From DAVID ATKINS
Hullabaloo
All of these problems have the same solution…
No need to pay attention to this. I’m sure everything will be fine.
The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air jumped dramatically in 2012, making it very unlikely that global warming can be limited to another 2 degrees as many global leaders have hoped, new federal figures show.
Scientists say the rise in CO2 reflects the world’s economy revving up and burning more fossil fuels, especially in China.
Carbon dioxide levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million, says Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That’s the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.
The great tragedy here is that we have three gigantic problems right now, each of them with the same simple solution. We have a climate problem, first and foremost. We have a global economic and unemployment problem, second. And we have a global terrorism (or imperialism, depending on your point of view) problem focused largely on oil producing states, third.
All of these problems have the same solution: a global effort to create jobs in renewable energy, conservation and climate adaptation technologies while transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The importance of this effort to the climate problem is obvious. The human race is quite literally going to go extinct if we don’t solve this problem by mitigating the climate crisis and bringing emissions under control. The longer it takes us to solve this problem, the more in danger we are of civilization collapse unless we figure out significant adaptation solutions. And it may well be that, dangerous as it certainly is, we may be forced to attempt geo-engineering as well.
But this is also of crucial importance to the economy. When people think of “green jobs”, they tend of think of highly trained engineers working on solar panels. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Conservation involves all sorts of projects: weather stripping and insulating homes, painting rooftops, creating bicycle lanes and railroads, enabling telecommutes, and a host of other variegated economic activity, much of which creates jobs that don’t require advanced training. Transitioning from fossil fuels also involves some massive conversion projects, including altering and retrofitting every gas station in the world and all the associated infrastructure. We’re talking about untold millions of jobs here in nearly every sector of the economy. It wouldn’t even hurt capital markets much, except insofar as it would require the taxes to pay for them. But then, with the Dow Jones and wealth inequality at record levels, it’s not as if the investment community can’t afford to pitch in a little to help.
Finally, there’s the security angle. The Right and the Left like to argue about who is to blame for the horrors in the Middle East. The Right points to Islamism and other cultural problems, not without some justification. The Left points to the long history of imperialism and war that has decimated those societies, again with no little justification.
But the biggest problem is simply oil wealth. When a country has vast quantities of the world’s most precious resource under its soil, two things happen: first, every other nation wants to control it; and second, the leaders of that nation find it easier to buy off their public with easily gotten money than to build a stable, diversified middle class with a tax base.
Political scientists know that one of the most crucial factors in creating a society built on principles of democracy and constitutional liberalism respecting human rights, is the presence of a vibrant, diversified middle class that demands a say in its own government. Although it may cause increased instability in the short term, ending both imperialism and despotism in the Middle East will require the devaluation of oil as a commodity.
All of these problems have the same solution. And yet our leaders across the globe are taking precisely the wrong measures at every turn.
Instead of focusing on renewables and conservation, we are working to extract and transport as much fossil fuel energy as quickly as possible.
Instead of embarking on a massive jobs program, we are slashing deficits and enacting austerity in order to placate bond investors who are fatter and wealthier than ever.
And instead of defusing the military security problems in the world by reducing the power of oil, we are actively and expensively making them worse.
History will not be a kind judge. But it’s important that the record show that there were voices shouting sanity from the rooftops, even if it only amounts to cries in the wilderness. It’s that or just giving up. And giving up isn’t an option.
The future of our species depends on it.
~~
It seems to me it has been the practice of Empire builders throughout human history, to loot the country when it looks like the system is going under. Now that the Earth is one connected being and you can’t take your loot and hide it somewhere else, the emperors are sucking as much as they can out of the planet in order to fulfill the delusional and suicidal mantra, “he who dies with the most toys wins!”
At the first level of analysis you are succinctly correct. At another level the rich can be seen to have the tiger by the tail, AGAIN HISTORY REPEATS, with power they can not let go. Although the personal motivations of wealthy individuals play a part, the deep logic of our situation is consistent with the needs of total warfare where you can not afford to release any advantage lest, from the point of view of folks managing these fortunes, you, and everyone dependent on you, looses everything, and from these gladiatorial actors point of view, poverty is death, which in today’s world is not far from the objective truth.
The old solutions to this problem of an increasingly deranged elite, military conquest from without, violent revolution from within, are not options under the influence of insane military weaponry and surveillance. Empire has no history of just giving up. This Empire is driven and defended by petrochemical products. Most specifically there are no green alternatives to fueling tanks and jet planes, so control of petrochemical sources is the primary goal of a military establishment which shows little or no interest in long term outcomes, only the next battle.
Step one, it seems to me, is to demobilize the militaries of the world. The oligarchs are not able to allow that as, without their attack dogs, they are convinced, not without reason, they might well become hanging ornaments to revolution. It is also clear that anyone who even slightly damages the aspirations of the Empire faces grossly inordinate and overwhelming reactions. This is an accelerating problem. Witness the difference in treatment of Manning vs. Ellsberg. If Daniel Ellsberg tried what he did then now, the formalities prior to his solitary confinement or even execution would be minimal or totally lacking.
So now we have this wild animal of Empire feeling its back is against the wall seeking every and any military or economic advantage. No other power (where are those Aliens come to save us from ourselves?) presents any threat because this is indeed a world wide, economically integrated, Empire. Salvation for the species depends on taking control out of the hands of these demented people. Transferring that power to yet another centrally organized form of power will not work, just recreate the problem at an even bigger scale. Spreading electoral democracy will not work. If we haven’t learned anything from our experiment with electoral democracy we should have learned that it is a false system uniquely vulnerable to manipulation by concentrated wealth.
All familiar paths away from danger are blocked. The odds are not in our favor of surviving as a species. If we avoid this fate it will be because we invented a new, clever and creative way to disarm the psychopathic elites. The dim outlines of such an approach indicate that it will involve actual, REAL, concern for everyone on the planet and their needs and rights, redistributes power fundamentally away from systems of debt and energizes the youth by showing them a picture of a future that is attractive. Not impossible, but it requires a total remake of our thinking. Now that is a problem.
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” – Albert Einstein
ybera
“The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.”
― Chief Seattle, The Chief Seattle’s Speech
‘No matter who or what has caused the deep wounding, it is greatly detrimental to the healing process and survival of the life force to continue adding salt’ ~ A. Farmer
Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, recently linked the attenuation of ice caps on Mars to fluctuations in the sun’s output. Abdussamatov also blamed solar fluctuations for Earth’s current global warming trend. His initial comments were published online by National Geographic News.
“Man-made greenhouse warming has [made a] small contribution [to] the warming on Earth in recent years, but [it] cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov told LiveScience in an email interview last week. “The considerable heating and cooling on the Earth and on Mars always will be practically parallel.”
Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:
“Global warming on Neptune’s moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets … Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”
Peiser included quotes from recent news articles that take up other aspects of the idea.
“I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system,” Peiser said in an email interview. “Perhaps this is just a fluke.”
http://www.livescience.com/1349-sun-blamed-warming-earth-worlds.html
Well, J. Lee, if virtually every climate scientist is wrong about this then there is no purchase on reality and folks just ought to demobilize and go home, give up trying to change an inevitable outcome. Congratulations. I see a great short and midterm future for you.
Personally, I do not count LiveScience as a reliable source for anything. Look up the company that owns it.
ybera
Whether or not climate change is caused by human lifestyles or the sun, we still have a huge problem to deal with, and the changes that this article, and Herb, proposes are still valid…
A source for people wanting to delve into the science.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-on-Mars.html
From my observation of 68 years, the planet is warming up.
Was your starvation caused by too much CO2 or just a natural cycle? Does it matter? No.
That we are seemingly killing our planet means that, as the dominant intelligent species, we should use all of our abilities to do something about it. And, as neanderthals, we are. Every military on the earth is gearing up for the last big one. At least we will go out with a bang we caused ourselves and that did not come from outer space.
In a few million years, another ecosystem will evolve. Another species will be dominant, and all of the works of homo sapiens will be erased. Any future geologists (maybe from space) will wonder what caused the layer of radioactive dust at this point in time and the absence of all life forms for the next million years after. Homo who?
Was petroleum a cosmic test set up for just this event? If so, we got an F-!
“Conservation involves all sorts of projects:” Let’s begin at home, stop purchasing all that heavily manufactured stuff imported from wherever at you-name-it store, local or not, big or not. organic or not. We are the ones purchasing this stuff. We are the ones on the stand. All those other guys are just doing what they think is necessary to extract money from us — and we’re so willing to oblige.
My dream comes closer to reality. North Korea threatens a nuclear presumptive strike. The best strategy for them is to take the few primitive weapons they have and loft them up above the ionosphere, can be done with simple scud missiles, and set off a word wide massive emp. It is the best medicine for climate remediation. Almost immediately fossil fuel use and availability would drop to insignificance and might never come back as such idiotic idea of personal high powered internal combustion engines.