Our Last Chance to Preserve Life On Earth Is Slipping Away

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Shallow news coverage causes most Americans to underestimate the urgency of the threat of global warming. Television’s failure to adequately cover the climate threat, along with the deliberate opacity created by massive oil and coal advertising, masks the vivid realities of the situation, much like the haze and light pollution blocked out the reality of the night sky for those urban kids.

The television has been described as a weapon of mass distraction. On hearing about the methane leaking from the Siberian Sea, one Canadian blogger mockingly wrote, “Runaway climate change? Massive methane release off Siberia? Nah, let’s talk about Wall Street instead!” Meanwhile, on “the upper decks of our ‘Titanic,’ everyone is worried stiff about a crisis on Wall Street.”

Denial is a too-common human tendency, especially around global warming. On June 23, 2008, twenty years since he first warned Congress that human activity was causing the earth to warm, James Hansen warned that a “wide gap has developed between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific communities and what is known by policymakers and the public.”

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Apart from the direct influence of coal and oil advertisers, I fail to understand why the news media ducks or ignores these terribly important stories. In September 2006, Katey Walter, leading a US-Russian team of scientists, published an important paper in Nature warning that melting permafrost in Siberia, covering more than 10 million square kilometers of Russia, is releasing five times the amount of methane previously estimated by scientists. Walter compared the melting Siberian permafrost and the massive amounts of frozen methane that could be discharged as “a (ticking) time bomb waiting to go off,” threaten the world’s climate.

You would think Walter’s shocking findings would be newsworthy. Well, you would be wrong. While Radio Free Europe, the BBC, and NPR found it newsworthy, the mainstream US media was completely distracted by mindless pursuits. At this same time, network and cable channels were in a frenzy, with satellite trucks gathered in front of the Boulder, Colorado, district attorney’s office to report titillating details of JonBenét Ramsey’s warped admirer and supposed killer, John Mark Karr.

more at http://www.alternet.org/environment/141990/our_last_chance_to_preserve_life_on_earth_is_slipping_away/?page=1

Maybe we're getting all set up to pay a huge karmic debt. I don't know, but the stupidity is mind-boggling.

The powermongers and the corporate media use this genetic defect to perfection. For their ends.

They're semi-immortal compared to humans with extra-human power; psychological marketing knowledge and vast financial resources at their disposal, combine all that with only one amoral obligation that being to make a profit and you have a growing; (over a century now) sociopathic threat; against our democratic republic, Constitutional declaration that government should be representative of "We the People" and now against human life as we know it.

These are dangerous times we live in and make no mistake about it, the corporate media have betrayed not only the American People, but all of humanity, even those clueless wealthy people that believe they have a "lifeboat."

<snip>

"The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine was one of the most devastating attacks on truth. Do not underestimate the powerful alignment of media owners and talk radio voices committed to keeping it from returning. If you do not believe we need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, read the very words that ABC executives thought were too controversial to run on national television during the election season in 2008:

The solution to our climate crisis seems simple. Repower America with wind and solar. End our dependence on foreign oil. A stronger economy. So why are we still stuck with dirty and expensive energy? Because big oil spends hundreds of millions of dollars to block clean energy. Lobbyists, ads, even scandals. All to increase their profits, while America suffers. Breaking big oil’s lock on our government, now that’s change. We’re the American people and we approve this message.

These are obviously outrageous, even dangerous words because they mention the millions of dollars flowing to the networks from false energy ads. In the spirit of full disclosure, the above-mentioned inflammatory ads came from the Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP), a tripartisan organization founded by a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort composed of Nobel laureate and former vice president Al Gore, four well-known Republicans, three prominent Democrats, and one lowly independent (me). The ACP submitted the above ad to ABC to have it aired on September 26, during 20/20. We paid $85,000 for the airtime, but the morning the ad was to run, the network rejected it."

Although I have been suspicious of the role of the media in sustaining the power of the corporate elite/military/industrial/intelligence complex since the early 70's, I never realized until recently that the undoing of the media's independence was in the early and mid-60's. This being a direct result of the CIA and FBI co-opting journalists to work for them. Journalists meaning actual newspaper writers, teevee talking heads, radio voices, AND their mainstream media bosses. All in the name of national security.

Now we face the ultimate threat to our national security and these folks are nowhere to be found.

Those are reserved for First Class.

The wealthy people of the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia aren't the ones with flooded villages and droughted crops.

Furthermore, there is no "fix." The media essentially ignores anything that can't be narrated. there is no beginning, middle, end for climate change. it just is, and even our best efforts will only make it less extreme.

over. I am betting on the cockroaches.

....all the people who warn of change also are the biggest polluters. With the exception oF Ed Bagely jr.
I talk to people all the time who say if Al Gore et al were really worried they would not live in mansions while asking ordinary folk to bike to work. And I have no response to that.

a lot of the self-appointed spokespeople really don't walk the walk. Celebrities strike me as the worst because they mostly don't really ratchet down their own lifestsyles at all.

Most people give them a pass because their intentions are pure. But I wonder if they know something we dont.

"Our Last Chance to Preserve Life On Earth Is Slipping Away"

Life has survived far worse than anything we're gunna do to this planet. The issue is whether it will support *us* in the short term, geologically speaking. Interesting article that shoots itself in the foot before it even gets started.

look how well the right wing is doing stirring people up using it. on the other hand, we don't want to be seen as extremists so we always underplay everything, and people just yawn and look away. when you tell people that sea levels may rise by 1 metre in 100 years it means next to nothing to most people - not their problem.

as for 'life' surviving well that's a very esotoric concept, but i think for most people 'life on earth' means human life on earth. in any event, humans will probably outlast most other creatures, except insects.

not to mention the possibility of runaway global warming, which most people wonn't even briong up, eithyer because they don't want to use hyperbolic language, or it's just too depressing.

That language is over the top. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of science knows that "life on earth" has been around for several dramatic warming cycles.

Human economies may not survive dramatic global warming but "life on earth" will.