Living on Our Heating Planet
By James Donahue
I am sitting in a shaded ground floor apartment in the heart of a California rain forest suffering from 91 degree heat on what should be a comfortable autumn afternoon. And I am thinking of our ugly future as I write these thoughts. While scientists are nearly united now in their belief that human activity over the last century has brought about this already deadly runaway heat we still have government leaders and corporate CEOs refusing to do anything about it. To do so would mean financial sacrifice that personal greed will not allow them to make.
Researchers saw this crisis coming now for at least the last half century. I remember interviewing a University of Michigan science professor in about 1970 who was worried then about acid rain and the effects industrial and automotive pollution were having on our planet. That was a period when we had time to make comfortable changes in our life style and assure our children and grandchildren a secure and safe world on which to live.
But lo, in spite of the warnings by the responsible scientific community there remained those soothsayers, obviously well paid by the corporate giants especially in the oil and gas industry, who poked fun at those early warnings and assured everybody that all was well . . . nothing to worry about.
There was enough concern generated at that time, however, that the automobile industry saw fit to add catalytic converters to their gasoline powered cars and launch a movement away from lead additives to the gasoline we used. And a growing number of young people joined environmental groups that pressed for and got important legislation that forced creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. With this came laws forcing coal burning plants to add scrubbing devices to their chimneys and stop dumping polluted liquids into local rivers and lakes.
We even had special government grants to assist in ground contamination cleanup where underground gasoline, oil and other toxic storage tanks leaked into the soil.
While some of us thought we had the issue of ground, water and air pollution under control in the United States it appears that other awakening industrial nations like China, Brazil and India were not in sync with the rest of us. And the air, ground and waters of the world became dirtier and dirtier. Then came the industrial takeover of our governments, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and Messias Bolsonaro as president of Brazil and suddenly everything has changed. Both nations have now disbanded any effort to repair the environment. Brazil is on fire and Trump has all but shut down the EPA even as we are living in extreme heat, violent weather change, melting ice caps and warnings by researchers that it may already be too late to fix anything.
Ernest Stewart, editor of Issues & Alibis, wrote of our plight: “Back around the turn of the century we were told that we had until 2100 until we reach no return on stopping global warming. Five years later it dropped to 2075. Last year the United Nations said the new date was 2030.” After the fires sweeping the forests in Brazil and mid-Africa, and Trump’s relaxation of pollution laws in the United States, “it seems there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis.”
Stewart went on to write: “Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45 percent by 2030. But today observers recognize that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.
Stewart then quoted Prince Charles, speaking at a recent reception for Commonwealth foreign ministers: “I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.”
That the United States remains the biggest polluter on the planet with President Trump not only refusing to recognize global warming as an issue, but doing all he can to keep oil, gas and coal burning plants, cars, aircraft and trucks operating freely does not bide well for the future of the human race.
Death by extreme heat will not be pleasant.
By James Donahue
I am sitting in a shaded ground floor apartment in the heart of a California rain forest suffering from 91 degree heat on what should be a comfortable autumn afternoon. And I am thinking of our ugly future as I write these thoughts. While scientists are nearly united now in their belief that human activity over the last century has brought about this already deadly runaway heat we still have government leaders and corporate CEOs refusing to do anything about it. To do so would mean financial sacrifice that personal greed will not allow them to make.
Researchers saw this crisis coming now for at least the last half century. I remember interviewing a University of Michigan science professor in about 1970 who was worried then about acid rain and the effects industrial and automotive pollution were having on our planet. That was a period when we had time to make comfortable changes in our life style and assure our children and grandchildren a secure and safe world on which to live.
But lo, in spite of the warnings by the responsible scientific community there remained those soothsayers, obviously well paid by the corporate giants especially in the oil and gas industry, who poked fun at those early warnings and assured everybody that all was well . . . nothing to worry about.
There was enough concern generated at that time, however, that the automobile industry saw fit to add catalytic converters to their gasoline powered cars and launch a movement away from lead additives to the gasoline we used. And a growing number of young people joined environmental groups that pressed for and got important legislation that forced creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. With this came laws forcing coal burning plants to add scrubbing devices to their chimneys and stop dumping polluted liquids into local rivers and lakes.
We even had special government grants to assist in ground contamination cleanup where underground gasoline, oil and other toxic storage tanks leaked into the soil.
While some of us thought we had the issue of ground, water and air pollution under control in the United States it appears that other awakening industrial nations like China, Brazil and India were not in sync with the rest of us. And the air, ground and waters of the world became dirtier and dirtier. Then came the industrial takeover of our governments, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and Messias Bolsonaro as president of Brazil and suddenly everything has changed. Both nations have now disbanded any effort to repair the environment. Brazil is on fire and Trump has all but shut down the EPA even as we are living in extreme heat, violent weather change, melting ice caps and warnings by researchers that it may already be too late to fix anything.
Ernest Stewart, editor of Issues & Alibis, wrote of our plight: “Back around the turn of the century we were told that we had until 2100 until we reach no return on stopping global warming. Five years later it dropped to 2075. Last year the United Nations said the new date was 2030.” After the fires sweeping the forests in Brazil and mid-Africa, and Trump’s relaxation of pollution laws in the United States, “it seems there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis.”
Stewart went on to write: “Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45 percent by 2030. But today observers recognize that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.
Stewart then quoted Prince Charles, speaking at a recent reception for Commonwealth foreign ministers: “I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.”
That the United States remains the biggest polluter on the planet with President Trump not only refusing to recognize global warming as an issue, but doing all he can to keep oil, gas and coal burning plants, cars, aircraft and trucks operating freely does not bide well for the future of the human race.
Death by extreme heat will not be pleasant.