solar radiation and warming things up.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is the Martians.
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/09/sunwarm.html
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650
Hi there ~WTF~ You ask, “Can we collect and burn the methane gas?” ___Yes indeed we certainly can. We already do in some old garbage dumps and landfills on Staten Island for one example.
However, if we started burning the methane gas in the Arcitc, it would take about four billion years to burn it all. It wouldn’t help the global warming situation anyway.
We have to attempt to reverse, or at the very least slow down the Co2 going up into our atmosphere and stop burnng coal is the first major step. If we stopped burnng all gasoline and diesel fuel world-wide today, that would not do enough to help. We need to develop totally clean energy first and then start working on the other serious problems.
You choose.
Empire
Or
Earth Community.
Here are some facts to help support your choice.
Use any the following to copy, paste, print and hand out to people you don’t kow. Inline at the post office, at the supermarket, in the gas lines. (Make smaller and use less paper!)
ENERGY
China ranks second in production of solar cells, Japan is third, USA is fourth
Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of man-made CO2, accounting for one quarter to one third of the world’s total
Americans now spend $200,000 a minute on foreign oil, and more than $25 billion annually goes to Persian Gulf states for oil imports
Every one-cent increase in the price of gas costs American consumers approximately $1 billion
As of October 24,2006 the average gallon of gas was $2.60–a 78 percent increase since Bush was inaugurated in 2001
Exxon Mobil makes 1 billion a day in revenue
America has only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves, we produce 8 percent and consume 25 percent of the oil
Forty percent of the world’s oil is shipped through the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf
WAR
More than half of every dollar 54 cents exactly now goes to support the military machine
Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history.
The U.S. has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth.
ECONOMICS
There are approximately 114 million households in the U.S. today.
The top 1 percent make up 1.4 million households.
The top 1 percent today hold more than 35 percent of all assets and wealth of the country.
As compared to the bottom 50 percent of all households, nearly 60 million families—all working class— who own 2.5 percent of the country’s total assets and wealth.
The top 1 percent own 51 percent of all stocks and 70 percent of all bonds, and own homes worth more than $3 million.
The top 1 percent now receive between 19-21.5 percent of the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States
In the past three years, corporate profits have increased more than 60%. Workers are being paid just 3% more.
****Only 6.5 percent of U.S. workers overall earn more than $100,000 a year
Corporations used to pay 60% of the taxes collected 60 years ago. Now they pay 16%.
Health care costs increased 60 % in last five years
Average families using heating oil or natural gas will pay nearly three times the amount paid in 2001.
Thirty years ago less than five percent of home sales were for second or third homes owned by one person. Now it is over 30%. First time house buyers are getting more rare as home sales soared to the investor class who will now rent to those who would have purchased if they could’ve and those who tried are now back to paying the equity for the investor class.
Kem I went to the link you put up and yeah it scared the crap out of me. My only defense against that paralyzing terror is another link:
PLAN B is a path to a solution. It’s comprehensive. It’s a rallying point.
Check it out. Print it, roll it in a tube and jam it up your local representative’s agenda.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PlanB_contents.htm
NO ~YOUAREYOURSLF~. ~MiMiCcS~ is NOT correct that the global warmng is not man made and that is a myth. It definently is man made. And you are correct that the “Greenhouse effect” is the problem. That “greenhouse” effect began in ernest 200 years ago at the beginning of man’s industrial revolution.
We began using fossil fuels and oil to produce power. Every bit we burn is still partially there in our atmosphere. We may breath air today that contains Co2 produced by Henry Ford’s first model T, or the coal fired boilers of the Merrimack and Monitor. We must stop it.
KEM: I hear the power of your heart speaking in its love for humanity… I wonder if global leaders know about or understand this methane thing? Sure it’s sexier to attend summits and act like the age-old issues of poverty, hunger, war and despair are actually being worked on then take ACTION to face and ensure long-term human sustainability.
We know that most of American leadership is sold-out to its fiscal sponsors, but other nations (given the tragedy in Burma this week) surely recognize the CALL to take immediate action? Sadly, the world needs the US and China to do their part for certainly these zones are major offenders.
I wonder if someone like George Soros who tends to fund progressive caues knows about this? Obviously the wealth of elite persons won’t mean shit to a tree if things get as bad as some scientists presume. I mentioned when this topic came up before that perhaps Krakatoa would blow and cover the world in ashes thus creating a block in the upper atmospheres that wards off the sun’s warming effect. Something could happen to aid mankind. I say this on account of my innate optimism, and yet what haunts me are the archaeological imprints of societies like Pompei that were essentially erased in less than a day.
Does anyone, including the author, believe that humans will cooperate to reduce our consumption to bring CO2 within “livable” levels?
Look at our “democratic” society. Is there cooperation between the political parties? No.
Look at the war the USA is in for control of oil. Any cooperation for the common good there? No.
Charge it, use it and fuck it, we are toast.
Recently the Cumberland Times-News (Cumberland, MD) printed an editorial page article from some guy stating that the earth is COOLING, not heating up. Apparently there’s ONE Canadian scientist who believes this, so a local guy sent in the letter presenting this hypothesis as established fact and the local Republican newspaper (owned by a Birmingham, AL corporation) printed it. Around here they’re arguing that modern coal-fired power plants are “clean” and that proposed wind turbines lower property values and destroy the pristine mountain environment. This newspaper also recently published an article stating that growing corn for ethanol is not related to rising food prices. It’s a stinking, lying, day-after-day publication of right-wing propaganda and its fascist owners and editors deserve to be hanged.
I do sincerely appreciate the nice things you say to me ~Siouxrose~, but it really is not about me, or you, or any of us individually. It’s about all of us humans combined and especially our children and their children.
And let us never forget the wildlife and the flower and fauna on this water world we have named “Earth”. Earth is the only water world known to exist in the entire universe and we are literally killing it. Coud say “obliterate”, ____ but don’t want to start anything over word usage.
You asked, Do any people, leaders or those with a great deal of influence know about the (Arctic methane gas) issue?
I don’t know ~SUE~, but they damn sure should know and the more who do know and accept it is a fact, the more chance there is they will hear of it.
For MiMi……
The radiation output of the Sun does fluctuate over the course of its 11-year solar cycle. But the change is only about one-tenth of 1 percent—not substantial enough to affect Earth’s climate in dramatic ways, and certainly not enough to be the sole culprit of our planet’s current warming trend.
“The small measured changes in solar output and variations from one decade to the next are only on the order of a fraction of a percent, and if you do the calculations not even large enough to really provide a detectable signal in the surface temperature record,” said Penn State meteorologist Michael Mann.
“Solar activity continues to be one of the last bastions of contrarians,” Mann said. “People who don’t accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change still try to point to solar activity.”
For more salient points please reference the 1999 study conducted by Judith Lean and David Rind, solar radiation experts. It will relieve you of your misinformation.
Had Al Gore taken office in 2001 and the Democrats controlled Congress, I am sure we would have made at least a few small steps toward solving this problem. Had we invested a fraction of what we’ve spent on the wars on alternative energy, we’d be far ahead of where we now are. It’s been the malign influence of the conservatives, especially the envangelicals and right-wing Zionists, who have brought us their version of moral governance: environmental destruction, brutal warmongering, war profiteering, torture, illegal spying on citizens, repudiation of the Geneva Conventions, destruction of constitutional balance of powers, suppression of science and tax breaks for the rich with massive deficit spending.
You are correct ~MIFTIN~. Getta rope.
Maplefudge,
need to look at Plan B closer but I think I will take your advice. My senator is Bill Nelson. Think he’ll enjoy it?
SiouxRose,
Oh they know about methane alright. They just don’t want to do anything about it. Not only is the permafrost melting escaping methane but there has also been alot more action with the methane hydrates on the sea floor.
For all ohers and thanks for the posts, you guys are great…….
Do yourselves a favor. Read this book. “Under a Green Sky” by Peter Ward. It will let you know just how close we are to extinction.
“If it were not for these SOB’s, our industry and technology would have been allowed to innovate and develop the planet in an environmentally friendly way that would easily support 20 billion. Instead, they have withheld the technology and inhibited science for over 30 years, eliminated competition and replaced it with monopoly cpaitalism, allowed the most corrupt financial system to become more corrupt to place limits on development by the greatest hoax of all, telling you that your government must borrow and tax for the money it spends, when it could just create the money needed.”
I think ALL valid challenges to the eco model that supports widespread genocide and totalitarianism are under attack.
Life-saving understandings/ideas and technologies (such as humans are NOT omnivores but rather herbivores) are withheld from the mainstream.
A little over ten years ago, I was working with a man on a new fuel cell retro-fit design for cars. He had previously designed the fuel cell for the Gemini space program and also held over 300 patents.
His partner would joke about his continuing to fly small planes… that he should not fly until the project completed (and this partner had realized his financial return).
And sure enough, his plane inexplicably went down one sunny afternoon over Half Moon Bay, CA on his return flight only minutes after he left the local airport.
Coincidence? NOT LIKELY!
My own efforts to launch any number of alternative businesses and projects have met with concerted efforts to block them by government agents, established businesses/corporations and undercover operators.
This is the problem. It is the reason for the problem in the first place and the force that is preventing solutions, real solutions from being implemented.
And the following, in my opinion is completely true:
“Looked at another way, it is global terrorism, using food, oil, weapons (even weather) and climate change to scare you into accepting global government. Essentially they are putting a gun to Mother Earths head and saying give me global government or I will shoot. Their vision is a planet populated by no more than 600 million people. Do you really trust your government that much, let alone a global government, to determine which of you will live or die, or who can have children and who can not.”
Beware the solution that those who have created the problem are planning to implement.
BTW, world-wide government is a fait accompli, has been for a few centuries at least… keeping the myth of states of divergent interests alive is simply a ruse to forestall developments not perceived as of interest to the ruling elite’s control paradigms.
Genocide is a present day fact as well. It is ongoing at all times. It is likely that it will be stepped up increasingly over the next few years but we are already in an extremely aggressive phase especially if one considers animals other than the human monkey… and genocides are generally quite destructive to the eco systems in which they are unfolding as well. The rainforest is burning 24/7 and the air over Argentina is a strange color of orange… permanently.
I remember video of a woman of the Kiribati atoll (I believe it was), talking about how their roads were increasingly being swept away by the rising tides. And the newsman asked her: where will you go, what will you do? And her reply: I think I’ll just stay here: if my island disappears, I’ll have to go with it.
She had a brave, outward-jutting-jaw, approach to her fate. But, increasingly, I’ve begun to realize: they really WILL let her and her island die. It’s nothing personal.
It’s just business.
miftin May 11th, 2008 10:02 pm — “Recently the Cumberland Times-News (Cumberland, MD) printed an editorial page article from some guy stating that the earth is COOLING, not heating up. Apparently there’s ONE Canadian scientist who believes this, …”
Gee, I didn’t realise that Canada was graduating “scientists” at such a young age that they haven’t been outside to experience the situation for themselves. I suppose his mommy probably wouldn’t allow him to travel to Churchill, Manitoba or any other polar bear region to watch them searching for some arctic ice on which to hunt seals.
Siouxrose and Kem Patrick–interesting dialog. Reading the clearly thought out ideas of people like Bill McKibben and then listening to all the “leadership” on whom we must depend for implementation blopviate is really depressing.
It reminds me of a repeating dream of a slow-motion head-on collision between a train and yourself in a car that cannot be changed, stopped, or made to go a way. Humanity is collectively going insane and none moreso than its
“leadership”.
Last month some Russian scientists were in the Arctic and discovered several large lakes which had been totally ice bound for millions of years were now open water. The surface water of the lakes were broling with escaping methane gas. It scared the crap out of them.___ As it should have.
We can have a MASSIVE effort to develop clean energy, the technology is already well proven. We have already spent trilion$ just waging a war in Iraq, an unjust and totally unnecessary war we are all aware. That type of money can be used to initiate and develop clean energy and stop burning coal world-wide.
A few examples of a MASSIVE effort. ___WW-2. Not to indicate WW-2 was necessary, only to illustrate what humanity can do within four years if they deem it a necessity.
Here in America, from 1941 thru 1945, a few of the “Mega Projects” we sucessfully accomplished. ___ The “Big Inch”, a 40 inch oil pipelne which ran from Texas to New Jersey, over hill and dale, across mighty rivers, through swamp-land and forests and was buried deep in the ground. One year and it was open and running and it worked. __ It still does.
The “Manhatten Project”, the largest and most expensive project ever started and finished by mankind, ___three and and a half years and it worked also. ___ Still does.__ Unfortunantly.
Actually the Manhatten Project gets the silver medal, the largest and most expensive was “Boeing’s B-29″ bomber development and deployment to war. That near three year operation was a larger and more expensive program than the Manhatten project.
The “Alcon Highway”, an “impossible” task. (One year) and a very rough road running all the way up Alaska opened, but it opened and it worked and now it’s a decent and important highway.
In addition, we built millions of vehicles, tanks, ships, aircraft of all types, cannons, weapons and munitions. We trained millions of men and women, we clothed and fed them. It was a massive effort and we didn’t lower our living standards by doing it.
Oh sure, we rationed shoes, sugar and gas, tires and cigarettes, nylons and condoms. But we helped to fight and to win a war and we sure didn’t suffer here at home.
There were millions of good jobs and the same thing could happen with a war against Global Warming and we wouldn’t have to shoot at each other or drop bombs and “oblitere” anyone.
We could have our pancakes and “Maple” sugar and syrup while we fought it also.
KEM PATRICK - was it last year that people in NYC and NJ complained about the terrible smell that overwhelmed the area? The search was on for a gas leak, but so far as I know ocean-source methane was never considered. Is it 28x more potent as a greenhouse gas? Something ridiculous like that, very potent…
If it were possible to examine all the patents hidden away under USC35-181, the national security patent secrecy law, one would discover 4-5 thousand inventions, many of them dealing with alternative energy generation devices. Tesla’s radiant energy, electro-gravitic, over-unity machines tapping the quantum vacuum, alternative energy concepts generally unknown to the public that is fixated on solar, wind, biomass,that can’t solve the problem.
The petro-Nazis have effectively suppressed high mileage devices, from simple vaporization systems that would allow huge increases in efficiency to gas vehicles, to “water powered” cars ( Brown’s gas ) in the name of trapping us in the petroleum prison to perpetuate their global dominance.
McKibbon doesn’t appear to know about true alternative energy and it is simply impossible to achieve co2 reductions that we must have without it.
We do not truly have an energy crisis, we have an identity crisis. The understanding we have of ourselves prevents us from seeing our world in a different way, which is what is called for at this critical moment. We see ourselves as competitors in a world of scarcity instead of recognizing that we are cooperative beings in a world of unlimited energy. This is not your usual MLM bullshit, this is the fact of life
the universe is a perpetual motion machine. There are devices in existence, “over unity” devices, that output more energy than is input, that are in fact, perpetual motion machines producing no pollution whatever and capable of powering human civilization at no cost other than the cost of producing such machines for mass consumption.
The fact that people like McKibbon who are intent upon warning the world of imminent disaster, are unaware of true alternative energy makes one thing certain: we will not escape the global calamity. The hope is, however, that this calamity will shock us into a profound identity crisis, that this real alternative energy will see the light of day, and we will permanently solve the non-existent energy crisis or return to the stone age….
“We could have our pancakes and “Maple” sugar and syrup while we fought it also.”
You are so right…
Recipe:
2 cups organic whole wheat pastry flour
1 Tablespoon non-aluminum baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
21/4 cups soy milk
Sift dry ingredients into large mixing bowl. Whisk soy milk until frothy and pour into dry ingredients. Stir all ingredients until mixed. Do not over mix.
Pour some organic canola oil into pan. Heat to medium high. Ladle batter into pan for one large or three small pancakes. Turn pancake(s)once when the top(s) bubbles.
Serve with Earth Balance Organic spread and organic maple syrup.
Can also be served with fresh fruit, Gimme Lean sausage also fried in organic canola oil (I add a little dried basil, red chili flakes and dried oregano to the oil) until brown on both sides, and/or Tofu Scrambler.
(pancake recipe from Lindsay Wagner’s vegan cookbook… the BEST pancakes on the planet, guaranteed!)
Thank you, cruxpuppy. I truly wish everyone could take note of what you are saying.
Almost two years ago, I met with someone who was involved with the Smart Cars. He started to tell me about batteries being a limiting technology for electric cars…
But when I corrected him and told him about research I had read over two decades earlier, he confessed that his partner had just returned from China where he was shown the factory where the US military was having batteries produced secretly that were far more efficient than any the public was being told were even technologically feasible!
~Kem Patrick~
I have read your link, you have posted this before.. Continue, so many are just not aware of the threat that “methane burps” pose to all of us.
I recently saw a clip on a fissure off the California coast releasing large amounts of methane… And this is just the tip of the ice burg. Scary stuff but all true people.
I wish every human on earth would read it ~Clubconnector~.
Yeah, the methane hydrates on the ocean’s floor beds are only stable if under both (water pressure and cold water temperatures). Take away either of the two and the trapped methane WILL release.___ Billions of tons of it. That is in addition to the methane in the Arctic’s perma-frost.
Two months ago, because of global warming, that some wizards deny is a problem, one of the largest ice shelfs in Anarctica broke off and is now melting away in the Pacific ocean. That is far more serious than just some melting ice. ___ Here’s why:
The cold water beneath that mile thick ice flowed
northward deep beneath the Pacific’s waves n to the Arctic and then turned and flowed southward as it slowly warmed. That huge undersea river was similar to the warm water Gulf Stream in the Atlantic ocean. Both are very importnat for our climate.
That cold water insured the methane hydrates on the ocean floor beds stayed stable. That cold water river is now not as cold or flowing northward in as great of volumn as it had for millions of years. It was also the breeding ground for the ocean’s phytoplankton. Without suffecient phytoplankton, we slowly but surely lose our normal supply of fresh oxygen in the atmosphere.
Funny how a microscopic sized, water floating plant, is so vital for life on a water planet. Here’s an interesting one minute read.
http://whyplankton.com
As we speak the rwing ridicule Al Gore.
The sad thing is millions believe Gore
detrators.
What good it does,when millions refuse to
take action,on top of the millions
that do nothing,because do not have
a clue of what is going on.
The illiterate that are burning
the jungles of the Amazon,Asia
and Africa do know a thing about
what will happen.So its hopeless.
Hi KEM — I am thankful for your heartfelt dedication to thwarting our long established tendency for self-destruction, of which many neoCONuts would surely rejoice to their higher proportional profiteering.
I do however, believe that LIFE is ALL encompassing, and our planet is alive far more than many humans could ever know.
The web of life has taken many “disastrous” turns over billions of years of alternating freezing and thawing cycles, as in the TOBA caldera 65,000 years ago that ejected ~ 30 km3 and thinned out all but a few thousand humans ( > 99.9% dead ) that we are all descended from.
I believe that our savior of this foolish course, is NOT to be found nor is appropriate for us to focus upon the concrete world of logical, material, and within the existence of various forms of matter, pollution, and imbalance. This doesn’t mean to ignore your concerns, but to look creatively elsewhere for the entirely unique and unprecedented solutions - as Einstein so cleverly noted our current ways of thinking will only produce more of the same.
This is really about the creating the required contrast of stark reality - to drive humankind to make moral and internal choices and take “action” in different directions ( non-physical ones ), than those leading to disastrous apocalypse. It really can be seen as good news in a sly way, that hooks humankind onto a whole new level of conveyance,
only dimly I M A G I N E d previously
Our inner imbalances and thwarted spiritual growth is being reflected externally in what we see, catalogue, and imagine as separate from ourselves. The healing mandated, and providing the cumulation of evolution’s challenges to imbibe spirit and nature’s humanity - is within each of us, although the EGO would rather die than acknowledge this.
SO it will be, above as below us — but that is far from the death of our lovely jeweled Earth, nor it’s human “spiritual” guardians.
Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK
Well ~PRESENCE~ If this is God’s plan to destroy the planet by fire, as it reads in the Holy Bible that God promised to do the next time. Then that’s the plan and we just have to accept it. For if enough methane gas enters our atmosphere, it could eaily ignite and burn the whole place down.___ Or up, same thing actually, ____ ‘obliterated’. Neat word there huh?
But, it may be God’s plan that he’d much rather see if we will get our shit together and attempt to fight the global warming issue and insure the methane gas stays locked up in the ice where it won’t kill everybody and everything.
Now you see ~Presence~, you and I write differently here and I don’t have the training necessary to go off with a lot of wording that I can’t readily comprehend. So I’ll end this here comment with the following paragraph.
If any here think the global warming issue is a bunch of bullshit and it isn’t our very most serious issue,____ bar none, you’re a damn fool and you better read this here three minute read link I’ll bother to post again before you write some stupid shit about it.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
P/S ___ Welcome back ~Nam~. Missed ya.
KEM — No one doubts the reality of global climate change, at least no one whose opinion (really matters) and that is based on facts and reason.
On the other hand, the prognosis is the really challenging part, as well as the millions of trillions of interactions between the manifold dimensions of all of the interdependent variables (many of which we as yet don’t even know of).
Even if we could use all of the available supercomputers ALL together, the knowledge needed to formulate an accurate model of the interdependencies is likely decades away, and even then the computational demands would swamp potentially available superdupercaliuper-computers even millions of times more complex than those we have today.
Remember, we’re talking about forecasting the weather and climate, on a scale perhaps many billions of times more complex than that which is used for our current state-of-the-art several days into the future.
Consider that the ACTUAL IMPACT TO HUMANITY is convoluted along with variations of every possible solution and alternative problem formulation - in addition to the above quandaries.
My suspicions favor this being another staged and contrived INFO WAR to promote FEAR and subservience of the public at large - to experteasing by propaganda barrage. The population is far easier to control when FEAR levels are max’d out, and hardly anyone believes that scientists are really independent of federal funding constraints and pressures, as there is very little research anywhere that isn’t tied up in financial strings to the powers that be.
The purity of science is ALL about unencumbered research, which is now days an abstract idea, seldom to be found evidenced in reality, as almost everything is applied research now. I’m not DIS’ing all scientists, as many are doing their darnedest to adhere to their principles, and some of the very best can obtain a degree of independence (from their pay masters).
With the observed blizzard of contrived 9!! theories (and supporting and divisive “facts”), one can see a parallel here in climate research, where divide and conquer while otherwise undermining good data with false-flag data means that almost everything is suspect to some degree.
¿ What is truth ?
Presence… the models may be flawed because as yo