You don’t have to think very far back to remember a time when Republicans and their corporate lobbyist supporters were seriously saying that there was no such thing as global warming. Even more recently, the GOP Flat Earth crew were saying that, even if global warming is happening, it’s a good thing. The Republicans seriously argued that global warming would be great, because there would be more hot days to spend at the beach. They said global warming would improve the world economy and make everyone happier.
Those days of denial are over. Hurricane Katrina has brought the dramatic nature of the impact of global warming to a larger audience, but the practical negative effects of global climate change have been occuring in smaller ways for years now.
Consider this: between 1994 and 2003, 2.5 billion people on Earth were affected by natural disasters. That’s a 60 percent increase from the two previous ten-year periods. Last year’s insured loss of property due to natural disasters was over twice the average annual rate that has been measured since 1987 – even when the tsunami in the Indian Ocean isn’t counted.
Strong storms and flood are projected to increase as global temperatures increase, adding energy into the systems create our weather and produce destructive storms. Consider this: More than half of Americans live in coastal areas. Other Americans live in flood plains, and yet others live in arid areas where the human economy can only barely continue with the scant rainfall available.
It doesn’t take a big change to wreak havoc on populations that are living close to the edge of habitable environments. People living in more stable locations pay the price when inhabitants of ecological fringes must suddenly relocate.
Scientists agree that human activity is behind the increase in global temperatures to date. The polluting activities to blame are still on the increase, meaning that we’re not just avoiding a fix, but are accelerating the rate at which we make the problem worse. We did it, and we can undo it, with an investment now that can help us avoid greater expense and loss of life in the future.
Nobody cares. i’ve been reading and talking about these kinds of data since the 60′s and early 70′s (when i was in college) and it has become abundantly clear that not only are the politicians ignoring these trends, they are actually exacerbating the problem by allowing their big-money corporate constituents (who pay them through lobbyists) to continue their polluting practices by weakening the laws or not enforcing environmental regulations and thereby worsen the effects on us all. The religious right, on the other hand, seem to be gung-ho for the earth to come to some kind of violent end – either through Armeggedon type world war (not out of the question yet) or clashes with the other world religions in a showdown scenario where Christ (they believe) will lift them all to safety in some kind of Rapture. So we’re competing with the zealots and the idiots, the careless and the greedbags, for a voice of reason in Washington. I seriously doubt that anyone (including most of the Democrats anymore) are listening to we progressives and dissenters. Yeah, we’ll keep up the strident vocal criticism, but don’t expect much. The real end will come when the earth is so out of balance that we can’t grow food enough to feed ourselves (due to growing seasons being both unpredictable and impacted by extreme climate phenomena, as well as the steady depletion of top soil), when the little bugs (like mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus) and microbes take over and become a real hazard to human life (like the coming flu pandemic that the scientists keep warning us about, for which we’re woefully unprepared), when the earth inundates vast land areas due to the unstoppable melting processes we’ve put into effect through our ignorance, and when the gulf stream becomes inactive due to the same cooling of ocean temperatures due to the melting ice-caps, glaciers, and their unpredictable aftereffects. The earth is just reacting to the plague of humanity and will do what it takes to rid itself of us. It’s a shame – it used to be considered such a paradise (long, long ago i guess).
“The earth is just reacting to the plague of humanity and will do what it takes to rid itself of us.”
Sounds just like the right-wing Christian apocalyptic bull you’re ranting about. Neither God nor a personified earth itself is out to get us. Humans are doing it to themselves, and they can stop.
One of the challenges we face is the fact that deniers can always deny: There were floods, drouts, heatwaves and hurricanes before global warming, right?
Yeah, sure. And people get lung cancer even if they don’t smoke, right?…
It might take what it took the tobacco industry–an insider defecting and a subpoena of industry documents–to determine just how brazen the energy companies are being about this whole global warming thing, and how clearly they know their own orchestrated pseudo-scientific team of deniers is engaging in a campaign of misinformation.
Any defectors out there? Any reporters looking for them/this?
Hey, maybe a reporter for NBC (owned by GE) will break the story. Ha ha.
very bleak scenario, tom.
but, with god on their side the rght-winged corporate robber barons and all their religious peons will see their appocalypse yet.
well, those guys will leave their decendants piles of money, no planet, but, piles of money. maybe they can use it to build a big boat…
of course if god’s not on their side he might smite them with all the vengeful glory he can muster. and that’s a lot of vengeful glory.
either way i don’t see any huge investment saving the day in the near future and i sure don’t see any help from the “liberal media”.
so, we’re on our own. oh, yeh, defectors! we need defectors!
Well, not quite the same Ralph. The earth isn’t doing anything but reacting to our pollution and out-of-balance ways. It doesn’t take things personally, it just reacts (like the bio-chemical Gaia that it is). The trouble is, after a certain amount of this reaction (and it may already be too late), we CAN’T stop it. I really hope i’m wrong . . .