We have eight years to try to keep carbon dioxide within 400 ppm (parts per million). Before the industrial revolution carbon dioxide sat at 280 ppm. We currently sit at 380 ppm (2007). The current growth rate of carbon dioxide primarily, from increased use of fossil fuels, is 2 ppm per year and growing. See the National Geographic article for details on the math related to carbon. Failure to reduce carbon emissions that achieve a maximum of 400ppm will lead to global warming the likes of which planet earth has not seen in millions of years and the human species has never had to endure in our brief moment of existence.
Failure would mean our children would be forced to cope with horrific changes everywhere. The direct consequences of a warmer climate will be bad enough through extensive flooding of great cities, massive crop failures that lead to starvation on scales we’ve never imagined, and diminishing sources of clean drinking water. Indirectly the potential for conflict will escalate dramatically. War in our every back yard is inevitable as uncertainty and fear for our next meal makes all consequences but survival irrelevant.
As we sit here, sipping our coffee, watching TV, working to put food on the table, and enjoying relative prosperity, it is hard to believe that this fight against global warming is really necessary. Surly if it was such a big deal, if it was really bigger than the world wars, or the cold war, surly we would know it by now. You would think our “leaders” would have acted by now.
Think about this. The greatest weapon of mass destruction that has been proven to exist is global warming caused by our increasing use of fossil fuels. The world’s best scientists told us this way back in 1992. Rather than mount a global collective effort to fight warming, trillions of dollars and massive planning efforts have gone into securing the world from “wmd’s” that didn’t even exist with the real effect of securing control over the worlds largest remaining relatively untapped fossil fuel reserve.
Each year that hundreds of billions of dollars are thrown away to secure extending the flow of profits from continued fossil fuel extraction, our children and their children’s children approach the abyss of run away global warming that threatens to exterminate almost all life on earth. Why would our current leadership be preparing the noose to hang ourselves? Short term thinking? Denial? Ignorance? Fear? Disconnection from reality? Lack of empathy for children? Inability to rationally visualize the future? This type of leadership comes about for a variety of reasons and because we ourselves allow it. Until enough of us overcome our own blindness we will be unable to demand it in sufficient numbers for sensible leadership to emerge.
Great social changes, great wars have been mounted and won in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. This is our next great challenge. We must fight together to prevent global warming. No other challenge in human history has been so great. No other challenge has posed such dire consequences for future generations. We are fighting for survival on a scale that makes us responsible for an entire planet. Our generation must decide now.
Your Footprint Calculator
The footprint calculator is based on the ideas presented in the book Suicidal Planet by Mayer Hillman, Tina Fawcett, and Sudhir Chella Rajan.
For an excerpt from the book see:
www.bookbrows.com excerpt
Interview with Mayer Hillman:
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141016924,00.html#
Article by Sudhir Chella Rajan:
http://www.hindu.com/2007/12/20/stories/2007122055391100.htm
