If you really want a detailed assessment of anything, print is always your best source. For example, today's Star details the horrendous changes taking place in the Arctic thanks to the record-breaking temperatures occurring there.
If, however, you want a quick overview of what is happening in the North, take a look at the following report by NBC's Lester Holt:
Finally, if you have the heart for it, read how our existential crisis is playing a role in helping people decide whether they want to bring children into this world.
And yet the Star endorses Trudeau's TMX pipeline. Go figure. I was gutted today to read Tim Flannery, Australia's greatest climate campaigner, declare his incredible work over the past 20 years a failure. He came right out and said that the fossil fuelers and their political pimps have turned predatory and are now an immediate threat to our children. That goes for Jason Kenney, Scott Moe, Scheer, Trudeau and Horgan. He speaks of a "grim winnowing" ahead that will take billions of lives.
ReplyDeleteThat is sad to hear, Mound, but when we see the state of the world, it is hard to muster up any counterargument or basis for hope, isn't it?
DeleteHard atop Flannery's remarks comes an analysis piece from a professor emeritus of human ecology at UBC published in The Tyee. This fellow speaks of the consensus of the world's top climate scientists that we can expect a die-off in the magnitude of six billion people. Schellnhuber estimates we'll fare even worse - somewhere between half a billion to a billion survivors. UBC's professor Rees has added his voice to other experts who are now emphasizing that climate change, while an existential threat on its own, is just a symptom of a far larger basket of existential threats.
DeleteFor so many years the conversation treated climate change as a stand alone crisis. Dr. Rees says it's the worst of the lot but we're facing a far greater danger:
"that places the global community in a particularly embarrassing predicament. Homo sapiens, that self-proclaimed most-intelligent-of-species, is facing a genuine, unprecedented, hydra-like ecological crisis, yet its political leaders, economic elites and sundry other messiahs of hope will not countenance a serious conversation about of any of its ghoulish heads."
We, especially our grandchildren, are being sold down the river by our political leadership. They won't even acknowledge what we're facing much less what we can and must do to prepare. That, to me, is willful and criminal neglect.
Truly, these are crimes against humanity in the truest sense of the phrase, Mound.
Delete.. anyone born in the 50's or 60's who was fortunate enough to visit Jasper National Park as a kid.. via The Icefield Highway will recall the Crowsfoot Glacier.. some of us got to ride in the snow vehicles on the glacier itself and stare into the seemingly bottomless crevasses..
ReplyDeleteMy family has a painting done by one of our great aunts.. it depicts the crow's three toed foot of ice.. Well, I believe that glacier is no more. If so, did they remove the highways signs ? Will we remove the signs saying 'Wildlife Crossing' when Alberta has lost the last of its hoofed elk, mountain sheep and goats ? Will 'whale watching' become a historic term soon ? More likely the signage will reflect 'Pipeline Crossing' or 'Slippery During Diluted Bitumen Leaks'.. until that too is exhausted.. and we can set aside & fence in the vast evaporated tailings ponds.. and warn people to avoid being downwind as they will be filtering the dry windblown toxins through their lungs. By that point, the traditional prevailing winds from the northwest will be history too.. and instead will become capricious & blow from any damn direction anytime.. but the buffalo will roam.. cuz Jason Kenney promised they would.. Welcome to the new Dark Age ..
These days, Sal, as I ponder how our world is rapidly hurling toward the climate-change abyss, I often think of words attributed to Nikita Khrushchev:
Delete"In the event of a nuclear war, the living will envy the dead."
Will our descendants say the same about the world we bequeathed them?
"The living will envy the dead." There is nothing more to add.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a fitting epitaph for humanity, Owen.
DeleteAnd in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. Revelation 9:6
ReplyDeleteMost of my friends opted to be childless since the 60s and the environmental writing has been on the wall since way before then.
All of us are upset now
but we have mumbled and shuffled at the rape of the earth for about as long as we have lived
and traded our future and greatest treasure
for distractions and trinkets, ease and progress
with no heed to the cost.
.....
one barrel of oil contains the energy expended by a man working for 40 years.
at $100 a barrel how many mens lives have you burned up?
We all made the money
and spent it on landfill.
And our inconsideration is gonna leave a scar.
Well put, lungta. Like the profligates that we are, we have foolishly expended our natural capital, heedless of the true cost of such folly
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