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Twelve Days to Save the World
Mohammed Nasheed knows what global warming means, because he sees it every day. He survived years of imprisonment and torture to lead his country - the Maldives - to democracy. But now, as its President, he is being forced to watch as his homeland is wiped from the map. With each year that passes, the rising sea claims more land, and at the current rate it will claim everything.
He knows why. We know why. It is because we have released massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we aren't stopping. Unless we turn around - fast - the Maldives will be gone.
Today, he has a final plea. President Nasheed says: "Copenhagen can be one of two things. It can be an historic event where the world unites against carbon pollution in a collective spirit of co-operation and collaboration, or Copenhagen can be a suicide pact. The choice is that stark."
If we fail, the story of the Maldives will become our story. A ream of scientific studies now suggest we could be on course for 6°C of global warming this century. It doesn't sound like much at first. But the last time the world warmed by six degrees so fast was at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. The result? Almost everything on earth died.
The only survivors were a few shelled creatures in the oceans, and a pig-like creature that had the land to itself for millions of years. The earth was racked by "hypercanes" - hurricanes so strong they even left their mark on the ocean floor. Oxygen levels in the atmosphere plunged to 15 per cent; low enough to leave any fast-moving animal gasping for breath. These six degrees of separation stand between us and a planet we do not recognise and cannot live on.
The fever of denialism is natural. This is so far outside our experience that is seems intuitively untrue, wrong, or even mad. I desperately wish the deniers were right: I would jump on the next flight to Tahiti for a month-long party. But the scientific consensus is overwhelming - as strong as the consensus that smoking causes lung cancer, or HIV causes Aids. The deniers are a discredited fringe with virtually no scientists currently working in the field. If you release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere on an industrial scale year after year, the world will get much warmer, and many of us will die.
I have seen it happen. In the past few years, I have reported from three places where global warming is having a catastrophic effect - the Arctic, Bangladesh, and the borders of Darfur. I spoke to Inuit who are watching in disbelief as their historic hunting-lands disappear and the ice-sheets crumble into the sea. I stood on the drowning coast of Bangladesh as villagers pointed to a spot in the middle of the sea and said: "That is where my house was."
"When did you leave?" I asked.
"Last year," they said, shaking their heads.
But it was in Darfur that I got the plainest glimpse into a much warmer world. The settled farmers and the nomadic pastoralists had developed a peaceful way to share the water supplies of the area - but then, in the Nineties, the water started to vanish. As one refugee put it to me: "The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left." (The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, has said this is due to global warming, summarising the reports of his leading scientists.) When the things we require to survive vanish - water, food and land - we don't wait to die. We kill for them.
Whenever the scientific consensus is accurately described, the deniers cry that we are being "alarmist". There is a difference between being alarmist, and being alarmed by the facts. To know what we know and carry on pumping out warming gases wouldn't just be foolish. It would be a crime. Yet even politicians who understand the science don't believe there will be progress at Copenhagen, because we must adhere to "political reality". People aren't ready to make changes; there's still a sense this is a vague problem for future generations; the US Senate won't pass a bill; and on, and on. But in a conflict between political and physical reality, physical reality will win. You can't stand at the edge of a super-charged hurricane and shout: "The focus groups say I can't deal with you yet."
Others complain that we who want to prevent the catastrophe mustn't be negative or scare people; we should "stress the positive". Yes, there are positive opportunities to grab: it's a chance for us all to come together in a common cause and to be a great generation, remembered as heroes by history. But it would be patronising and bizarre to start there. In 1936, Winston Churchill and George Orwell warned about the rise of Nazism. They didn't sugar-coat it. They didn't wrap it in feel-good homilies. They treated people like adults. A terrible threat was rising, and it had to be stopped. This is our position today. This is our choice. We can make history - or we can commit suicide.
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23 Comments so far
Show AllThe problem is that the majority of adults do not want to be treated like adults. Narcisism is the affliction of children (imaginary friends are under one's total control). Americans (for instance) do not want to give up the illusion that "we" are in control.
Well, yeah, except that the majority of adults are NOT adults. In fact, they never even reached the "age of reason". The problem is more obvious in the US, but infantilism--individually and in public policies--is by no means exclusive to the US.
The planet WILL be saved--it will save itself. The land masses will be smaller, probably, for a while--and many species (hopefully ours, as we caused this debacle, among others) will go back to that dark drawing board from which black holes come from. In short, the earth will shake us off like fleas and breathe its own sigh of relief.
That is so true. Americans, over centuries, have been made to believe that they can pretty much control nature. A substantial number, while reluctantly accepting the global warming evidence, still have the mistaken notion that we can somehow force nature to do our bidding without changing our way of life.
It's not just "Americans". The idea of controlling nature for the relief of man's estate is straight out of the so-called Enlightenment. It was gaining traction when Americans were living in wigwams. Better living through chemistry
Highly recommended: http://www.vhemt.org/ (Voluntary Movement for the Extinction of Humans. Note: You may already be part of it, and not know it, as I was.)
Yikes! You can't be serious. While the website rightly mocks Malthus, the solution is right out of his playbook.
While over-population is a problem, overcoming this 'obstacle' will not in and of itself remove the human species from its current path of mass extinction (if ZPG can even be accomplished).
The idea that 'too many people' is the cause of all our woes buys into the rhetorical argument that the planet cannot sustain 7 billion people because of the psychological notion of 'scarcity', of 'winners and losers' which brings about fear and greed. This meme has been foisted upon the populace by the oligarchy. It makes warfare acceptable and keeps us fighting amongst ourselves for a few crumbs and future 'treasure' while conveniently ignoring the possibility that human innovation, if properly channeled away from weaponry and toward equitable sustainability, is the only true way out of our present global quagmire.
trying to answer climate change with population control is just as dumb as pretending it's not there. We need action that will be immediate, and then do it still faster. this is not about something in the future. climate change is upon us right now.
The Malthusians have a complete misunderstanding of how capitalist economics works. The world could have a population of 100 million, and there would still be climate catastrophe looming (There would still be the same percentage of people too). The only difference would be that the economy, under the imperitive of perpetual growth, woyuld find a way for each afffluent person to use orders of manitude more energy and resources.
Energy use is driven by economic growth, not population growth. Under capitalist economics, economic growth and population growth have nothing to do with each other. Just look at real statistics. Where is GDP and energy usage the highest and were has energy use and GDP grown the fastest? In nations with low-population deesity and/or stable popluaitons, (The US, Europe, Oz, Canada) or nations with high density and rapid growth? China? China's energy usage growth is coinciding with a population has largely stabilized. Not it's Capitalist economy, though.
How many population alarmists know that world population growth is alrady slowing considerably, and world population is expected to level off at about 9-9.5 billion around 2050 (UN studies)?
Look for solutions elsewhere, starting with you own bourgeois lifestyle.
For the past decade or more, there have been two major news stories running in parallel. One is about US wars in Asia aimed at getting control of Asia's oil. The other is about global warming and the imperative to stop burning oil. Few people seem to notice that these stories are related.
Go to Copenhagen.
Remember Tienanmen Square? Remember the guy standing in front of the tank? Well, in the new fable the tank is the laws of physics and the guy is the race of talking monkeys we call humanity. The tank doesn't even slow down, just rides right over the guy, turning him into a blot of blood and bone on the pavement. Moral: you can't argue with this tank; it doesn't care; it won't stop as long as the monkeys feed it. Kiss your ass and your children goodbye.
[NB: Today India, Brazil, China, and South Africa said no to Copenhagen. Kiss the Maldives goodbye too, probably by next Tuesday.]
I love all these articles about Copenhagen. It's such a joke.
Let's look at what's really going to happen there....
Copenhagen King of the Ring
See the blood, hear the trash talk, witness the Uber struggle as police and activists duke it out to see who will claim the media interview!
And that's only in the streets! Come inside to see the unbelievable mountain of BS as skeptical old fart world leaders gather to stack on their share. Hear "blah" said ten million times! Take bets on who will fall asleep first and who will start yelling first. Anyone can win!
And when the smoke clears.....Copenhagen hotels and restaraunts will be in the black. The street sweepers will have some job security. The climate......no change.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage."
John Kenneth Galbraith
Good quote. So true!
This behavior has got to be a dysfunctional relic of social organizaton of our distant ancestors.
Calling human nature "dysfunctional" doesn't make it change.
I always hate when the truth is right there and no one wants to say it, let alone believe it. If you care to do it you can look for yourself and see it. I don't think it is good and tomorrow does not dream well.
Tru dat:
I have two questions for GW deniers:
1. If CO2 went from 250ppm to 150ppm, would earth experience 'global cooling'?
2. If CO2 went from 250ppm to 390ppm, would earth experience 'global warming'?
If you answered 'NO' to question 1, you are denying the greenhouse effect, which is like denying gravity, or that the earth is round. CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas: remove it from earths atmosphere and temperatures would drop 15-30F. This has been known since 1820 and is not disputed by anyone who wants to be taken seriously. And CO2 has been at 250ppm for most of the last 300,000 years, since its in a state of balance imposed by vegetation and the oceans.
If you answered 'NO' to question 2, you are a GW denier. If you answered 'Yes' and 'No' to the two questions, you are a 'scientifically-consistent' GW denier: you believe that CO2 matters in concentrations BELOW 250ppm, and DOESN'T matter in concentrations ABOVE 250ppm. You cannot state WHY you believe this because, inside, you know it doesn't make sense. It's like believing that if you maintain your weight by eating a burger for lunch every day, you WONT GAIN WEIGHT by eating a burger and a half every day.
And yet that's what you want the rest of us to believe. We can't all throw away the sense God gave us so easily.
CO2 levels are at 390ppm, which they haven't been at for 15 million years, when sea levels were 75-150ft higher than they are today (Oct09 report in Science online, UCLA scientists). Most people understand that this elevated CO2 level has something to do with the fact that mankind has liberated trillions of tons of carbon from earth's crust in 100 years, that took nature tens of millions of years to put there through natural processes.
I want everyone who's read this far to take a look at Figure 2 at this website:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Greenlands-ice-loss-accelerating.html
Greenland is falling apart at the seams, right now. We can no longer afford to get this issue wrong. And if you live within 4ft of sea level, its already too late.
If I ate a burger for lunch every day and maintained my weight, and then increased that to a burger + 1 french fry per day I might gain weight at an inconsequential rate. I don't care if I gain one pound in twenty years. And this would assume that I did not compensate by eating less for breakfast, exercising more, or increasing my calorie burn rate through anxiety over possible weight gain. Complex systems are, well, complex systems. People are not convinced that climate scientists understand the climate system well enough to make precise predictions of what will occur fifty or a hundred years in the future - esp. now, with Climategate. In fact, with Climategate, people distrust the basic integrity and honesty of scientists even more than they did before.
Scientists cannot simply ignore the political aspect of the thing - the necessity to convince the people that they are right and that drastic action is necessary - and then expect to be taken seriously by the people. "Trust me, I'm a doctor" just won't cut it. Nobody, it seems, is as impressed by the letters Ph.D. as much as are Ph.D's themselves.
But they don't have to be "right"! Considering the consequences, there only needs to be a SMALL CHANCE of of being "right" to warrant action.
To repeat what I wrote earlier, has anyone living downstream of a dam ever denounced the dam safety officials as "alarmist" because they require all dams to be built or retrofitted to withstand a PMP and MCE - storm and earthquake events with only a remote chance of happening over the life of the dam? And yes, they are even willing to pay higher taxes or utility rates to meet these requirements.
But in the case of AGW, were not talking about one stream valley, we are talking about the whole earth.
And, bullshit-degrees (like MBA's) notwithstanding, I suspect this distrust of people with an education is mostly a peculiar, disfunctional, USAn thing. In countries where higher edication is very cheap or free, such attitudes are absent.
Your argument assumes that taking action is of little or no cost, so that, if there is even a small chance that the climate scientists' worst fears are right, we might as well do it. In fact, "taking action" will be of huge cost - in money, sovereignty, consumption, in our whole way of life. You are talking about a return to a medieval way of life - and while I personally don't necessarily hate the idea, I know that people will not accept it. They will take their chances with the climate.
The dam analogy doesn't work. Dams are local, we understand them, and we control them, since we built them. None of that applies to the climate.
I don't think that people are distrustful of liberally educated people, but they see modern scientists as narrow specialists - newt fanciers, if you like - who lack extraordinary, or perhaps even ordinary, prudence.
I can't imagine why cheap or free education would be more highly valued. Who values that which is cheap or easy? "Cheap" is indeed a synonym for that which is despicable or that has little value.
I assure you that "taking" action on the improbable things buildings and dams must be designed for is hardly cheap either. The cumulative cost of complying with building code requirements worldwide is hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
And you apparently ignorant as to the natural forces that human structures must be designed against. Our understanding of them (meterology, seismology, soil and rock mechanics) is even more poorly understood than the carbon cycle and the greenhouse effect.
Sorry, if you are too stupid and uneducated to understand this last paragraph.
The "return to a medieval way of life" is just silly bullshit. Do inhabitants of large areas of New York City, maybe San Francisco, and most European cities, who don't own cars and have a carbon footprint a tenth of that of a suburbanite, live a "medieval life". Quite the opposite. It is energy ravenous suburbia that is the cultural wasteland.
Ther rest of your points are just profoundly typical USAn ignorant. Only in screwed-up USA is low-cost associated with being of little worth. European education standards are far more rigorous than the US.
I'm sorry that you cannot have a discussion with descending almost immediately into vulgar abuse - but perhaps this is what is to be expected from hysterics.
I cannot answer your questions yes or no, I don't think it is a yes or no question, but I appreciate that you want people to understand more about thier relationship to other things and how they live. I think there is imbalance created by the past and I think you have to start with that understanding.