Today’s paper has some pretty interesting news. Humanity is facing annihilation, and yet we are ramping up “development”.
Global warming’s frightening, relentless, mathematics: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Global+warmings+frightening+relentless+mathematics/8073820/story.html
Here, Pete McMartin describes how a team of scientists led by Malte Meinshausen, a climatologist with Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact, published a paper entitled Greenhouse-Gas Emission Targets for Limiting Global Warming to 2 C. It came out in April 2009, in the science journal Nature. The team’s aim was to “determine just how much time mankind had left before our burning of fossil fuels would cause catastrophic global warming”. “Catastrophic” meant a rise in global temperature of 2 degrees Celsius.
Meinshausen’s team concluded that humanity has precious little time left. With current rate of consumption of fossil fuels, and the rate continues to increase, humanity only has a window of 10 – 15 years before the planet passes the 2 degrees Celsius marker. Now that it’s 2013, we only have between 6 to 11 years. That’s 2019 to 2024.
Since this article was published, several other researchers have found similar results. Simon Fraser University professor of environmental economics, Mark Jaccard, states that the Germany study’s findings are indisputable. The entire environmental science community, as well as big-wigs from oil and coal companies, all concede that humanity is “on or near the worst-case track that Meinshausen et al. modelled, and that puts us on a probable course for several degrees of planetary warming by the end of this century. In a word, that will be disastrous.”
The solution: stop producing and consuming so many fossil fuels.
People’s real response?
Rail, road work underway: Project will open up Prince Rupert port land for industry: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Rail+road+work+underway/8073889/story.html
Canadians don’t give a hoot (emphasis mine):
Construction began Friday on a $90-million road and rail corridor at the Port of Prince Rupert that is being described as the key to unlock access to Asian markets for Canadian resources.
The corridor, which is to link the port’s Ridley Island bulk export terminal to the mainland, is expected to open up 400 hectares of prime port land on the island to new development.
Canada is ever faithful to its religion, “Progress” (emphasis mine):
“This is not about building transportation infrastructure. The real story is that we are building instruments of trade,” Prince Rupert Port Authority president Don Krusel said shortly before attending a groundbreaking ceremony at the site.
“Canada is a trading nation and British Columbia is a trading province. Without our ability to expand the tools and the instruments to get our goods to international markets, we will not have continued prosperity and growth. This is all about building trade and thereby growing prosperity.”
He said that when the two-year-long project is completed, it will add 60 to 90 million tonnes a year of potential export capacity to Canada’s West Coast.
The road, rail and utility corridor is part of a broader $300-million multiphase port expansion underway at Prince Rupert and is the catalyst to attracting mega-projects like the BG Group‘s proposed liquefied natural gas terminal to the island. Further, metallurgical coal mines in the province’s northeast and proposals to develop the mineral wealth of the northwest all require access to the deepwater port.
In other words, China, India and other Asian nations are calling. If we want to continue our current rate of consumption, based on our present earnings as individuals and as a nation, we have to hand our resources over to the Asians. They, in turn, will continue to pursue the American Dream. After 60+ years of watching North Americans wine and dine like there’s no tomorrow, Asians and other non-Westerners want to join in on the Party.
Our current consumption rate, still dominated by Westerners, is already pushing the planet to fatal levels of environmental destruction. Add the non-West “Rest” to the race, and you’re looking at a couple of decades left before the earth looks like a post-apocalyptic nightmare featured in such films as The Road, The Book of Eli, Babylon A.D., Children of Men, The Planet of the Apes, The Matrix, etc.
As Naomi Klein, activist and author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, mentioned in the extra from the DVD “The Children of Men”, entitled “The Possibility of Hope”: Humans are addicted to Consumption, and our present lifestyles. It’s exactly like a crack addict. Beyond all logic and reason, you’ve just got to continue with your behaviour, which equals a slow suicide.
When the hell are we all going to stop this Party, pack up, and go home?
Mother Earth is getting impatient . . .
Cheers,
Amos8
(Slava Tolstoy)
The Children’ of Men’s Extra – The Possibility of Hope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwsBd6PizJY
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