A nicely written post by our new friend Mark Richardson. I put him through the ringer to friend me, but as a newfly found modus operandi, I am adding HARDLY ANYONE, so here is thank you. I will be cutting back soon, for sure, outside this silly din and noise here which leads to a colossal void. Also as a rule, I dont participate in Facebook Groups which leave my heart empty, even if others add me to join, so I duly re-post what he directed me to here, instead of EarthWrecked. Thereby I can chew on it better, since he took great care here, and deserved for exposure. I do not, repeat, do not agree with all of it, but grist for the mill. Nietzsche was a great writer as was Thoreau but doubt I would have liked either of them. Joseph Campbell as a person also leaves me empty (I think he wrote books where he talked to himself about imaginal constructs. His awakening was totally mythical, know someone who knew him. Not nice. Seemed to me fast asleep at a soul level. The eyes in the back of his head as he talked. Over-rated!). But oddly, in contrast Mircea Eliade whos books leave my heart empty, is a really fascinating man (the way he trained himself to work on much reduced sleep, and learned Sanskrit four hours per day, timing study like an athlete, much as Michelangelo did in youth). I bet on the man, more than the work. Mark has shown me earnestness, instead of telling me to take a hike as he easily could have impressed me: ----------------- Many of those of us who are aware of the long-term effects of climate change feel that it is already too late to prevent massive damage to the livability of our planet. If we discount the outlier IPCC and recent World Bank studies, the IPCC because of its politically-motivated approval process, and focus instead on a dozen other recent studies as major as the US National Climate Assessment, the 2013 climate change study done by the normally-staid International Energy Agency, and even the US National Intelligence report Global Trends 2030, along with climate change studies from Michael Mann, David Spratt, Potsdam University, and the Stockholm Resilience Center, among many other respected sources, it is apparent that it is already too late to limit average global temperature rise to less than 2.2-2.5 C, which means double that in the Arctic. Even two senior Google renewable energy scientists came out two weeks ago and claimed that even if the latest renewable energy technology was to be fully implemented by 2050, that US GHG emission reductions would only be about 55%, which would result in a continued rise in global atmospheric CO2 and CO2e readings, albeit at a slower rate. You are correct that an immense amount of reorder of society and our economy including the localization of economies and food supply could substantially reduce GHG emissions, but as the Google study and many others point-out, we are still stuck with 40-50 years’ worth of an unabsorbed GHG emissions backlog that will continue to drive CO2 readings and temperatures even higher, regardless of what we accomplish. Essentially all we can hope to do at this late stage is to work very hard to slow the rate of increase and pray like h*ll that the Arctic temperature rise doesnt spike global methane levels above a point where most all of us die. For those of you that still think that working very hard to try to delay the inevitable is a goal worth pursuing, this recent urban sustainability study out of retired professor of city & regional planning William Rees from the University of British Columbia is an excellent source on localization of economies, while sources like the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute are other excellent sources which also describe the CO2-reduction benefit of localization of our food supply, which could cut food supply CO2 emissions by as much as 60%. Still, it should be known that large cities are not sustainable because of the immensity of the required food supply, and that numerous PHD-level academics insist that because of food supply logistical size requirements, the maximum size of a sustainable urban area is likely no more than 200-250K population. Large areas of our planet are also rapidly running out of water while any additional temperature rise will cause sea-levels to rise by approximately 1 to 1.5 meters per degree Celsius of average warming, with a minimum average temperature rise of 2.5 C by 2050-2055 in substantial worldwide agreement. Such a sea-level rise also includes 1-2 billion climate change refugees and the loss of 1/4 to 1/3rd of world farmland, and unless world man-made CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and other GHG emissions were to cease by 2030, the problem just continues to worsen with the Arctic methyl hydrate monster hanging over our heads just waiting to explode. Just a 1 Gt Arctic methane burp rapidly raises global average temperatures by another 4-5 C, which puts us into catastrophic territory, and numerous Arctic research scientists that have studied the Arctic methyl hydrate issue for many years have concluded that up to 5 Gt of natural methane could be released from shallow Arctic sea-beds at any time, a problem which today has spiked average Arctic temperatures to 2.68 C above the 1979-2000 baseline temperature, with large areas downwind of still-melting East Siberian sea-beds as high as 20 C above the baseline temperature, as Arctic, Northern Pacific, and Northern Atlantic ocean temperatures are substantially above their historic average too. Perhaps what we should be building are sustainable underground or underwater cities, as once the Arctic methane is released, the feedbacks will rapidly extinguish almost all life on the surface of our only planet. I saw a recent post about a sustainable underwater city that some Japanese company hopes to build as soon as 10 years from now but it only holds 5000 people. Other companies are today building sustainable underground bunkers and even a fairly sizable underground camper village but the sum total of survivable underground space only holds 250K people today too. Anyway, here is Dr. Rees study entitled Avoiding Collapse: An Agenda for Sustainable Degrowth and Re-Localising the Economy, which even if fully rapidly implemented likely will only buy us a few extra decades before disaster strikes. https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/BC%20Office/2014/06/ccpa-bc_AvoidingCollapse_Rees.pdf
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 01:23:05 +0000
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