It Isn't Morning in America Anymore -- It's Dusk on Planet Earth

[marmar]

from TomDispatch, via AlterNet:



It Isn't Morning in America Anymore -- It's Dusk on Planet Earth

By Bill McKibben, Tomdispatch.com. Posted May 12, 2008.

If we want to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed, we've got to cut CO2 emissions.



Even for Americans, 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 sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It's that everything is so inextricably 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 (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- "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. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/85080/

[fed-up]

1. it's mourning in America.... :( nt

[nebenaube]

2. I do not disagree with you but

The assertion that gas is at $4/gallon is due to limited supply is pure bullshit; the reality is that the doller is practically worthless now, a fact that is the natural consequence of our leader's actions.

[kristopher]

3. The supply is limited.

That it, it is matched to demand. This is something we haven't seen before since we controlled everyone else's oil and caused them to overproduce. We aren't going from matched demand to shortage, we are going from oversupply to matched demand.

I think the number will settle at about $6 a gallon.

[phantom power]

4. It was never morning in America.

That was never anything more than a campaign slogan. A lie we told to ourselves for a while, enabled by China's policy of importing pollution and exporting cheap labor, while OPEC mainlined salt-water into its oil fields, and Thomas Friedman wrote a thousand essays about the flat earth, 2000 years after Eratosthenes. Which should have been a clue that something was up, right there.