Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Welcome to Bizarro World
UXBRIDGE, Canada -- Canada and the United States are now the center of Bizarro World. This is where leaders promise to reduce carbon emissions but ensure a new, super-sized oil pipeline called Keystone XL is built, guaranteeing further expansion of the Alberta tar sands that produce the world's most carbon-laden oil.
"It's imperative that we move quickly to alternate forms of energy - and that we leave the tar sands in the ground," the U.S.'s leading climate scientists urged President Barack Obama in an open letter Aug. 3.
"As scientists... we can say categorically that it's [the Keystone XL pipeline] not only not in the national interest, it's also not in the planet's best interest."
The letter was signed by 20 world-renowned scientists, including NASA's James Hansen, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and George Woodwell, founder of the Woods Hole Research Center.
The proposed seven-billion-dollar Keystone XL pipeline would carry 700,000 to 800,000 barrels of tarry, unrefined oil every day from the northern Alberta tar sands 2,400 kilometers south through the U.S. heartland to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas.
Embedded in all that bitumen - the tar sands form of crude oil - will be an estimated 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions every year. That's more CO2 than the annual emissions of 85 percent of the world's countries. Oil-rich Norway emits a mere 50 million tons.
"That extra carbon dioxide is going to warm the planet for hundreds and thousands of years, causing sea level rise, more pronounced droughts and floods," said German climate scientist Malte Meinshausen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Meinshausen was not involved in the letter to Obama.
Emissions attributed to the project are "enormous" and officials must take into account how it will add to climate change, Meinshausen told IPS.
President Obama and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper say they are worried about climate change and have promised to make major CO2 reductions by 2020. Both countries are parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose membership unanimously swore to keep the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees C to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
Any hope of reaching that goal requires Canada, the U.S. and other industrialized nations to cut emissions 25 to 40 percent compared to their 1990 levels by 2020. And because CO2 lasts forever, the ultimate goal has to be net zero carbon emissions.
Both the U.S. and Canada have failed to cut their emissions, but at least U.S. emissions have stopped growing. It's not well known, but Canada has become a compulsive overeater of carbon. Its emissions "weight" ballooned from 590 million tons in 1990 to 734 million tonnes in 2008, according to U.N. statistics.
In the early 1990s, Canada promised to lose weight and even signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol swearing to the world community that it would be a fit and trim 550 million tonnes by 2010 or 2012 at the latest. Government estimates put Canada at substantial 710 million tonnes (Mt) in 2010, 28 percent above its target weight. That leaves the country in seventh place amongst the big boys, just behind Germany, a country with more than twice the population.
In Copenhagen at the end of 2009, Harper himself promised other global leaders that Canada would do better and trim down to 607 Mt by 2020. However, an official government report called "Canada's Emissions Trends" quietly released last month projects a continuing carbon binge, piling on the weight to a whopping 775 to 850 Mt by 2020. Most of that extra carbon lard is from the tar sands.
In Bizarro World, everything is the opposite of what it should be: lose weight by eating more, avoid dangerous climate change by guaranteeing it. And so enormous sums of money, including incentives and subsidies from both governments, are being spent to put ever more tar sands' CO2 into the atmosphere.
In fact, an incredible 2.077 trillion dollars is expected to be invested expanding and maintaining the tar sands over the next 25 years, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
The tar sands are the world's second largest deposit of oil, albeit in the form of tar, with an estimated 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil. There is so much carbon in the tar sands that if much of it is burned, there is no chance of stabilizing the climate, according to Hansen and other climate experts.
That means dangerous climate change where billions suffer the effects of an ever-hotter world, with mega-droughts, mega-flooding, and mega- storms. It bears repeating that the undisputed cause of this will be the atmosphere's thick blanket of CO2 from the tar sands and other sources of fossil fuel that trap much more of the sun's energy - effectively forever.
That is the nightmarish future Hansen and thousands of other scientists have been warning governments about for over 20 years.
For some, the climate nightmare has already begun. The U.S. experienced the most extreme weather in its history this past July, including an unprecedented area of exceptional drought, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
It had already been a record breaking year for weather disasters, totaling 32 billion dollars in economic losses - five times the yearly average - and that's only the damages up to June. It doesn't include anything from the hurricane season that's just getting started.
Canada experienced its hottest year ever in 2010, a whopping three degrees C above normal over the entire year, according to Environment Canada. Last winter, temperatures were 21 degrees C above normal for an entire month in the high Arctic. Yes, 21.0 degrees C or 37.8 degrees F above normal for a month. That's never happened before.
In Bizarro World, the right response is to jack up the odds of having trillion-dollar weather disasters and more extreme weather by building a pipeline that will dump another 150 Mt of CO2 annually into atmosphere starting in 2015.
That's why the Harper government, at the apparent behest of tar sand oil companies Shell, Valero, ConocoPhillips, Canadian Natural Resources Limited and Cenovus Energy, has lobbied the Obama administration to approve the pipeline "tout suite" as the Canadians say.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised to wrap up a review of the Keystone XL project before the end of the year. The State Department promised to issue the final environmental impact statement this month, and hold a second round of public hearings along the six- state route in September.
Industry insiders say this is all pro forma and that the Obama administration will not listen to its own climate experts and will approve Keystone XL, justifying it as "enhancing America's energy security".
For clear-headed citizens who find themselves in Bizarro World, there is little choice but protest and civil disobedience to force their governments to protect the future interests of today's children. Starting Aug. 20, thousands of people will descend on the White House in Washington DC as part of a two-week long sit in. They hope to pressure the Obama administration to deny the "presidential permit" necessary for construction on the pipeline.
"We hope those so inclined will join protests scheduled for August and described at tarsandsaction.org," concludes the letter from the U.S.'s foremost scientists - fully aware their expert advice will most likely be ignored in Bizarro World.
58 Comments so far
Show All" I'll go on a diet tomorrow. " Where have I heard that before?
I'll quit smoking after this one last cigarette... yep, we'll all quit smoking; when the oil and coal are gone. (or we are)
30yrs ago it was all about the coming ICE AGE!! how do we stop it? Do we have to move the US south to Mexico? Personally I'm glad we missed the ice age!
Climate Change? it happens every year!! Summer might run long or Winter might run colder! We'er all on a rock in an odd shaped orbit around a somewhat varible yellow star! You want Prefect and Predictable??? Build it yourself!!!! Nature does not work that way!. >^^<
P.S. Nature always wins! Life is gauerenteed 100% fatal! get used to it!
Ha!
No worries Rich, the Ice Age will Cometh...
Unless it don't a 'course. ;)
I remember Leonard Nimoy on that show he had and the whole "coming Ice Age thing".
Whenever I hear about "Global Warming" I always think of it.
Basically, my thought is "You folks better hope to HELL we're just looking at warming. Warming could well throw us back into another Ice Age and then human civilization will REALLY be screwed!".
That ice age was predicted to start some 20 thousand years from then, so you've got another 19,970 years to wait. Of course the global warming effects are being felt now.
Why go to hell, when we can make our own?
Well from the looks of London, Paris, Jersulum, and much of America, I'd say Human Socity is dismantleing itself nicely, and will be done long before any change in climate is really a problem >^^<
With what has happened, and is continuing to happen in Fukushima I think that you may have said something I agree with, almost. Man, that was close. :)
No, it wasn't and you know it. I've pointed that out to you on my original account (the one with a very good password, one so good I don't know what it is anymore...).
"30yrs ago it was all about the coming ICE AGE"
No, there was no such "coming ice age" 30 years ago. It's a myth, and you keep propagating it instead of educating yourself:
"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then" (ref.: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society)
And here are sources to better educate yourself:
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=They_predicted_global_cooling_in_the_1970s
Myth?!?! like global warming, in case you haven't noticed the sun has been putting out less and less energy in preparation of the new solar minimum, 11yrs of nothing but cooling forcast for the Sol System. So get your fire wood if the planet is to get any hotter we're gonna have to work togther! like never before! >^^<
Don't worry I have no Hope that we can Change anything! lol
That's a useless comment.
I will be there-for most of the reasons stated in this article... and perhaps one more-as a small act of compassion for what I love.
keystone - as in kops?
"For clear-headed citizens who find themselves in Bizarro World, there is little choice but protest and civil disobedience to force their governments to protect the future interests of today's children."
And there it is!
The fundamental mistake that the ecology movement has been making for 50 years now.
The idea that Campus Left tactics -and ONLY Campus Left tactics- and basically no strategy at all is all we can do to bring about social change in regards to ecology and "the environment".
Why aren't our "governments" already made up of people that accept the demonstrated utility of ecology, the demonstrated harm of pollution, the demonstrated benefits of "sustainability", the demonstrated weakness of a fossil fuel economy now that Peak Oil is here, the demonstrated stimulus of a "Green Jobs Recovery", and the demonstrated dangers of continued reckless fossil fuel burning for the Global Climate?
We have had two entire generations now since "Silent Spring".
Two entire generations that should have formed their view of the world with basic ecology taken as a given.
Yet I still, STILL, have "little choice but protest and civil disobedience to force(!) (my) government to protect the future interests of today's children."
The truth of this statement shines a harsh light on the failures of the ecology and "environmental" movement to date. And a lot of the blame for those failures has to rest on the Green Party -or the failure to create a Green Party, really.
THIS is why we need a strong, State-by-State, County-by-County, AND national AND Global Green Party!
Not for next year's Election, or the next, or any one election or another. Not to pull the Blues to the Left nor protect us from the Reds on the Right. Not to "end corporate personhood" or solve social injustice. Not to reform the elections system, or the banking system, or any system. Not to stop the Empire and not to start the Revolution..
Not for any one or two or several of those things, though they may all happen along the way.
No.
The reason we need a strong Green Party is so that whenever some project like this is proposed, articles written on the subject feel compelled to quote the Congressional Ecological Caucus, not remind us of our "little choice" but yet another "protest".
If you had told me 15 years ago -before I could even vote- when I first became involved with the Green Party and Ecology that we'd be sitting here now looking forward to a 2012 Election in which the Greens are still, STILL, a disorganized receptacle for throwaway votes and "progressive" daydreams to create a Party to the Left of the Blues while the world outside is tottering on Peak Oil poised to ride the downside more anti-ecologically than it rode the up,...well,...I would have called you a gloomy pessimist and told ya to get to work making that NOT happen.
So, better late than never, let's get to work making that NOT happen, eh? ;)
-matti.
I don't think it's gonna be a green party or any other colored party . This is the real mess and no amount of Doing is gonna make it right. Look where all the Doing has got us so far...yep, right in the worst mess ever.
i look at it as an opportunity. Since we don't really know what "it "is, just accept "it" is going in a direction we can't imagine, forget about changing "it"(redundant) and participate right now in your own way.
or
“It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that--it's all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown--then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right?”
John Lennon
"THIS is why we need a strong, State-by-State, County-by-County, AND national AND Global Green Party!"
Your fundamental mistake, along with the liberal environmentalists, is believing that this political system will respond to any electoral process that would mean a loss of power for the ruling oligarchs.
That's incredibly naive. The corporations have won. They own the state, and the politicians that run it. Forget about any transition of power via the electoral system. It simply won't happen. They will assassinate anyone that got close enough to win.
While I don't agree with everything Derrick Jensen says, he is dead right in his analysis that this civilization will not voluntarily transform itself into a sustainable world. Read his premises from Endgame:
http://www.endgamethebook.org/Excerpts/1-Premises.htm
The best we can hope for is a mass movement that forces the state and corporations to stop what they are doing. Only a mass movement involving all kinds of direct action and pressure will have any hope of success.
Well, YOUR fundamental mistake -to borrow once again from my OP- is in assuming that I mean the Green Party should -necessarily- cause "loss of power for the ruling oligarchs".
My point was it is exactly that kind of "mission drift" that has made the Greens failures thus far.
The Green Party should be about building and representing the ECOLOGICAL worldview, set of principles, and toolkit. EVERY other interest should be represented by a FACTION of the Greens not the WHOLE -including "loss of power for the ruling oligarchs".
Another -less fundamental- mistake you make is in thinking that the "ruling oligarchs" control absolutely the entirety of the "political system".
Another is your implicit assumption that overthrowing "ruling oligarchs" is something rare in this world, when in fact it happens somewhere several times in any given decade.
Have Fun, ;)
-matti.
~~matti~~,,, you with ample justification asked__ ("Why aren't our "governments" already made up of people that accept the demonstrated utility of ecology, the demonstrated harm of pollution, the demonstrated benefits of "sustainability", the demonstrated weakness of a fossil fuel economy?")....
I believe the major answer to those good, honest and fair questions is... Our 536 DC elected are primarily supported by (big business) and if you ran for office for a seat in congress or the senate, you would not have the support and the MONEY from (big business) to finance a decent campaing against one who has the (big business) money... and therefore; it is very unlikely you could or would win an election bid... a very few have managed to do so, not near enough.
So we have a majority in congress who aren't really tuned into the enviromental or the green equation... Some of them "talk" green, but vote otherwise... I believe we all know that now (big business) rules the country.
Yeah but they were rhetorical questions. ;)
Seriously, I agree with you completely.
But my point was that somewhere back in the salad days of the Campus Left, the Green Thang went off the rails a bit.
There are big business opportunities -at least in the short- or medium-term- in sustainable stuff. There may not have been 41 years ago on the first Earth Day when we were just talking U.S. Peak Oil and the wonderful future of Imperial Wars for resources looked promising to the amoral. But now? There is big $ in green, if you know what I mean?
If the Green Party was as detached from Campus Left social, economic, and political theory as the "green" consumer movement has been, I believe we would be talking about re-electing the first Green Senator, the dozen Green Representatives, the hundreds of Green State Legislators and Mayors and Councilpersons, and maybe a Governor or two today instead of none of the above and the 27th "new" plan for Green "third party" Prez-run relevancy.
And if we can accept this notion of how we could have been, maybe we can change and do better in the future.
THAT was my point. ;)
-matti.
I agree with your point matti, just answered the fair questions you put forth, rhetorical or otherwise... We are not going to change what has now occurred in our government, not any time soon enough to alter the global waming and the resulting dramatic climate chages that are now just in phase one... Wait till next year and the following... We are in serious trouble, but not serious enough as yet to awaken any of the powers who be to realize or comprehend just how deadly serious it all is..
Most of our DC elected still deny GW and climate change. They think it's just unusual isolated weather conditions and everything will be alright next year....They are wrong.
In other words, you heard me, you just -politely- insist on talking about something else? ;)
WE are a "power", and we seem awake -or at least I think I do- don't we?
So that scenario sorta falls apart a bit doesn't it?
The warnings of doom have been falling on deaf ears for 50 years, I'm into trying something new, just for kicks. Doom doesn't work on people who -at least unconsciously- believe in a Good God and their Immortal Souls anyway.
I should have known that no one would want to talk about reimagining the role of the Green Party in our society...
I keep thinking I will have the fortitude to stop playing these pointless distracting games here on CD and get back to real life. Maybe this is the time?
~~matti~~ I replied to YOUR questions and I did not talk about something else... They were YOUR questions... You wrote>>> ("I keep thinking I will have the fortitude to stop playing these pointless distracting games here on CD and get back to real life. Maybe this is the time?")
That's another fair question you have asked matti.. I'll bother to answer it for you also ... Yep, it's time,,, bye.
You are a strange one... You asked fair questions and I with no thousght whatsoever of angering or anoying you answered them and you go off like a firecracker... Last week I related how few birds we had counted on a 6,000 mile road trip we took to see our country one morte time and visit our family.. The route included traversing the Everglades from east to west. We couned 61 birds total on a four week trip and you went off on me for drriving and polluting the atmosphere, instead of discussing the rapid decline of wildlife... Thirty plus years ago we would have seen thousands of birds on that route.
Yep, we ALL pollute the atmosphere and that includes you matti... My point was, we humans are destroying life on this only Water World which has a liveable atmosphere that is (known) to exist in the entire vast universe... I'm one of those humans and suspect that you may also be one of us. But then, we have never met, so that is an assumption.
Too many people and billionaires upset the balance of nature and things get bizarro
ezeflyer,
True, but there are a few influential people across the world who CAN see the profit in renewables as opposed to beating the dead fossil and nuclear poison planet killing energy frankenstein ("horse" is not the appropriate term) cadaver.
Even as the math challenged die hard idiots in governments fight the reality that fossil and nuclear are NOT cost effective while ignoring the planet destroying aspects of these ruiniously exploitative technologies, renewables are eating their lunch.
For all my depressed friends here at CD, I want to share this from wisegeek with you to cheer you up. There IS some hope out there, folks.
[California used to produce more than 90 percent of the world's wind power, but because of a combination of increased production elsewhere and aging equipment, it now produces less than 2 percent. As of 2010, about half of the world's wind power comes from Europe, with China, the United States and India also being big producers.
More facts about wind power:
•World wind power production doubled every three years between 2000 and 2006, with an estimated 200 gigawatts (GW) of capacity installed by the end of 2010. To put that in perspective, that's about half of the world' nuclear power capacity.
Wind power capacity is projected to double again by 2014.
•The country that uses the highest percentage of wind power for its energy is Denmark, where wind power accounts for about one-fifth of the nation's energy usage.
In the United States, the state that generates the most wind power is Texas — if Texas were a country, it would be the sixth-largest wind producer in the world — and the state that uses the highest percentage of wind power is Iowa, which uses wind power for about 14 percent of its energy needs.
•The U.S. Department of Energy estimated that, if fully utilized, winds from Texas, North Dakota and Kansas could completely power the country.]
http://www.wisegeek.com/where-does-the-worlds-wind-power-come-from.htm
Please feel free to pass this on. We need to counter the fossil fuel and nuclear propaganda lies as much as possible. THEY ARE LOSING! The media is trying to pretend they are the unstoppable juggernaut. Tell your friends. Spread the truth.
Wow, thanks agelbert. That was a welcome pick me up
wow indeed, agelbert! i'm on my way to the site you suggest. the best advice to get the ball rolling, cheer up! the fast-paced corporately sponsored paper chase or run for the money only creatates stress. and that brings mental fatigue.
how'd you do all that neat stuff?
hummingbird,
This site has a pretty big bag of HTML tricks. ;>)
http://www.quackit.com/html/codes/
I don't dispute the major point of this article, but it does include one glaring error: the assertion that carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere "stays there forever". That is obviously untrue. Among other things, CO2 in the atmosphere finds its way into the oceans (where it is turned into limestone), and it is absorbed by plants and used to make complex organic compounds.
Jim Shea
Yup "stays there forever" is wrong.
The duration period for carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere is somewhere between 100 and 500 years. Obviously, not all carbon dioxide molecules will stay in the atmosphere that long, but on average the duration may be around 200-300 years.
Hi Jim,,, how long any single molecule of Co2 stays in the upper atmosphere is not an issue... The (*accumulation*) of Co2 in the upper atmosphere or the greenhouse effect, is the issue.. .We are just pouring too much Co2 into the greenhouse gas mix by burning fossil fuels to the extreme extent that we do.
I'm sorry, I do not have that long to wait for nature in her good time to clean up our mess. As it is, she is getting ready to get rid of us parasites because we have become too troublesome.
The situation is more complicated than we might guess. The carbon released from burning fossil fuels enters the "Carbon Cycle", a chemical system that explains how carbon moves from the atmosphere to the oceans and the land. While in the ground, the carbon was essentially removed from the carbon cycle, but now it participates in it. The carbon incorporated into wood through photosynthesis is eventually released through decomposition. Some carbon in the sea is dissolved in the ocean but it is important to understand that is not a one-way process. There is an equilibrium by which carbon dioxide is released at the same time it is absorbed. As for carbon dioxide getting incorporated into limestone, the concern actually goes the other way: limestone is eroded by increased levels of carbon dioxide dissolved in the water.
Frankly, I do not know how we can put carbon back into the box it was in when it was imprisoned underground in vast reservoirs of coal and petroleum. Barring some technological breakthrough, we shall have to endure a planet with higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It's true-it isn't up to any party, because the parties up there right now are all bought and paid for by the corporations. It will take a monumental civil disobedience/societal shutdown of sorts to get anything accomplished. But once the civil disobedience happens, then what? Will the pols come outside and meet with the protestors, at which point they hear our demands and "promise" to change things? Do we somehow follow them around from now on or monitor their every action regarding this issue and/or others?
Will anything short of a major, and I mean a major, upheaval in the power structure, possible only via some type of overthrow of the government, accomplish anything? Let's be honest, making calls and signing petitions is a fools game. Even large groups of caring enviro- groups have made no real impact on the energy policy and these oil companies thumb their nose at us.
I believe only massive civil-and maybe not-so-civil unrest will change anything
Is the electrical grid that you are using to access this site powered by 100% renewable generation systems?
If not, then maybe making that happening would be a good first step before "overthrow of the government"?
Way, WAY too many Armchair Revolutionaries in the Green Movement, and way, WAY, too few Practical Thinkers.
One - 'tout suite' is for Quebec.Two - Canadians are not all for the Tar Sands - some Canadians are, as is the current government.
Three - maybe it's time for "Beyond Government", and not just "Beyond Nuclear"??
Every single one of us can act - both in our own interest - in the interest of our local group and community - in the interest of our country - and in the interest of the global community, including the natural environment and all of the lifeforms with which we share this beautiful planet and universe.
Four billion years of life right here ~ maybe three or four times that for this universe.
Let's all grow and learn - deliberately - as a life's responsible work - in order to balance the seemingly contrary interests listed above.
Since it is entirely possible that solutions will not be found through government - let's act individually.
No one can stop us if we do this - no one.
Learn - then learn more.
Manysummits
=======
haleatus
I get you!!!! This is where I'm at most of the time-in order for things to change, we would need a MASSIVE revolt, basically...... The rich, the oil companies and anyone who gets rich off oil and coal, will NEVER give it up...... with a fight...... will we win? I don't think so...... We will get slaughtered, because our government will pull out all the the military hard ware it has to stop us, besides putting us away deep and far so no one will ever see us again....... Does this mean I think we shouldn't fight? NO!!!!WE SHOULD!!!!!!! How we revolt is the question...... strategic revolt is better than chaos..... look at England..... A MASSIVE REACH OUT TO THOSE WHO DON'T GET IT, EDUCATING EVERYSINGLE AMERICAN POSSIBLE, IS PART OF HOW WE WIN..... AFTER THAT, WE WILL HAVE OUR OWN ARMY. Because before say, 80-90 % of the pop fully and deeply understands climate change -and peak oil.... we will be fighting our neighbors, family members and strangers.... think in terms of the pyramid sceams.... reach out by giving as much info as you can find in many different forms and have those people do the same..........build a net that stretches across the nation and DO IT FAST!!!! THEN WE CAN MAKE A MOVE.
One move that should be made is to do something to assist EVERYONE to be able to HAVE the new technologies/ be able to afford it...... with out an assistance program, many will be stuck using the old, or not having any electricity or be able to get from one place to another and will die, the same way they would if we let climate change take over...... This also is part of the problem in getting people to WANT to change over... including our government.....they cannon wrap their minds around how they will get everyone on the same page.....IN TIME....... time is the key here, since we don't have a lot of it left....... It would be a great idea to actually go ahead and spread the wealth around. That's right, take the money from the rich and you can switch the country over to a very green life style right away...... NOT 50YRS FROM NOW OR WHAT EVER IS PLANNED BY USING THE "FREE MARKET" ......
WE NEED A REAL PLAN AS TO HOW THE WHOLE PROCESS IS GOING TO TAKE PLACE ---ALONG WITH MANY OTHER FACETS OF OUR LIFESTYLE LIKE LOCALIZATION OF MOST EVERYTHING ETC. WE MUST GET PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENT KIND OF LIFE THEY WILLL NEED TO LIVE.....AND WHY......... IT'S WILL BE A BATTLE.....BUT....
I agree that the Obummer Administration will not listen to the climate experts about this. After all, they refused to take seriously the warnings from economists who knew far more than they about what was happening to the economy. Why should they listen to a renowned climate expert like James Hansen? He would deny them the corporate agenda that they work for. These sociopath corporate whores don't give a damn about the future they are handing over to our children and especially our grandchildren. They are environmental criminals just as they are war criminals. The most ominous fact of the piece was the report that the high Arctic has had temperatures 38 degrees F warmer than normal for an entire month. How do these reckless assholes respond to this? Well, Hillary Clinton is on record as saying that the melting of Arctic ice will make it easier to explot oil and mineral resources in the region. There you go, if you are going to fuck up the natural world you might as well make some money out of it.
viva zapata...
down with the hacendados...
land and liberty!
This oil is being extracted against the will of the owners of the land, The Six Nations Peoples. It is 21st Century genocide. Who among you will participate in this genocide?
Well I'm not gonna stop filling my car or heating my house,, if that's what you mean?!?! >^^<
Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten. - Cree Indian Prophecy
We're toast, got jelly?
With the way the banksters got things tied up,, the only green I expect to see in the near furure is Soilent Green! >^^<
These psychopaths in their wisdom know that they will not be around when some of these predictions come true. You would think that they would not want this for their own children or grandchildren, but then they covet their greed and avarice with such conviction that if left unchecked…..life as we know it is gone forever. Just look at the planet Mars and think about trying to make a life in such an environment.
Love the view of the world (in the illustration for this article) that always shows North America front and center. How about Africa or Asia? Or the middle of the Pacific Ocean? At least they take up more space on the globe.
jpheran
....thanks for that book, haven't read your comments, I guess. I have been wanting to find sources for indigenous ways of living......I will definitely get the book.... I am 1/32 american indian, although I can't say much about the this part of my heritage. My greatgrandmother's mother was half indian. That may sound lame, but part of me wants to connect..... I have found some information on indigenous knowledge but it does not go into enough detail...
jpheran
....thanks for that book, haven't read your comments, I guess. I have been wanting to find sources for indigenous ways of living......I will definitely get the book.... I am 1/32 american indian, although I can't say much about the this part of my heritage. My greatgrandmother's mother was half indian. That may sound lame, but part of me wants to connect..... I have found some information on indigenous knowledge but it does not go into enough detail...
The Powerful Few are carrying out the slaughter of each and every one us and right before our eyes. What are their names? Home and office addresses? The seven billion should be watching the two million at all times. If the top thirty go underground (out of sight) and beneath the earth (into their subterranean cities), this will signal that the end is near, i.e., thermonuclear holocaust.
Nuclear holocaust will not be necessary Leland.
I have said this before and will repeat it... As the Arctic's ice continues to rapidly disappear, (trillions of tons) of methane gas will finally escape from beneath the Arctic ocean floor into out atmosphere..
That disaster will occur within the next two to four years... That massive amount of added methane in the greenhouse gas mix will set off global warming like few have ever imagined... Expect to see average daily summer temperatures around the globe 30 to 40+ degrees F higher than what we have experienced this summer.
Expect to see massive world wide crop failures, massive flooding, many more devistating storms, incredible winter blizzards and far below freezing temps during winter months, spring summer and fall tornadoes and hurricanes in number and magnitude like we have never experienced in human's recorded history... Expec to see sea levels begin to quickly rise several feet and all ocean's coral reefs dead... Most of those things will occur world wide
That global rise in temperature will insure massive amounts of methane gas in many other areas of the planet will then also escape into the atmosphere and then things will get serious, possibly adding so much methane in the air that it will suffocte much life... No one will escape from it, except those living in the orbiting space station.
Chicken Little? __ If any wish to ignore or deny the facts and think so. __ My opinion is based entirely upon the scientific studies and highly educated opinions of a few highly qualified scientists and geologists who know the score, but have not been and are not being listened to and who have no control over it.
Google: (artcic methane) __ Try to avoid the articles published on the net by the professional GW Deniers...If the authors downplay the issue or deny it, they are lying... Lying is what they are paid to do and they are very good at it. .