Chris Hedges: Stand Still For the Apocalypse
from truthdig:
Stand Still For the Apocalypse
Posted on Nov 26, 2012
By Chris Hedges
[font size="1"]AP/Elizabeth Dalziel
In much of the world, including China and the United States, dirty energy remains cheap and plentiful, with disastrous consequences.[/font]
Humans must immediately implement a series of radical measures to halt carbon emissions or prepare for the collapse of entire ecosystems and the displacement, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of the globe’s inhabitants, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank. The continued failure to respond aggressively to climate change, the report warns, will mean that the planet will inevitably warm by at least 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, ushering in an apocalypse.
The 84-page document,“Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided,” was written for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics and published last week. The picture it paints of a world convulsed by rising temperatures is a mixture of mass chaos, systems collapse and medical suffering like that of the worst of the Black Plague, which in the 14th century killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population.
A planetwide temperature rise of 4 degrees C—and the report notes that the tepidness of the emission pledges and commitments of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will make such an increase almost inevitable—will cause a precipitous drop in crop yields, along with the loss of many fish species, resulting in widespread hunger and starvation. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to abandon their homes in coastal areas and on islands that will be submerged as the sea rises. There will be an explosion in diseases such as malaria, cholera and dengue fever. Devastating heat waves and droughts, as well as floods, especially in the tropics, will render parts of the Earth uninhabitable. The rain forest covering the Amazon basin will disappear. Coral reefs will vanish. Numerous animal and plant species, many of which are vital to sustaining human populations, will become extinct. Monstrous storms will eradicate biodiversity, along with whole cities and communities. And as these extreme events begin to occur simultaneously in different regions of the world, the report finds, there will be “unprecedented stresses on human systems.” Global agricultural production will eventually not be able to compensate. Health and emergency systems, as well as institutions designed to maintain social cohesion and law and order, will crumble. The world’s poor, at first, will suffer the most. But we all will succumb in the end to the folly and hubris of the Industrial Age. And yet, we do nothing.
“It is useful to recall that a global mean temperature increase of 4°C approaches the difference between temperatures today and those of the last ice age, when much of central Europe and the northern United States were covered with kilometers of ice and global mean temperatures were about 4.5°C to 7°C lower,” the report reads. “And this magnitude of climate change—human induced—is occurring over a century, not millennia.” ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/stand_still_for_the_apocalypse_20121126/
= new reply since forum marked as read
methane release. maybe never.
Our satisfaction with ourselves over all the things we achieve is just a pro-species thing. "Oh look what a genius MY kid is, what a wit!" 
And yes, science and music are great, but the effect we will have on this beautiful world and all the other species we'll erase.. that real effect.. will be our big legacy.
But the lucky ones who protect themselves from the violence of the next few decades will still feel great about humanity's wonderful rise. It's a god-like feeling every species has about itself, no matter what. It would take a higher evolution for a species to get past that instinct, and it's a terrible instinct when the species is acting as a deadly virus on the only host it will ever find.
christian rightists, our own member of different congressional 'science' committees deny this based on the premise that 'god' would not provide something to us that would eventually create the chaos and misery mentioned in this article. One small thing these people are forgetting, provision is one thing, wise management is another. humans who buy the denial route, hundreds of millions, will continue to obfuscate and distract with their helpers in the media, science committees and christian right wing groups looking for rapture until it is too late for all of us, IF it's not too late already? Go human race! eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we ...?
