Humanity has done untold damage to the planets climate system, that damage is now locked in by the buildup of human-generated greenhouses gases where carbon dioxide exceeds 410 parts per million is the highest it has been in 800,000 years, a time when humans did not exist. This plague in our atmosphere began to get out of control at the start of the Industrial Revolution when CO2 was at 280 parts per million.
Along with a rapid explosion in population during the same time, climate change threatens the survival of most creatures that dwell in the biosphere, including us humans. We gobble up the world's resources faster than the Earth can replace them. At this rate, we will need the resources of two planets in just 12 years to support human life a report warns.
By ignoring the warning of the dire consequences of inaction by climate scientists, refusing to act on adaption policies and mitigation, we gambled with our lives on the greatest existential threat our species has ever faced, cast the die, and foolishly took our chances by kicking this contagion down the road for future generations to solve. Unfortunately for us, and them, a steaming hothouse world won this game, and billions of people alive today will suffer and die as a result. We broke the Earth’s climate system due to greed and selfishness and honestly, just not giving a shit; consequently, we have only harrowing impacts on the horizon that we have no choice but to endure.
People escaping from fires into the sea in Attica, Greece during wildfires near Athens in July 2017But despite all the damage done, we still have a choice to make our future somewhat better, or significantly worse, depending on which path we decide to take today and tomorrow. An opportunity exists right now to change the trajectory we are on, an election in the United States is occurring within a month. We can vote in a Congress that will act on fossil fuel emissions and technology to remove carbon safely from the atmosphere and vote out those that won’t. People should choose wisely.
Donald Trump's history of spewing climate denial, extreme paranoia and white nationalism on the international stage is telling. Matt Taibbi, in a must-read article in Rolling Stone Magazine, writes about Trumps’ narcissism which may just kill us all, “obese and rotting, close enough to the physical end himself (and long ago spiritually dead),” he speaks to his no-nothing cheering cult that “America was doomed anyway, so we might as well stop worrying and floor it to the end”. Trump nonsense is what passes for “winning” in this surreal period that we are all collectively experiencing, much like the passengers in a pleasure boat on the Niagra River and the engine stops.
While the press has focused in the past two years either on the president’s daily lunacies or his various scandals, the really dangerous work of Trump’s administration has gone on behind the scenes, in his systematic wreckage of the state.
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On a policy level, this apocalypse politics is pure corporate cynicism, with Trump’s big-business buddies showing a willingness to kill us all for a few dollars now.
The broader electoral pitch is just an evil version of every nuclear-age dance tune ever, “99 Luftballoons” or “1999.” The world is ending, so fuck it, let’s party. As crazy as it is, it’s a seductive message for a country steeped in hate and pessimism. Democrats still don’t understand it. Trump’s turning America into a death cult, with us as involuntary members.
French President Emmanuel Macron told the United Nations General Assembly that his country will begin to make trade agreements contingent on membership in the Paris climate pact. "We will no longer sign commercial agreements with powers that do not respect the Paris accord," he told the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018.In a short exchange between Anthony Hobley (CEO Carbon Tracker) and Professor Michael Mann, Mann states that:
“2018 is the year where climate change really showed its face. The impacts are no longer subtle. We see this now play out on our TV screens, our newspaper headlines. This onslaught of heatwaves, droughts, and superstorms that we have seen in recent months has finally awakened the public imagination and attention.”
In a separate quote, Mann comments on the consequence of climate change inaction that pairs nicely with Trump’ s pedal to the metal fossil fuel policy.
“It is not going off a cliff; it is like walking out into a minefield. So the argument that it is too late to do something would be like saying: ‘I’m just going to keep walking.’ That would be absurd.”
I could write forever on this issue, but instead, I will end with excerpts from Joshua Busby of Foreign Affairs Magazine titled Why Climate Change Matters More Than Anything Else
The world seems to be in a state of permanent crisis. The liberal international order is besieged from within and without. Democracy is in decline. A lackluster economic recovery has failed to significantly raise incomes for most people in the West. A rising China is threatening U.S. dominance, and resurgent international tensions are increasing the risk of a catastrophic war.
Yet there is one threat that is as likely as any of these to define this century: climate change. The disruption to the earth’s climate will ultimately command more attention and resources and have a greater influence on the global economy and international relations than other forces visible in the world today. Climate change will cease to be a faraway threat and become one whose effects require immediate action.
The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, now exceeds 410 parts per million, the highest level in 800,000 years. Global average surface temperatures are 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. The consensus scientific estimate is that the maximum temperature increase that will avoid dangerous climate change is two degrees Celsius. Humanity still has around 20 years before stopping short of that threshold will become essentially impossible, but most plausible projections show that the world will exceed it.
This video from World Population, perfectly illustrates why we find ourselves in the predicament that we are in today. Energy demand will never slow down with this trend of population increase.
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