The Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a peer-reviewed assessment of the impact of climate change on human societies, contains the following bits of information:
- Portion of people killed by the effects of climate change who are children: Over 80%
- Economic loss due to climate change, every decade, at the current rate: $1.5 trillion
- Ratio of deaths from terrorism on September 11, 2001 to deaths every year due to climate change, at current rate: 1:116
- Estimated rate of annual climate deaths, in 2030, if no action to mitigate change is taken: 1 million
- Estimated increase in people vulnerable to desertification between now and 2030: 373%
- Nations currently at acute vulnerability to the impacts of climate change: 15
- Nations estimated to be at acute vulnerability to the impacts of climate change in 2030: 54
Green Man: Chris Hedges latest article is spot on.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_do_you_take_your_poison_20120924/
(from page 2 of the article)
Fiscal implosion is only a matter of time. And the corporate state is preparing. Obama’s assault on civil liberties has outpaced that of George W. Bush. The refusal to restore habeas corpus, the use of the Authorization to Use Military Force Act to justify the assassination of U.S. citizens, the passing of the FISA Amendments Act to monitor and eavesdrop on tens of millions of citizens without a warrant, the employment of the Espionage Act six times to threaten whistle-blowers inside the government with prison time, and the administration’s recent emergency appeal of U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest’s permanent injunction of Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act give you a hint of the shackles the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, intend to place on all those who contemplate dissent.
But perhaps the most egregious assault will be carried out by the fossil fuel industry. Obama, who presided over the repudiation of the Kyoto Accords and has done nothing to halt the emission of greenhouse gases, reversed 20 years of federal policy when he permitted the expansion of fracking and offshore drilling. And this acquiescence to big oil and big coal, no doubt useful in bringing in campaign funds, spells disaster for the planet. He has authorized drilling in federally protected lands, along the East Coast, Alaska and four miles off Florida’s Atlantic beaches. Candidate Obama in 2008 stood on the Florida coastline and vowed never to permit drilling there.
You get the point. Obama is not in charge. Romney would not be in charge. Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are corporate employees. Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and their idiosyncrasies are meaningless. And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion. The corporate state does not produce a product that is different. It produces brands that are different. And brands cost a lot of money to sell.
You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil disobedience. You can pride yourself on being practical. You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils. But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the real sucker is.