The future seems to me the most uncertain it has been since I was a young child in Hull, England during World War 2, when that city suffered horrendous bombing. The morrow, never mind the future, was uncertain for many at that time. When I first arrived in the USA at the end of 2004, global warming was looked on as something of a joke here. I despaired. I can see, now, the enormous difference Al Gore has single-handedly made, in a short time. When "An Inconvenient Truth" first arrived in cinemas in Oklahoma, it was shown only in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. We travelled to Oklahoma City, about 75 miles away, to see it. The number of people in the theatre could have been counted on two hands, but that sparse audience rose to their feet as one at the end of the film, applauded, and uplifted my hopes.
Back then, in the run up to the 2008 presidential election I was an avid supporter of Al Gore, "Run, Al...run!!" frequently appeared in my posts, or on my sidebar. I finished the 2007 post thus:
Ten years on, nothing has changed, in fact the situation has grown worse. The Bush and Obama administrations did nothing, or next to nothing to address climate change; anything seemingly helpful proved to be lip service only. The current administration is openly opposed to addressing climate change. The horrendous storms, floods, fires and losses of Fall 2017 could prove to be the opening act of a new and far more dangerous stage in our journey to temperate climate destruction. People of the USA have not yet vociferously demanded action on this. They loudly demand action on race and gender issues, important in their own ways of course, yet without a habitable planet on which to live, what will those issues matter? Why have there been no huge marches, sit-ins, protests on behalf of planet Earth? Where are the the "Earth Matters" Warriors?The American government is still dragging its feet, and appears to be lagging well behind public opinion, but in 2008 that government is guaranteed to change. I hope that its successor will be strong enough to do what's needed, however unpopular it makes them. We may not get to the stage of being uncertain about the morrow in the next few years, but those who come after will have that to face, if we don't insist that something is done by world governments soon.
“If your house is on fire, you don't comfort yourself with the thought that houses have been catching fire for thousands of years. You don't sit idly back and think, "Oh well, that is the way of nature." You get going, immediately. And you don't spring into action because of an idealistic notion that houses deserve to be saved. You do it because if you don't, you won't have a place to live.”
― Bill Nye
Yes me too. Blogging way back. And the misnomer of Angry Nature, et al enrages me. It is humans goddammit. As far back as the thirties when building on wetlands caused catastrophic floods later in the Mississippi Delta and even in Toronto.not to mention New Orleans.
ReplyDeleteAnd now? We only have to look at Miami. Ocean is up 1 degree, why?
I despair.
XO
WWW
Wisewebwoman ~ Whether there's still time to prevent it from being a totally lost cause, I don't know -nobody does for sure. This US administration is not going to be of any help at all though - the opposite in fact. It's tough, determined government action that is needed now. It'll probably take some future totalitarian leader, who rises to the top due to increasingly destructive weather events, to begin making forced major and unpopular changes to our US lifestyles. Could've been an easier transition if started long ago, when the first evidence emerged.
ReplyDeleteFrom a piece by Naomi Klein at The Inercept today:
ReplyDeletehttps://theintercept.com/2017/09/11/irma-donald-trump-tax-cuts-climate-change-republican-ideology-capitalism/
Here is what we need to understand in a hurry: Climate change, especially at this late date, can only be dealt with through collective action that sharply curtails the behavior of corporations, such as Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs (both so lavishly represented at Trump’s cabinet meeting). Climate action demands investments in the public sphere — in new energy grids, public transit and light rail, and energy efficiency — on a scale not seen since World War II. And that can only happen by raising taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, the very people Trump is determined to shower with the most generous tax cuts, loopholes, and regulatory breaks.
Comment received by e-mail from JD in the UK
ReplyDeleteOh dear! Global warming? Climate change? When I first started work (early sixties) the soothsayers were wailing and weeping about how we were all going to die in the next ice-age which was just around the corner. It sounded plausible; remember that winter of 62/63? I was learning to drive in that winter. In a Mini! :)
But the ice-age never arrived just as the latest scare story will also be proved false!
Piers Corbyn, Jeremy's brother, is an astrophysicist who studies solar activity. He runs a weather forecasting company called WeatherWatch and his forecasts have so far been considerably more accurate than anyone else's forecasts. Logical really if you think about it: our climate is governed entirely by the sun and not just the temperature but there are other factors such as the variations of electro-magnetic radiation which influence the ionosphere, stratosphere etc.
Whatever we do is incosequential on a global scale. We can have an effect locally, a city generates its own climate for example, but not much else.
Read his web page and he explains why CO2 is not remotely dangerous to life on earth-
http://www.weatheraction.com/
I think we have to agree to disagree on this topic :)
P.S
you have read Gulliver's Travels of course and you recall the mad scientists building a machine where you feed cucumbers in one end and sunlight comes out of the other end.
Mad scientists don't understand nature, they think they do but however much they think they know about photosynthesis they actually know nothing about it. If they truly understood it they could build a machine as described by Swift to reverse the process.
Apply that analogy to global warming. Mad scientists don't understand nature. :)
JD ~ Yes, we shall have to agree to disagree on this issue. :-)
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