May 12, 2008
Dusk On Earth
The Nation: The Planet Has Reached Its Tipping Point, And It's Time For A Hail Mary Pass
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(CBS/iStockphoto)
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Photo Essay A Warming Effect A behind-the-scenes look at the 60 Minutes team's trip to Patagonia, Chile and Antarctica.
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Photo Essay Earth Day 2008 A look at protests and observances around the world
In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord. When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty--a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2.
If we did everything right, says Hansen, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.
More likely, though, we're the Coyote--because "doing everything right" means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they're supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way we made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.
It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones, so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal.
That's possible--we launched a Marshall Plan once, and we could do it again, this time in relation to carbon. But in a month when the President has, once more, urged us to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that seems unlikely. In a month when the alluring phrase "gas tax holiday" has danced into our vocabulary, it's hard to see (though it was encouraging to see that Clinton's gambit didn't sway many voters). And if it's hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as we do.
Still, as long as it's not impossible, we've got a duty to try. In fact, it's about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced.
A few of us have just launched a new campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next eighteen months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality.
After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can't do this one light bulb at a time. And if this 350.org campaign is a Hail Mary pass, well, sometimes those passes get caught.
We do have one thing going for us: this new tool the web, which at least allows you to imagine something like a grassroots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that "350" stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.
Hansen's words were well-chosen: "a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not.
Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won't exist, at least not for long, this side of 350. That's the limit we face.
By Bill McKibben
Reprinted with permission from The Nation.
 | If you like this article, check out www.thenation.com for more investigative reports, timely editorials and incisive columns |
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 52 CommentsThat''''s when our planet will have its ideal optimum temperature.
Posted by juwboy at 05:00 AM : May 14, 2008
It''s nonsense to say that by promoting global warming we will obtain optimal temperature on the planet. Warm winters in temperate zones mean hotter summers but also scorching temperatures year-round in the tropics. There is always this differential in temperatures between different zones. This will drive more plant and animal life to extinction with greater impact in the tropics because, as it turns out, tropical plants and animals can only tolerate a much narrow range of temperature. In this regard, living things in cold climates have greater adaptation to climate change. And when large swatches in the tropics become uninhabitable, where do you think affected human populations will go to survive?
Posted by juwboy
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Because then starvation, which is already a greater cause of death, will become worse. Climate change is already causing drought in areas where such has never been a problem. This effects crop production. The increased use of corn for ethanol production along with other factors are creating food shortages, all of which is driving up the price and driving down the supply of food globally. We%u2019re already seeing food riots in parts of the world.
(A) a cold winter
(B) a hot summer
The answer is (A) by a huge margin.
So, why aren''t we doing everything we possibly can to promote and accelerate global warming until the two numbers are comparable?
That''s when our planet will have its ideal optimum temperature.
There has been one controversial theory put forth that suggests that Mars is warming. A Russian scientist named Habibullo Abdussamatov presented it. And notably, Abdussamatov is not even a climatologist. The rest of the scientific community has not accepted his theory.
The lower gravity and dramatically lower atmospheric pressure of Mars is insufficient to retain water in liquid form. Thus, any time some of its water ice at its North Pole does melt, it almost immediately boils off into space. I suspect that much the same thing happens to CO2 ice, just at a much slower rate, since CO2 is heavier than H20.
Further, the meteorological dynamics of any other planet have nothing to do with those of Earth. So what happens with Mars%u2019 weather is not representative of what happens on Earth. The only possible exception will not occur for around another 5 billion years -- when the sun begins to swell into a red giant. At that point, global warming will take on a much more direct meaning on ALL of the planets of this solar system.
The connection between global warming and human activity is today considered an established fact.
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Then why is MARS warming?
It has been observed for years now that the polar ice caps on the planet Mars have been melting - they have virtually disappeared now.
MARS IS GETTING WARMER - why?
DID HUMANS HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT???
Humans did not cause climate change. We just accelerated the process. It would have still happened within another thousand or so years anyway.
The geological record is full of mass extinctions. The difference is we will know what is happening to us and why.
If you have one person in a building the ac is pleasant if you have a 200 in that same room the air conditioning is too warm. We give off heat through our bodies, our ACs and everything else we touch how could we not be part of the problem and thats not even counting the effect the rest of our emissions
Rising Sea levels? I live 950 feet above sea level so I don''t care.
How''d I do Rush?
Posted by VoidMaster
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Ok
ay, so go kill yourself.
Hmm, don''''t want to? Ruh-roh...
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Posted by hypnotoad72
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I%u2019m not sure how or why someone killing himself would help with global warming. But then it%u2019s also clear that this idiot did not read (or maybe just did not comprehend) the rest of my post (go back 3 pages). My point -- which was very clear to the literate -- is that I am prepared for either outcome.
I can program a computer and I can chip a Clovis point (currently working on my Folsoms) and many, many things in between. I%u2019m ready to live comfortably within whatever environment emerges on this planet. Ultimately, the environmental impact on me will be to determine which of my many skills are survival oriented and which are mere hobbies.
Whether or not global warming is man-made is irrelevant. Whether or not our species has the ability to impact it; also irrelevant. Let us say for the sake of argument that humanity is able to effect climate change by some concerted effort. No way are we inclined toward the level of global cooperation that would be necessary. Plus, I rather suspect it%u2019s too late anyway.
Posted by Oscarez
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As long as %u201Cmakin%u2019 babies%u201D remains more popular than dying, a dramatic reduction in human population is more likely to be an effect of climate change than a means by which it is contained. Further, I suggest that a global collapse of civilization will result in a human population reduction to around 2 billion by the time it stabilizes. That%u2019s a bit more than a 50 percent reduction of current levels.
See http://www.wri.org/ecosystems
And the biggest moron of them all, George Bush and his administration have for years worked tirelessly to dampen the truth.
Makes me ill!
Time to lose the SUVs, big house in the subsurbs, get off the fat buts and walk and bicycle. It will help our single payer health plan as well.
Posted by hk94 at 09:48 PM : May 12, 2008btful.
The connection between global warming and human activity is today considered an established fact. There is no longer room for doubt. To dismiss the weight of this scientific consensus is to try to beat extremely long odds. I can only think you''re in denial or foolish.
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