FREEDOM with honesty, justice, and courage..
COMPASSION with dignity, humour, and tolerance..
KNOWLEDGE with effort, perseverance and sharing..
LOVE with peace and harmony towards all
LIFE ON EARTH.
A science-based international free press humanitarian organization...
created in 1972.. human4us2.blogspot.com...
For the sake of keeping things manageable, let’s confine the
discussion to a single continent and a single week: North America over
the last seven days. In Houston they got down to the hard and unromantic work of recovery from what economists announced was probably the most expensive storm in US history,
and which weather analysts confirmed was certainly the greatest
rainfall event ever measured in the country – across much of its spread
it was a once-in-25,000-years storm, meaning 12 times past the birth of
Christ; in isolated spots it was a once-in-500,000-years storm, which
means back when we lived in trees. Meanwhile, San Francisco not only
beat its all-time high temperature record,
it crushed it by 3F, which should be pretty much statistically
impossible in a place with 150 years (that’s 55,000 days) of
record-keeping. Floods in drought season: is this the future for parts of India?
Raghu Karnad
Read more... That same hot weather broke records up and down the west coast, except in those places where a pall of smoke from immense forest fires
kept the sun shaded – after a forest fire somehow managed to jump the
mighty Columbia river from Oregon into Washington, residents of the
Pacific Northwest reported that the ash was falling so thickly from the
skies that it reminded them of the day Mount St Helens erupted in 1980.
That same heat, just a little farther inland, was causing a “flash drought”
across the country’s wheat belt of North Dakota and Montana – the
evaporation from record temperatures had shrivelled grain on the stalk
to the point where some farmers weren’t bothering to harvest at all. In
the Atlantic, of course, Irma
was barrelling across the islands of the Caribbean (“It’s like someone
with a lawnmower from the sky has gone over the island,” said one
astounded resident of St Maarten). The storm, the first category five to
hit Cuba in a hundred years, is currently battering the west coast of Florida after
setting a record for the lowest barometric pressure ever measured in
the Keys, and could easily break the 10-day-old record for economic
catastrophe set by Harvey; it’s definitely changed the psychology of
life in Florida for decades to come.
Oh, and while Irma spun, Hurricane Jose
followed in its wake as a major hurricane, while in the Gulf of Mexico,
Katia spun up into a frightening storm of her own, before crashing into
the Mexican mainland almost directly across the peninsula from the spot
where the strongest earthquake in 100 years had taken dozens of lives.
Leaving aside the earthquake, every one of these events jibes with
what scientists and environmentalists have spent 30 fruitless years
telling us to expect from global warming. (There’s actually fairly
convincing evidence that climate change is triggering more seismic activity, but there’s no need to egg the pudding.)
That one long screed of news from one continent in one week (which
could be written about many other continents and many other weeks – just
check out the recent flooding in south Asia for instance) is a precise,
pixelated portrait of a heating world. Because we have burned so much
oil and gas and coal, we have put huge clouds of CO2 and
methane in the air; because the structure of those molecules traps heat
the planet has warmed; because the planet has warmed we can get heavier
rainfalls, stronger winds, drier forests and fields. It’s not
mysterious, not in any way. It’s not a run of bad luck. It’s not Donald
Trump (though he’s obviously not helping). It’s not hellfire sent to
punish us. It’s physics.
Maybe it was too much to expect that scientists’ warnings would really move people. (I mean, I wrote The End of Nature,
the first book about all this 28 years ago this week, when I was 28 –
and when my theory was still: “People will read my book, and then they
will change.”) Maybe it’s like all the health warnings that you should
eat fewer chips and drink less soda, which, to judge by belt-size, not
many of us pay much mind. Until, maybe, you go to the doctor and he
says: “Whoa, you’re in trouble.” Not “keep eating junk and some day
you’ll be in trouble”, but: “You’re in trouble right now, today. As in,
it looks to me like you’ve already had a small stroke or two.”
Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are the equivalent of one of those transient ischaemic attacks
– yeah, your face is drooping oddly on the left, but you can continue.
Maybe. If you start taking your pills, eating right, exercising, getting
your act together.
1:50 Hurricane Irma's path of destruction - video report
That’s the stage we’re at now – not the warning on the side of the
pack, but the hacking cough that brings up blood. But what happens if
you keep smoking? You get worse, till past a certain point you’re not
continuing. We’ve increased the temperature of the Earth a little more
than 1C so far, which has been enough extra heat to account for the
horrors we’re currently witnessing. And with the momentum built into the
system, we’re going to go somewhere near 2C, no matter what we do. That
will be considerably worse than where we are now, but maybe it will be
expensively endurable.
The problem is, our current business-as-usual trajectory takes us to a
world that’s about 3.5C warmer. That is to say, even if we kept the
promises we made at Paris (which Trump has already, of course,
repudiated) we’re going to build a planet so hot that we can’t have
civilisations. We have to seize the moment we’re in right now – the
moment when we’re scared and vulnerable – and use it to dramatically
reorient ourselves. The last three years have each broken the record for
the hottest year ever measured – they’re a red flashing sign that says:
“Snap out of it.” Not bend the trajectory somewhat, as the Paris
accords envisioned, but simultaneously jam on the fossil fuel brakes and
stand on the solar accelerator (and also find some metaphors that don’t
rely on internal combustion).
This is a race against time. Global warming is a crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it. We could do it. It’s not technologically impossible – study after
study has shown we can get to 100% renewables at a manageable cost, more
manageable all the time, since the price of solar panels and windmills
keeps plummeting. Elon Musk is showing you can churn out electric cars
with ever-lower sticker shock.
In remote corners of Africa and Asia, peasants have begun leapfrogging
past fossil fuel and going straight to the sun. The Danes just sold
their last oil company and used the cash to build more windmills. There
are just enough examples to make despair seem like the cowardly dodge it
is. But everyone everywhere would have to move with similar speed,
because this is in fact a race against time. Global warming is the first
crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it.
Winning slowly is just a different way of losing.
Winning fast enough to matter would mean, above all, standing up to
the fossil fuel industry, so far the most powerful force on Earth. It
would mean postponing other human enterprises and diverting other
spending. That is, it would mean going on a war-like footing: not
shooting at enemies, but focusing in the way that peoples and nations
usually only focus when someone’s shooting at them. And something is.
What do you think it means when your forests are on fire, your streets
are underwater, and your buildings are collapsing? • Bill McKibben is a writer and the founder of the climate campaign 350.org
A letter to Canadians from the Honourable Jack Layton
August 20, 2011
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Friends,
Tens of thousands of
Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to
thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often
beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my
home, my spirit, and my determination.
Unfortunately my treatment
has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner
Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.
I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.
I
recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the
New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our
new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and
our program, and move forward towards the next election. A few additional thought:
To
other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their
lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey
hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope.
Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this
disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused
on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with
those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this
summer. To the members of my party: we’ve done
remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a
privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for
your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer
commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will
try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger
than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and
determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice,
universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left
behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything
we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved
Canada as its next government. To the members of our parliamentary caucus:
I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our
caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my
role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again.
Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come.
Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our
party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and
solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in
the recent election. To my fellow Quebecers: On
May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to
replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better
was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians
across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the
right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to
the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a
superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing
remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for
us all. To young Canadians: All my life I have
worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my
political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about
Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I
have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your
frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging
in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of
you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life
draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to
change this country and this world. There are great challenges before
you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of
an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the
changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I
believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are
exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of
our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the
future. And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a
great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a
country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a
prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly.
We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our
children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can
restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things
because we finally have a party system at the national level where there
are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can
actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New
Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in
our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful
hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a
better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them
tell you it can’t be done.
My friends, love is better than anger.
Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be
loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
All my very best,
acquired September 3 - 6, 2017download large image (1 MB, PNG, 1920x1280)
On September 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma slammed into the Leeward Islands on its way toward Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the U.S. mainland. As the category 5 storm approaches the Bahamas and Florida in the coming days, it will be passing over waters that are warmer than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit)—hot enough to sustain a category 5 storm. Warm oceans, along with low wind shear, are two key ingredients that fuel and sustain hurricanes.
The map above shows sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico on September 5, 2017. The data were compiled by Coral Reef Watch, which blends observations from the Suomi NPP, MTSAT, Meteosat, and GOES satellites and computer models. The mid-point of the color scale is 27.8°C, a threshold that scientists generally believe to be warm enough to fuel a hurricane. The yellow-to-red line on the map represents Irma’s track from September 3–6.
By definition, category 5 storms deliver maximum sustained winds of at least 157 miles (252 kilometers) per hour. When it hit the Leeward Islands, Irma’s winds surpassed 185 miles (295 kilometers) per hour, making it the strongest storm to ever hit the islands and one of the strongest storms ever measured in the Atlantic basin.
acquired September 6, 2017download large image (1 MB, JPEG, 3109x1922)
acquired September 6, 2017download GeoTIFF file (17 MB, TIFF, 3109x1922)
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured a nighttime view of the storm at 1:35 a.m. local time (05:35 Universal Time) on September 6 as the eye was over the island of Barbuda. The image was acquired by the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight. In this case, the clouds were lit by the full Moon. The image is a composite, showing storm imagery combined with VIIRS imagery of city lights.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired the third image at 10:35 a.m. local time (14:35 Universal Time) on September 6, 2017. By then, the storm had also hit Anguilla and was poised to strike the Virgin Islands.
acquired September 6, 2017download large image (5 MB, JPEG, 4800x4800)
acquired September 6, 2017download GeoTIFF file (22 MB, TIFF, 4800x4800)
Irma’s winds are not only strong; they are spread across a remarkably wide area. Hurricane-force winds extend 50 miles (85 kilometers) from the center; tropical-storm-force winds extend up to 185 miles (295 kilometers). Meteorologists noted that the hurricane had the lowest central pressure (914 millibars) ever for a storm outside of the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean.
By September 6, Irma had already generated more accumulated cyclone energy—a term meteorologists use to describe the destructive potential of a hurricane—than the first eight named storms of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season combined, according to meteorologist Philip Klotzbach of Colorado State University. Irma even broke a record for generating the most accumulated cyclone energy in a 24-hour period.
The latest National Hurricane Center forecast calls for the hurricane to turn north-northwest after grazing Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. After that, the forecast shows Irma’s path will likely move over or near the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas, and may eventually make landfall in Florida.
Forecasting hurricane behavior remains complex and challenging, but meteorologists have become much more skilled at predicting both the track and intensity of these storms over the past decade. “The five-day track forecasts are now as good as the two-day forecasts were back in 1985,” said Scott Braun, a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Intensity forecasts were slower to improve, but did pick up after 2009. A lot of the improvements came from investments that led to better models, the increased use of forecast ensembles, and improved data assimilation techniques.”
If you live anywhere near the possible path of Hurricane Irma, please visit the Department of Homeland Security’shurricane readiness page.
Oil creates Gas and burning Gas creates atmospheric pollution which creates climate change which creates Hurricanes like Harvey and Irma and forest fires in the West.
Somebody has to make a stand against pollution and polluters and Greenpeace has the people to do just that!
Joseph, Right now, I’m in unceded Secwepemc Nation territory — on the Neskonlith reserve, near Kamloops, BC — supporting an incredible project. A grassroots group of Secwepemc Nation members, called the ‘Tiny House Warriors’, have started building the first of ten tiny houses that they will strategically put directly in the path of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain pipeline. Show your support for the Tiny House Warriors: watch and share their live video! What is a “tiny house”, you ask? Well, it’s a small house, usually under under 500 square feet, that represents simple, sustainable living. The vision for this project is that each tiny house will provide housing to Secwepemc families, and each home will eventually be installed with off-the-grid solar power. These tiny houses symbolize home, community and hope in the path of Kinder Morgan’s reckless destruction. Show your support for the Tiny House Warriors: watch and share their live video! Construction on the Kinder Morgan pipeline is scheduled to begin this month, so the Tiny House Warriors are on a mission to stop the pipeline from crossing unceded Secwepemc Territory. Greenpeace is supporting the project with volunteer recruitment, media amplification, tools and materials, and more. As well as supporting Indigenous resistance on the ground, we’re also calling on financial institutions like TD bank — that are funding tar sands pipelines — to cut off their support. Thank you for supporting Greenpeace — it's people like you that make this work possible. Watch and share now. With hope, Mike Climate & Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace Canada
We don't accept any money from companies or governments so we can be independent and challenge anyone who threatens the planet or peace. To help us keep fighting climate change, defending our oceans and protecting ancient forests, please make a donation. Thank you! If you no longer want to be in the loop with the latest news from these emails, we'll be sad, but you can unsubscribe here. Greenpeace Canada, 33 Cecil Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1N1 This email was sent to: human4usbillions@gmail.com
Joseph Raglione<human4usbillions@gmail.com>
9:22 PM (0 minutes ago)
to greenpeace.org
Toronto Dominion Bank.
Oil Pipelines are a last ditch effort by company CEO's to maintain their profit margins.
That is a terrible shame because nobody today wants Oil or any fossil fuel for that matter. The future is Green with alternative energy sources and the Oil business will continue to survive but on a limited and well monitored basis.
The Media frenzy is almost as powerful as Hurricane Irma but where can hurricane survivors find detailed information needed for food and shelter and water?
I will be happy to list any and all information on this blog when I find the dammed information!
Thousands of people no longer have food or water or shelter and they need immediate assistance!
We need to list the government agencies willing to help non-stop today and tomorrow and the day after that!
We need airplanes dropping food and water today, not tomorrow!
We need governments along with N.G.O's willing to help people in distress.
We need to re-direct billions of Dollars towards Texas and Florida.
1. The international Red Cross?
2 Fema.com
3. Canadians telephone 1-613-996-8885
4.?
5.?
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Dear Gentle Breakfast Club People:
There is a small school behind the Church in Ste. Placide, Quebec, where the school yard contains large 10' x 6'x 12" garden boxes filled with dark earth and growing vegetable plants. Every child in the school takes care of one or two plants and later reaps the benefit of his or her labor.
They eat what they produce but more importantly, they go home and continue the gardening process. Every school yard in Quebec and Canada should have these garden boxes as a supplement to the good breakfast provided by your breakfast club offering. The project would also attract funding from your local government and there is no better organization to create and distribute the concept for these garden boxes than your breakfast club. In winter, schools can create indoor Hydroponic gardens for the children. Thanks for reading!
Signed: Joseph Raglione
Executive director: The World Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement.
Cause of an inherited neurological disorder discovered Researchers at the University of Liverpool have identified the basis for how a single gene mutation can cause a rare neurological movement disorder known as dystonia.
Dystonia can result from an injury or can be an inherited disorder in which patients progressively develop from childhood uncontrollable muscle contractions leading to repetitive movements and awkward and painful postures. The disorder can affect one muscle, a muscle group, or the entire body.
It is estimated to affect at least 70,000 people in the UK. There are a large number of different types of dystonia which affect people in widely differing ways.
Symptoms of dystonia can range from very mild to severe. Dystonia can affect different body parts, and often the symptoms of dystonia progress through stages. Some early symptoms include: a ‘dragging leg’, cramping of the foot, involuntary pulling of the neck, uncontrollable blinking and speech difficulties. Usually there are no other neurological abnormalities. There’s no cure for dystonia, but the condition can usually be effectively managed.
Researchers from the University’s Institutes of Translational Medicine (ITM) and Integrative Biology (IIB), led by Dr Nordine Helassa, have studied mutations in the gene encoding a protein known as hippocalcin previously identified as one cause of the disorder.
The effect of these mutations on the physiological role of hippocalcin or how this would impact on the nervous system had not been understood.
Hippocalcin is a member a family of proteins involved in signaling in the nervous system that have been extensively studied in Professor Bob Burgoyne’s group in ITM for the last 20 years.
As a result of their research, which has been published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics, the effect of the disease-causing mutations in hippocalcin on its physiological function have now been characterized.
These mutations do not affect the expression or the structure of the protein but lead to subtle defects in how it controls signaling in neurons.
In the course of the study it was found that hippocalcin can interact with specific types of calcium channels that are important for the normal initiation of neuronal activity and that expression of the disease-causing mutations resulted in overactivation of one particular class of these channels.
Dr Nordine Helassa said: “We can now understand for the first time how these mutations would have important physiological consequences that would lead to abnormalities in neuronal function. Excessive neuronal activation that could result in aberrant signaling in the brain of affected individuals.”
Flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, southeast Texas 31 August 2017. Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Images.
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For the sake of keeping things manageable, let’s confine the discussion to a single continent and a single week: North America over the last seven days. In Houston they got down to the hard and unromantic work of recovery from what economists announced was probably the most expensive storm in US history, and which weather analysts confirmed was certainly the greatest rainfall event ever measured in the country – across much of its spread it was a once-in-25,000-years storm, meaning 12 times past the birth of Christ; in isolated spots it was a once-in-500,000-years storm, which means back when we lived in trees. Meanwhile, San Francisco not only beat its all-time high temperature record, it crushed it by 3F, which should be pretty much statistically impossible in a place with 150 years (that’s 55,000 days) of record-keeping.
Floods in drought season: is this the future for parts of India?
Raghu Karnad
Read more... That same hot weather broke records up and down the west coast, except in those places where a pall of smoke from immense forest fires kept the sun shaded – after a forest fire somehow managed to jump the mighty Columbia river from Oregon into Washington, residents of the Pacific Northwest reported that the ash was falling so thickly from the skies that it reminded them of the day Mount St Helens erupted in 1980.
That same heat, just a little farther inland, was causing a “flash drought” across the country’s wheat belt of North Dakota and Montana – the evaporation from record temperatures had shrivelled grain on the stalk to the point where some farmers weren’t bothering to harvest at all. In the Atlantic, of course, Irma was barrelling across the islands of the Caribbean (“It’s like someone with a lawnmower from the sky has gone over the island,” said one astounded resident of St Maarten). The storm, the first category five to hit Cuba in a hundred years, is currently battering the west coast of Florida after setting a record for the lowest barometric pressure ever measured in the Keys, and could easily break the 10-day-old record for economic catastrophe set by Harvey; it’s definitely changed the psychology of life in Florida for decades to come.
Oh, and while Irma spun, Hurricane Jose followed in its wake as a major hurricane, while in the Gulf of Mexico, Katia spun up into a frightening storm of her own, before crashing into the Mexican mainland almost directly across the peninsula from the spot where the strongest earthquake in 100 years had taken dozens of lives.
Leaving aside the earthquake, every one of these events jibes with what scientists and environmentalists have spent 30 fruitless years telling us to expect from global warming. (There’s actually fairly convincing evidence that climate change is triggering more seismic activity, but there’s no need to egg the pudding.)
That one long screed of news from one continent in one week (which could be written about many other continents and many other weeks – just check out the recent flooding in south Asia for instance) is a precise, pixelated portrait of a heating world. Because we have burned so much oil and gas and coal, we have put huge clouds of CO2 and methane in the air; because the structure of those molecules traps heat the planet has warmed; because the planet has warmed we can get heavier rainfalls, stronger winds, drier forests and fields. It’s not mysterious, not in any way. It’s not a run of bad luck. It’s not Donald Trump (though he’s obviously not helping). It’s not hellfire sent to punish us. It’s physics.
Maybe it was too much to expect that scientists’ warnings would really move people. (I mean, I wrote The End of Nature, the first book about all this 28 years ago this week, when I was 28 – and when my theory was still: “People will read my book, and then they will change.”) Maybe it’s like all the health warnings that you should eat fewer chips and drink less soda, which, to judge by belt-size, not many of us pay much mind. Until, maybe, you go to the doctor and he says: “Whoa, you’re in trouble.” Not “keep eating junk and some day you’ll be in trouble”, but: “You’re in trouble right now, today. As in, it looks to me like you’ve already had a small stroke or two.” Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are the equivalent of one of those transient ischaemic attacks – yeah, your face is drooping oddly on the left, but you can continue. Maybe. If you start taking your pills, eating right, exercising, getting your act together.
1:50 Hurricane Irma's path of destruction - video report
That’s the stage we’re at now – not the warning on the side of the pack, but the hacking cough that brings up blood. But what happens if you keep smoking? You get worse, till past a certain point you’re not continuing. We’ve increased the temperature of the Earth a little more than 1C so far, which has been enough extra heat to account for the horrors we’re currently witnessing. And with the momentum built into the system, we’re going to go somewhere near 2C, no matter what we do. That will be considerably worse than where we are now, but maybe it will be expensively endurable.
The problem is, our current business-as-usual trajectory takes us to a world that’s about 3.5C warmer. That is to say, even if we kept the promises we made at Paris (which Trump has already, of course, repudiated) we’re going to build a planet so hot that we can’t have civilisations. We have to seize the moment we’re in right now – the moment when we’re scared and vulnerable – and use it to dramatically reorient ourselves. The last three years have each broken the record for the hottest year ever measured – they’re a red flashing sign that says: “Snap out of it.” Not bend the trajectory somewhat, as the Paris accords envisioned, but simultaneously jam on the fossil fuel brakes and stand on the solar accelerator (and also find some metaphors that don’t rely on internal combustion).
This is a race against time. Global warming is a crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it. We could do it. It’s not technologically impossible – study after study has shown we can get to 100% renewables at a manageable cost, more manageable all the time, since the price of solar panels and windmills keeps plummeting. Elon Musk is showing you can churn out electric cars with ever-lower sticker shock. In remote corners of Africa and Asia, peasants have begun leapfrogging past fossil fuel and going straight to the sun. The Danes just sold their last oil company and used the cash to build more windmills. There are just enough examples to make despair seem like the cowardly dodge it is. But everyone everywhere would have to move with similar speed, because this is in fact a race against time. Global warming is the first crisis that comes with a limit – solve it soon or don’t solve it. Winning slowly is just a different way of losing.
Winning fast enough to matter would mean, above all, standing up to the fossil fuel industry, so far the most powerful force on Earth. It would mean postponing other human enterprises and diverting other spending. That is, it would mean going on a war-like footing: not shooting at enemies, but focusing in the way that peoples and nations usually only focus when someone’s shooting at them. And something is. What do you think it means when your forests are on fire, your streets are underwater, and your buildings are collapsing?
• Bill McKibben is a writer and the founder of the climate campaign 350.org