Probably, It Is Already Too Late To Prevent Global Climate Catastrophe

I Really Do Not Think We're Gonna "Exceptionalize" Our Way Out Of This One...

But the motherfuckers in climate-change denial seem willing and able to take (no) responsibility for their intransigence. Via Grist:

"The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Those are pretty horrific stakes. The deniers won't probably live long enough to reckon with the consequences of their own venality, dishonesty, and cowardice. But one could be forgiven, I think, for hoping their children and grand-children are among the first victims of whatsoever ensues...

The thing is, it is true. The fate of the rest of the whole fucking WORLD--all its people, all species of life, the oceans, the forests, the rivers, the glaciers, the whole fucking thing--is held hostage to the narrow, blinkered, parochial, corrupt, psychotic, bottom-line, deranged, short-sighted, venal, quarterly-report "politics" of the USofA's entrenched oiligarchy,

which apparently doesn't give a fuck as long as they are making a buck...


Under the circumstances, the rest of the world would be more than justified in eliminating US, by whatever means were available to 'em. Who could blame them? Their lives and their lands, and their progeny depend on it. Eliminating the biggest obstructionist bloc (USer denialists, i.e., but they are unfortunately inseparable from the rest of us) is a matter of national and global security.

Grist has a section of the site dedicated to "Copenhagen," to which your attention should be devoted at least once per day. Right now there's new post up by Bill McKibben: The physics of Copenhagen: Why politics-as-usual may mean the end of civilization.

Addendum: The thing is: the fate of the rest of the whole...WORLD--all its people, all species of life, the oceans, the forests, the rivers, the glaciers, the whole fucking thing--is held hostage to the narrow, blinkered, parochial, corrupt, psychotic, bottom-line, quarterly report "politics" of the USofA's entrenched oiloigarchy, which apparently doesn't give a fuck as long as they are making a buck...

These fucking people are crazy! They seem to view the coming catastrophes as some kind of "good news." A binness opportunity. And the REAL, BATSHIT, GOD-BLIGHTED CRAZIES actually HOPE this crisis, finally, will summon the "redeemer." And then they (though not "we") will all gloriously escape this vail of tears for eternal happiness.

Wasn't there a comet cult that believed "in" the same sort of apocalyptic horseshit? Doncha wish they'd all leave together?

Eventual global consequences of even a small fraction of the enormously complex, interwoven effects of the MINIMUM of global temperature change could well BE apocalyptic. Population displacements--either the folks in places are gonna move or they're gonna hafta grow gills and fins; and where are those MILLIONS going to go?Habitat loss, and the loss of productive agricultural regions--and the uselessness of the accompanying infrastructure which will be (too?) expensive to relocate? In 50 years, if things aren't fixed (and even mebbe if they are) cities like Albuquerque should shrink to desolate shells of their present state. This city's still GROWING, and not too long from now there isn't enough water, anywhere, for the people who are already here...

I do not think there is anywhere anything like the political will it would take to marshall the globes fractious 'national' entities to foresake their petty antagonisms and regard their mutual responsibilities.

I give it 20 years.

I give me 15.