Extreme weather is our future
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Posted on January 20, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Last night I was telling friends that one of the problems with dealing with global warming and resource depletion is that these are not issues that, after years of struggle and good political work (like the civil rights struggle, for example), you finally get people to take seriously, deal with, and then it’s over, you move on. It’s not like the war in Iraq, which one can imagine actually ending one day, however horrific the outcome, through weariness, negotiated agreements, international peace-making, whatever — and then the world goes on, to the next war, or not, one hopes.
But this changing weather — that’s forever. You see, once we have altered the atmosphere, once the resulting climate changes take place, there’s no going back to where we once were. It’s not as if, should we get out of our cars, stay home more, stop consuming so much, go to carbon neutrality, then, whew, we will have back the comforting world we once knew. On this journey, there’s no return to some climate norm of old. And we do not know what the new ‘normal’ state will be, once the Earth’s atmosphere settles down again, generations from now.
No, the real question now is how bad we are going to let it get as we try frantically to adapt to the changes already in the works. If we change how we live right now, we can save the planet for future generations, but those generations will not live in the climate we once knew, and that is why it is beyond reckless that we in this society are not yet making plans, drawing up strategies, for this rapidly evolving new reality.
We still sell beachfront property, for God’s sake, and travel as if this is now a birthright, and the planet and future generations be damned! We still develop wetlands, floodplains and forests, build seawalls and levees in a futile atttempt to keep rising waters at bay, foment exurban sprawl, build more roads, and on and on.
Noticed the weather lately? No escaping it, is there? El Nino combined with global warming is spreading weather chaos to large swaths of the northern hemisphere. Can I tell you that these specific weather events are due to warming? No. Can I tell you that the increase in extreme weather events over the past three decades are? With a large amount of confidence, actually, as the patterns fit the computer models beautifully.
Europe is being beaten and battered by historic storms. Here are a couple of stories about it. Don’t miss the slide show on the International Herald Tribune web page or the video on the MSNBC page.
“A river of wind,” that’s what hit Europe. You probably know that there are a lot of concerns about violent of extremes of weather in Europe as the ocean conveyor belt slows, or worse, possibly halts altogether. It is that gulf stream that keeps Europe’s weather moderate.
Meanwhile, England is again dealing with severe flooding, something that is becoming a regular occurence in low-lying parts of the country, and a growing threat.
Here is a must read from today’s Financial Times. This article takes a broad look around our world at how global warming is already affecting coastal communities, where rising sea and river waters are wreaking havoc, destroying homes, changing shorelines — and this process is just getting started.
In the Washington Post today, there was this teeny tiny little piece (look for the second story under ‘Findings’). The North Atlantic is setting heat records, it says. Could this have something to do with the storms in Europe? Warmer water means more evaporation which means moister air which means more energy in the atmosphere which means stronger storms.
“The global oceans have been warming since the middle 1970s and several studies have shown that the warming can be attributed to a human-produced signal”
…says a scientist quoted in this teeny tiny little piece.
Did I mention that it was a teeny tiny little piece, worthy of about 3 inches on page A12?
Finally for this weekend, a little note to add regarding all the obviously crazy weather we are experiencing here in the US this winter because of this global-warming-enhanced El Nino. Once again, for the second year in a row, the Great Lakes are ice free. Instead of ice-fishing, folks are out in their boats. Second year in a row.
Meanwhile, over in Europe, SUV sales are booming. This from today’s Wall Street Journal. Proves that we US Americans are not the only insane people in this world. Small comfort, that. Just listen to what the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, says about those of us who think this insane — and that something mandatory, compulsory, regulated, and international should be done about it:
Product choices are up to individuals, according to their personal needs and preferences. It is against the European concept of a free society to micromanage people’s choices according to one model of supposedly correct behavior decreed by self-appointed moral authorities.
Yikes!! Apparently we do not have the freedom to save the planet. Apparently freedom does not include the right to a habitable planet. Apparently freedom once again comes down to our consumer choices.
How we have diminished the meaning of the human being. If this philosophy determines how we proceed, I will have to change the name of this blog.
I give the final word to David Suzuki, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, whose page on the conveyor belt is referenced above:
Reducing the use of fossil fuels is the only strategy available to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate surprises.
That’s it. The only one. That’s where hope lies.
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