ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE
If I am to believe the consensus of the letters and communication that I have received of late from those I most respect, time has run out on us and we are doomed as a civilization.
BUT
Having led and participated in mass movements that changed the rhythms of my society, I cannot accept defeat so easily, though data overwhelms and that data, collected by others, is supported by my daily experience of
ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE
happening before my eyes.
It is January 4, 2007 in the mountains of West Central Pennsylvania as I write this.
January here is normally frost, snow, chilling wind and cloud covered sky.
Yet all I have experienced since the end of summer – usually in early September – has been more summer and a perpetual spring that has brought almost no ground frost, no frost to speak of, balmy days, blue blue sky, a six day period after Thanksgiving filled with dandelions, flies, butterflies and bees and now in January mornings filled with bird song, for the birds seem to be nesting and think that spring has come.
These changes are happening much faster than the models predict as the situation we are attempting to map is non-linear, in extreme perturbation and probably broken as the best informed thinker, James Lovelock, has recently declared.
Terrorism, Iraq and the other headlines are minor compared to the threat we are facing, yet we are spending trillions ($1012) on such flea bites and almost nothing on the impending and ever accelerating disaster that threatens.
The failure of leadership defies description.
We need to create a planetary situation room that has a broadcast facility with satellite and internet links that slowly gears up to real-time coverage.
We need to get the best on the planet involved in operation energy transformation.
We need a global Manhattan Project directed toward perfecting new clean energy sources with a practical adjunct that produces new working models of everything that uses energy.
We need thinkers focused on ecological economics, so that we can replace our present system manned by a blind priesthood. We need to replace
MORE
the only value capitalism honors, with a broad measure of personal and ecological well-being.
The concentration on survival, if done with calmness and determination, could provide a new focus for the present madness of consumption that is eating the planet alive.
But, the time is very limited, for the human response to the coming environmental destruction will be far worse than the actual destruction itself.
Once it gets going our civilization and our future will dissolve before our eyes.
We built a bomb in a very short time.
Surely we can mobilize to change our energy use when the threat is greater and the stakes are higher.
Can’t we? Or are my friends correct?
Ira Einhorn
January, 2007
BUT
Having led and participated in mass movements that changed the rhythms of my society, I cannot accept defeat so easily, though data overwhelms and that data, collected by others, is supported by my daily experience of
ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE
happening before my eyes.
It is January 4, 2007 in the mountains of West Central Pennsylvania as I write this.
January here is normally frost, snow, chilling wind and cloud covered sky.
Yet all I have experienced since the end of summer – usually in early September – has been more summer and a perpetual spring that has brought almost no ground frost, no frost to speak of, balmy days, blue blue sky, a six day period after Thanksgiving filled with dandelions, flies, butterflies and bees and now in January mornings filled with bird song, for the birds seem to be nesting and think that spring has come.
These changes are happening much faster than the models predict as the situation we are attempting to map is non-linear, in extreme perturbation and probably broken as the best informed thinker, James Lovelock, has recently declared.
Terrorism, Iraq and the other headlines are minor compared to the threat we are facing, yet we are spending trillions ($1012) on such flea bites and almost nothing on the impending and ever accelerating disaster that threatens.
The failure of leadership defies description.
We need to create a planetary situation room that has a broadcast facility with satellite and internet links that slowly gears up to real-time coverage.
We need to get the best on the planet involved in operation energy transformation.
We need a global Manhattan Project directed toward perfecting new clean energy sources with a practical adjunct that produces new working models of everything that uses energy.
We need thinkers focused on ecological economics, so that we can replace our present system manned by a blind priesthood. We need to replace
MORE
the only value capitalism honors, with a broad measure of personal and ecological well-being.
The concentration on survival, if done with calmness and determination, could provide a new focus for the present madness of consumption that is eating the planet alive.
But, the time is very limited, for the human response to the coming environmental destruction will be far worse than the actual destruction itself.
Once it gets going our civilization and our future will dissolve before our eyes.
We built a bomb in a very short time.
Surely we can mobilize to change our energy use when the threat is greater and the stakes are higher.
Can’t we? Or are my friends correct?
Ira Einhorn
January, 2007
posted by Nayer | 1:13 PM
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