'2.5m people affected' by Pakistan floods officials say - BBC News
The truth is that it doesn't get any better than this. Ever. The record-breaking heatwaves across the globe this summer? This is among the coolest summers we will ever have, going forward. The damages to crops from the heat waves and flooding, and the food and water shortages? Mild, compared to the rest of our lives. And the rest of your children's lives, if you have children.
Considering an increasingly hostile climate that we created, increasing global population, basic human behavior that causes people to fight to survive, and the weapons at our disposal, we are set to destroy ourselves. By 2020, a fitting date, we'll all see this clearly.
Hi Timeslayer.
ReplyDeleteI think that you're analysis based on current trends is pretty accurate. But here's the thing. These problems are soluble. It'll cost money - a lot of money, but not nearly as much as say, invading Iraq or bailing out the global banking system. (See, for example, David McCandless' BillionDollarGram)
The problem here is neither scientific nor financial - we have both the means and the money. What we need is the political will.
I hope you'll forgive my boldness here but your mission, should you choose to accept it, is not merely to blog about the problem, but to blog about the solution. If civilisation falls due to ignorance then that would be the greatest shame of all.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting and welcome!
I agree with you that we need to develop and implement solutions to this challenge, and we need to do it fast. But the solutions must fit the challenge, and therefore we must understand just how great that challenge is.
I started this blog with the hope of informing people of the fact that this is the most serious challenge mankind has ever faced; most Americans don't know that, b/c we have a dismal mass media, and therefore the public cannot engender the necessary political will to implement effective solutions to this most daunting problem.
And I agree that it is not that expensive, especially in light of the amount of money we spend on tragic horrors like the Iraq War.
However much political will is necessary to make a serious dent in our GHG pollution, we seem to be nowhere close to it now. And a big reason for that is that people simply don't understand the magnitude of what we are dealing with. Even most of my friends and colleagues, who are smart and would say that they care about the environment, don't get it.
As I think you agree, the disasters about which I've written here are all linked to climate change, but this narrative is completely neglected by the American mass media. My hope is that this blog will shed some light on reality.
I look forward to continuing this discussion with you and anyone else who would like to contribute.