The catastrophe is upon us
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Posted on May 19, 2006
Filed Under Justice, Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Inspiration and reflection
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Field Notes from a Catastrophe:Man, Nature, and Climate Change
by Elizabeth Kolbert
A trip across the US can certainly open one’s eyes to the reality of climate change. I finally made it to Glacier National Park in Montana last year only to find most of the glaciers already gone. I also hiked at Paradise on Mt. Rainier, my third visit to this natural wonder, to find the immense glacier receding and park rangers talking about the changes in flora and fauna due to a warming climate at the volcano over the past two decades. Same thing at Mt. Hood in Oregon.
Then there are the warming waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico fueling the hurricanes of recent years, with the all-too-familiar results in Florida and along the US Gulf Coast. 142 days without a drop of rain in Phoenix. 12 inches of rain in 3 hours in St. Petersburg FL last year. 15-17 inches of rain in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire this past week, changes in weather patterns and jet streams persisting over long periods. The slowing gulf stream in the Atlantic Ocean that has kept Europe’s climate moderate over thousands of years. And on and on.
So the alarm bells are ringing everywhere.
And here’s one that can be shared in your churches, communities, book clubs, and around your family dinner table – the alarm bell that is Elizabeth Kolbert’s, Field Notes from a Catastrophe.”
Kolbert brings together in this book her 3-part series on climate change written for The New Yorker. She takes us to now familiar places – like Alaska and the Arctic, where warming and resulting climate change are already well-established – and offers a relentless view of the reality of rising carbon emissions and how we humans are responsible for a disaster-in-the-making. But one of the best things about this book is that she makes the science accessible and incontrovertible. It is an impassioned and frightening call to action.
What the science tells us is that the levels of human-induced greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are approaching levels that will set off a chain reaction of climate change to which we will not be able to adapt. There are scientists quoted in this book saying things like: “I wouldn’t be shocked to find that by 2100 most things were destroyed.”
Even many environmentalists are trying to debunk this extreme view, calling it fear-mongering – but read the science. It is quite possible. The person quoted is David Rind, a climate scientist working at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). According to one prominent measure, the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which Rind applied to a GISS climate change model, “as carbon dioxide levels rose, the world would begin to experience more and more serious water shortages, starting near the equator and then spreading towards the poles. When he applied the index to the GISS model for doubled CO2 [levels to which we are headed rapidly – my addition] it showed most of the continental United States would be suffering under severe drought conditions.” When he applied this same measure to the model operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, “the results were even more dire.” According to this model, persistent drought will effect most of the continental US.
Okay, that’s just one of many dire consequences that will come from our crazed carbon-emitting lifestyles. We know we can’t keep living like this, but still we go on.. And what Kolbert’s book also outlines clearly is the scandal of a US government that is doing little to nothing in regard to climate change, whose measures are too little, and maybe too late as well. Nothing short of drastic action on an international level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately will suffice.
“The warming that has been observed so far is probably only about half the amount required to bring the planet back into energy balance. This means that even if carbon dioxide would remain stable at today’s levels, temperatures would still continue to rise, glaciers to melt, and weather patterns to change for decades to come.”
Every day we do not change consumption patterns, we increase the level of disaster to come. The earth is seeking a new energy balance and it is up to us as to whether or not the earth will need to get rid of us in order to find that balance.
As Kolbert writes, what is required are "new patterns of consumption, new technologies, and new politics."
And how is this for a call to action: “the world is rapidly approaching the point at which, for all practical purposes, the crossing of that threshold will become impossible to prevent. To refuse to act, on the grounds that still more study is needed or that meaningful efforts are too costly or that they impose an unfair burden on industrialized nations, is not to put off the consequences, but to rush toward them.”
Friends of this blog, can we stop the rush?
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