Fifty years ago, I decided that a Master of Public Administration degree would be useful in my expected career in government. In 1975, I obtained on of the first MPA degrees in the field of “Environmental Management.” One of the books we read was “The Limits to Growth,” published by the Club of Rome, which detailed current enviornmental problems and forecast where they would be in 30 years of no action was taken, some action was taken, or effective action was taken. I rediscovered that book in a box in my garage 25 years ago and re-read it with the benefit of hindsight, since their 30 year period had just ended. In every case, no action had been taken, and in every case the current situation had been accurately forecast by the contributors to the book.
TC - you're one of the best writers out there. If only our MSM had your work ethic and talent to so clearly communicate complex topics. This piece is brilliant, and it scares the shit out of me.
when there's some kind of a lull in my ridiculously lazy TV viewing, I channel surf the way so many of us do. and I'll even check out Fox, although I really can't bear it for more than about two minutes, tops. yesterday was hardly an empty news day and it's impossible to ignore this weather (in this town, the air literally stinks and a few minutes outside makes me feel like a walking slimeball). but on that POS excuse for a bad TV show, "The Five," the scumbags were all having a big laugh over the "alarmist rhetoric" of "climate change nerds." Pirro now looks like an old, ugly body topped with a head that's paralyzed with botox, and of course, her role is to be The Nasty One. their main talking point was that "this is nothing" because "there were plenty of heat waves" in the past (the thirties were mentioned most frequently) and we're all still okay, aren't we? I immediately thought of the hundred-plus-degree ocean temperature down in DeSantis country. and let's not forget these frequent, devastating Extreme Weather Events. I don't think I need to enumerate and this superb piece does an excellent job of doing it already. after less than two minutes of those smug, playacting, overpaid faces and I was done.
I remember one occasion during the four horrifying years of TFF in which it was pretty cold and his comment was something like "so much for global warming." fucking felonious moron. "I only do what's right; I don't do anything wrong. I'm a legitimate person."
I actually feel guilty about supplying his quote with that semicolon; he wouldn't know a semicolon if (to quote Ginsberg yet again) "it buggered him in broad daylight."
all old territory, this. but sometimes simply venting helps.
and as soon as you mentioned that Club of Rome publication, I remembered encountering it when it came out and, like many other people, thought it sounded just plain crazy.
Sorry . . . But those “lizards” were more successful at survival by a factor of millions of years compared to Homo Sapiens. . . But tRump does look like he is part frog. . . (Don’t respond with corrections that frogs are amphibians, please. He looks like a damned frog with the mouth of lamprey.)
Had to watch Fox when I spent much time at a friends house when W pretended to be president. They were propaganda non stop then, they still are. And too ignorant to have a brain fart
Holy cow, Tom - you really know how to get people ready for the weekend..... I have been interested in this subject for years and am well aware of the Clathrate Gun hypothesis. We may be on the cusp (or have already crossed it) of initiating changes that we will bot be able to mitigate - then we are strictly along for the ride..... Lawrence Wright (he of the "Looming Towers") wrote an apocalyptic book about a global pandemic caused buy a virus called Kongoli, in a book titled "The End of October." There are things I didn't like about the book - if I were making the movie, I'd ditch the insane mad scientist - but the end, to me, was near-perfect. The hero goes to an abandoned Soviet bioweapons plant in Siberia and finds it abandoned. But they then go to a nearby group of dead polar bears that succumbed to the Kongoli virus, that had been seen in satellite photos. They also find the carcass of a woolly mammoth exposed by the melting permafrost, that the bears had eaten - the mammoth was infected by Kongoli, which had then been passed to the world by cranes that summered in Siberia and wintered in China. The head SEAL asked the hero what they should tell people, and the hero said "We should say that we did this to ourselves....."
In a related note, scientists in Siberia found and resuscitated a 46,000 year-old roundworm, restoring it to active life, and the roundworm then produced little roundworms..... Who knows what else is frozen in the permafrost, waiting.....and no one on the planet will have any immunity to any pathogen that might be in there. This is all well beyond scary - the 2024 election may be existential for the United States, but this is existential for every living thing on the planet.....
I may have mentioned this before - the first scientific report on atmospheric warming came from an American woman scientist named Eunice Foote, who published a paper describing her experiments comparing the heat absorbing effects of various gases in the atmosphere, with carbon dioxide being the most effective. Eunice Foote's paper was published in 1856.....we cannot say we were not warned.....
Well, first, as a woman, she was not allowed to present her paper at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, because - woman.....her paper was read by the president of the association. Then it was forgotten and another scientist (male) several years later repeated what she had done and now gets the credit for the discovery (so, what's new?).....
I bought "Limits to Growth" recently, on reading about it. I do remember the absolute brouhaha amongst the supply-side crowd when the book first came out many years ago. You would have thought the authors were calling for bestiality and cannibalism in the streets..... Sadly, that book has been proven true and we are screwed.....
Where to put this confession, attach it to my initial comment; write you a personal note or post it right here? There may be a few readers that have or will have the same difficulty that I did, so why not share my story with others. When I first read SUMMER OF CLIMATE COLLAPESE?, I had not slept all night but thought I was fine. I was not. Your informative route through the Climate Crisis felt to me like a lot of details jammed together.
Why did I travel with you again many hours later after I had a few hours of sleep? It was an entirely different read.
I have rarely read a piece on a blog or newsletter as tightly and clearly woven as this one. My appreciation is great, TC. You dug the road and placed the sign posts where they needed to be. I am back in this 94 degree F day, which feels like 104 degrees, and much smarter than I was before reading SUMMER OF CLIMATE COLLAPSE? the second time.
Big thank you, TC, for an your excellent elucidation on the biggest threat to life on earth.
Yeah, us Auld Phartz do have nights where sleep doesn't work. My doctor finally prescribed Trazodone (which Jurate used the last three years) to dial the mind down and now I can get through with only 2-3 bathroom calls a night.
Thank you, Samm, for your support and suggestion. II looked up Ashwagandha. 'Withania somnifera, known commonly as ashwagandha or winter cherry, is an evergreen shrub in the Solanaceae or nightshade family that grows in India, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. Several other species in the genus Withania are morphologically similar. Wikipedia
Ashwagandha contains chemicals that might help calm the brain, reduce swelling, lower blood pressure, and alter the immune system, but there is no good scientific evidence to support most of these uses. ' (WebMD) Each of us will decide for ourselves and, perhaps, speak with a doctor beforehand. Cheers!
"That we are all transfixed not by this news but rather by the prospect of the United States falling to the machinations of a tenth-rate failed circus clown demonstrates the problem."
That's an insult to failed circus clown's everywhere, Tom.
If Al Gore had been elected, I wonder if he could’ve affected any change? Or if his hands would’ve been tied by congressional in- fighting and big oil?
Nothing could make W look good in my eyes; when Rove foisted him on Texas, I watched the insanity evolve, and have seen nothing but a downhill slide since (Obama and Joe’s elections the exception). However, these events just made the crazies crazier. What I thought gave me a short burst of hope, just added oxygen to the right-wing fire. And he has done nothing to counter the insanity of current repubs. Just enjoying his “elder statesman” status. Puke on him and the horse(s) he rode in on.
Reading the "comments" about this documentary sure makes clear how impossible it would be to educate any or all of the humans living here. Selfishness, consumerism - lack of population control? And more. And far too many of those "tenth-rate failed circus clowns"!
Population control is coming - whether we initiate it or not..... The Ukraine war has ended Ukraine's position as the 4th largest exporter of grain, probably for at least 5-10 years. Some of the grain Russia just destroyed was supposed to go to China - wonder how Xi will feel about that..... The general trend is for the population to decline - China, Russia, most of the EU and many other countries are already approaching irreversible population declines that will profoundly alter their future history (and existence as nations). It is likely the global population by 2100 may be as low as half the current population of roughly 8 billion people. The famines started by this war, plus the effect of climate change on farming, will guarantee that millions (perhaps billions) may die in famines that stretch into the future. No one, not even the US, has the resources to prevent most of this from happening.....and then there will be the wars fought over food and water, with mass migrations FAR outstripping anything we have seen in the past 5-10 years. Fasten your seatbelts.....
"By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects." Your writing is brilliant. I am stunned. After a week of asthma from Canadian forest fires, I am also exhausted. Your piece is the best I have ever read on THE topic. Sharing and Praying to my Pagan Gods.
The quintessential problem with mankind's role in this now accelerating catastrophe is that we have never respected the word "enough" enough. Our excesses and appetites, as opposed to our curiosity and drive to solve problems, are doing us in. We were given minds and need to spend more time living in them, more time reading and thinking and writing and appreciating the maligned humanities and maintaining what we've got rather than giving in to planned obsolescence. The Buddhist proverb says it best: "Enough is a feast."
As for Nature's role, the shifting of the currents, the magnetic pressures, the whims of Ceres, the attacks by orcas, the swan song of the swans, all that is beyond me, but I know I don't need to bury myself in stuff when there is the simple joy of reading good writing and applauding good reporting.
That brings back one of my favorite stories. Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller went to a party in the Hamptons held by a hedge fund wizard, and one of his assistants was giving them a tour of the house, very large and full of expensive - everything. She was extolling the host's great wealth, and Heller turned to her and said that it was all very impressive but that he had something her boss would never have. She said, "What could you have that he doesn't?" Heller said, "Enough."
While I am not PhD scientist I did work in STEM for most of my career visiting research labs. None of my education or experience is needed to realize how we got here today.
I was just watching PBS/Frontline 3pt series The Power of Oil where we were led by industry that climate change ( remember the Greenhouse effect?) was uncertain & too $ to act upon.
When it comes to the bottoming these greedy myopic bastards will never give an inch, or a life. The Kochs succeeded and I am sure onto the next project per AL Senator...just skip voting and turn the country over to our corporate dictators. Sheesh.
There was a time 40 plus years ago when we could have led that change, now...?
Thank you Tom. Excellent writing and should be read by everyone. Our temperatures in Northwest Oregon have been about average, but we have been under very frequent red flag warnings. It’s very dry and windy a lot. Side note... I’m going to see Oppenheimer this evening.
I thought Oppenheimer was an excellent movie. I was kind of worried about it being three hours, but I really didn’t notice the time while watching it. The acting and directing were superb. I could almost feel the gut wrenching conflict that Oppenheimer experienced. His great achievement, or a grave failure to humanity’s future.
This article is very detailed and persuasive as to the disaster we are in and the even worse disasters looming. I would like to see another, equally detailed article about the best solutions to reduce as much as possible the future impact of this already existing emergency.
Truly alarming. We should have listened to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore and others, like Bill McKibbon and James Hansen.
Just FYI, the cofounder of 350.org was Bill McKibbon, along with six others, not including James Hansen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/350.org), who is a climate scientist now at Columbia University, who first testified to Congress in 1988 about the dangers of climate change (https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/)
And he was ridiculed and maligned and shunted aside.
Same as Bill McKibben and Katharine Heyhoe and Charles Keeling and many others. The science is clear but doesn’t comport with what Big Oil wants. What confounds me is Big Oil stubbornly sticking with fossil fuels instead of jumping on the renewable energy bandwagon. There is BIG money in a fossil-fuel free future; why not pursue it?
Because American corporations are run by cowards who cannot think even 2-3 years in the future - they have to report profit every 90 days or Wall Street will kill them.
In the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, no sacrifice is too great, including the very planet we inhabit. The obscenely rich don’t give a f*** about the Earth, as long as they can buy the next mega yacht, the next Lamborghini or Ferrari, the next mansion or private jet. We deserve the fate we’re getting, thanks to the oligarchs and the governments they’ve bought, too bad about the collateral damages…the love of money above all else is the true root of all evil.
I take the position that unless it is logically impossible that action can be taken and reduce the climate crisis long-term, it's worth trying to help. Your readers are knowledgeable enough to seek out the type of activism that best suits them, and get involved on a topic they are passionate about. I work with CCL and have had 120 LTEs published in 26 states since 5/2018, etc. Everyone can do more than they think they can. Your passion and knowledge is invaluable and my hat is off to your efforts to inform, which is essential to the motivation of so many others.
TC - you're one of the best writers out there. If only our MSM had your work ethic and talent to so clearly communicate complex topics. This piece is brilliant, and it scares the shit out of me.
ditto.
and yikes.
when there's some kind of a lull in my ridiculously lazy TV viewing, I channel surf the way so many of us do. and I'll even check out Fox, although I really can't bear it for more than about two minutes, tops. yesterday was hardly an empty news day and it's impossible to ignore this weather (in this town, the air literally stinks and a few minutes outside makes me feel like a walking slimeball). but on that POS excuse for a bad TV show, "The Five," the scumbags were all having a big laugh over the "alarmist rhetoric" of "climate change nerds." Pirro now looks like an old, ugly body topped with a head that's paralyzed with botox, and of course, her role is to be The Nasty One. their main talking point was that "this is nothing" because "there were plenty of heat waves" in the past (the thirties were mentioned most frequently) and we're all still okay, aren't we? I immediately thought of the hundred-plus-degree ocean temperature down in DeSantis country. and let's not forget these frequent, devastating Extreme Weather Events. I don't think I need to enumerate and this superb piece does an excellent job of doing it already. after less than two minutes of those smug, playacting, overpaid faces and I was done.
I remember one occasion during the four horrifying years of TFF in which it was pretty cold and his comment was something like "so much for global warming." fucking felonious moron. "I only do what's right; I don't do anything wrong. I'm a legitimate person."
I actually feel guilty about supplying his quote with that semicolon; he wouldn't know a semicolon if (to quote Ginsberg yet again) "it buggered him in broad daylight."
all old territory, this. but sometimes simply venting helps.
and as soon as you mentioned that Club of Rome publication, I remembered encountering it when it came out and, like many other people, thought it sounded just plain crazy.
oh well...
Given the survivors of the Permian age, maybe there is something to the description of many Republicans as cold-blooded, lizard brains.
Good one! :-)
Thanks.
Sorry . . . But those “lizards” were more successful at survival by a factor of millions of years compared to Homo Sapiens. . . But tRump does look like he is part frog. . . (Don’t respond with corrections that frogs are amphibians, please. He looks like a damned frog with the mouth of lamprey.)
Don’t insult lizards
Had to watch Fox when I spent much time at a friends house when W pretended to be president. They were propaganda non stop then, they still are. And too ignorant to have a brain fart
Holy cow, Tom - you really know how to get people ready for the weekend..... I have been interested in this subject for years and am well aware of the Clathrate Gun hypothesis. We may be on the cusp (or have already crossed it) of initiating changes that we will bot be able to mitigate - then we are strictly along for the ride..... Lawrence Wright (he of the "Looming Towers") wrote an apocalyptic book about a global pandemic caused buy a virus called Kongoli, in a book titled "The End of October." There are things I didn't like about the book - if I were making the movie, I'd ditch the insane mad scientist - but the end, to me, was near-perfect. The hero goes to an abandoned Soviet bioweapons plant in Siberia and finds it abandoned. But they then go to a nearby group of dead polar bears that succumbed to the Kongoli virus, that had been seen in satellite photos. They also find the carcass of a woolly mammoth exposed by the melting permafrost, that the bears had eaten - the mammoth was infected by Kongoli, which had then been passed to the world by cranes that summered in Siberia and wintered in China. The head SEAL asked the hero what they should tell people, and the hero said "We should say that we did this to ourselves....."
In a related note, scientists in Siberia found and resuscitated a 46,000 year-old roundworm, restoring it to active life, and the roundworm then produced little roundworms..... Who knows what else is frozen in the permafrost, waiting.....and no one on the planet will have any immunity to any pathogen that might be in there. This is all well beyond scary - the 2024 election may be existential for the United States, but this is existential for every living thing on the planet.....
Yes, the whole melting permafrost thing is way too scary.
And we've known about the threat of melting permafrost for a very long time and have done nothing to stop it.
I may have mentioned this before - the first scientific report on atmospheric warming came from an American woman scientist named Eunice Foote, who published a paper describing her experiments comparing the heat absorbing effects of various gases in the atmosphere, with carbon dioxide being the most effective. Eunice Foote's paper was published in 1856.....we cannot say we were not warned.....
And of course, she must have been mistaken, being a woman pretending to be a scientist.
(/snark)
Well, first, as a woman, she was not allowed to present her paper at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, because - woman.....her paper was read by the president of the association. Then it was forgotten and another scientist (male) several years later repeated what she had done and now gets the credit for the discovery (so, what's new?).....
We are our own worst enemies
Exactly.
If you mentioned this before, I didn't see it. How depressing that we didn't take heed decades ago, let alone more than a century ago.
I’m not convinced that “liking” this post is the appropriate response.
I recall being assigned the Club of Rome materials at UCSD in the late 70’s and thinking it was such Schumpeterian nonsense. Oh well.
“Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.”
Yeah, it was really quite shocking to me, to open that book and read the predictions, knowing the outcomes.
I bought "Limits to Growth" recently, on reading about it. I do remember the absolute brouhaha amongst the supply-side crowd when the book first came out many years ago. You would have thought the authors were calling for bestiality and cannibalism in the streets..... Sadly, that book has been proven true and we are screwed.....
I hesitated to click "like" on this post. But well-written.
Superb TC.
Where to put this confession, attach it to my initial comment; write you a personal note or post it right here? There may be a few readers that have or will have the same difficulty that I did, so why not share my story with others. When I first read SUMMER OF CLIMATE COLLAPESE?, I had not slept all night but thought I was fine. I was not. Your informative route through the Climate Crisis felt to me like a lot of details jammed together.
Why did I travel with you again many hours later after I had a few hours of sleep? It was an entirely different read.
I have rarely read a piece on a blog or newsletter as tightly and clearly woven as this one. My appreciation is great, TC. You dug the road and placed the sign posts where they needed to be. I am back in this 94 degree F day, which feels like 104 degrees, and much smarter than I was before reading SUMMER OF CLIMATE COLLAPSE? the second time.
Big thank you, TC, for an your excellent elucidation on the biggest threat to life on earth.
Yeah, us Auld Phartz do have nights where sleep doesn't work. My doctor finally prescribed Trazodone (which Jurate used the last three years) to dial the mind down and now I can get through with only 2-3 bathroom calls a night.
Thank you for your kindness, TC, and the tip. 💤
Note to some who have sleep problems particularly post reading Tom’s hypnotizing razor sharp post that I did not really want to fully absorb, but did.
My method:
take one 500mg Ashwagandha (mine is made by Pure encapsulations), and two 500 magnesium glycinate.
It actually works much much better than prescription Trazadone with zero hangover effect.
Thank you to all readers for your understanding.
Thank you, Samm, for your support and suggestion. II looked up Ashwagandha. 'Withania somnifera, known commonly as ashwagandha or winter cherry, is an evergreen shrub in the Solanaceae or nightshade family that grows in India, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. Several other species in the genus Withania are morphologically similar. Wikipedia
Ashwagandha contains chemicals that might help calm the brain, reduce swelling, lower blood pressure, and alter the immune system, but there is no good scientific evidence to support most of these uses. ' (WebMD) Each of us will decide for ourselves and, perhaps, speak with a doctor beforehand. Cheers!
"That we are all transfixed not by this news but rather by the prospect of the United States falling to the machinations of a tenth-rate failed circus clown demonstrates the problem."
That's an insult to failed circus clown's everywhere, Tom.
Also, about a decade ago, there was a documentary predicting everything we're going through right now: https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/prophets-of-doom/
Not to mention “An Inconvenient Truth.”
If Al Gore had been elected, I wonder if he could’ve affected any change? Or if his hands would’ve been tied by congressional in- fighting and big oil?
He might not have gotten anything, or not much. I think Biden only got what he did now because the news is so pessimistic even Democrats get it.
Anything would have been a great improvement over W/Dickie
And yet the Orange Menace is so awful he makes W look almost good.
Nothing could make W look good in my eyes; when Rove foisted him on Texas, I watched the insanity evolve, and have seen nothing but a downhill slide since (Obama and Joe’s elections the exception). However, these events just made the crazies crazier. What I thought gave me a short burst of hope, just added oxygen to the right-wing fire. And he has done nothing to counter the insanity of current repubs. Just enjoying his “elder statesman” status. Puke on him and the horse(s) he rode in on.
I have wondered that frequently in the past 23 years. 😢
Reading the "comments" about this documentary sure makes clear how impossible it would be to educate any or all of the humans living here. Selfishness, consumerism - lack of population control? And more. And far too many of those "tenth-rate failed circus clowns"!
Population control is coming - whether we initiate it or not..... The Ukraine war has ended Ukraine's position as the 4th largest exporter of grain, probably for at least 5-10 years. Some of the grain Russia just destroyed was supposed to go to China - wonder how Xi will feel about that..... The general trend is for the population to decline - China, Russia, most of the EU and many other countries are already approaching irreversible population declines that will profoundly alter their future history (and existence as nations). It is likely the global population by 2100 may be as low as half the current population of roughly 8 billion people. The famines started by this war, plus the effect of climate change on farming, will guarantee that millions (perhaps billions) may die in famines that stretch into the future. No one, not even the US, has the resources to prevent most of this from happening.....and then there will be the wars fought over food and water, with mass migrations FAR outstripping anything we have seen in the past 5-10 years. Fasten your seatbelts.....
Sadly, you are right
True. Plus Michael Ruppert died about a year after making this. https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/22/5881501/the-unbelievable-life-and-death-of-michael-c-ruppert
Thank you, TC.
Here, in Arkansas, we're under our 8th heat advisory
of the summer since June.
We'll be up around 104 with
overnight real feel not much
better and humidity rising.
Daily temps have been just
below the 100 degree mark
but the humidity you could
cut with a knife. Next week will see us even hotter, with little chance of rain for 10
days. It's been about 10 days
since the last rain on our
mountain.
If you live close to nature,
you can see the effects of
what our civilization is doing
to the natural world.
We have done this. Refusing
to accept that responsibility
and trying, by any means
possible, to stop the continued harm, is the
gravest crime we, as an
intelligent species, can
commit.
Yeah, all the other animals don't shit where they live. Unlike us.
When the forage for deer is so low, they're coming
down to eat the dry cat food I put out for the mountain cats, coons and
others, there's an imbalance. I'll be putting
out corn and carrots now
too. They should be in the high meadows, so something is off up there.
Just remember - Gaia always bats last.....
"By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects." Your writing is brilliant. I am stunned. After a week of asthma from Canadian forest fires, I am also exhausted. Your piece is the best I have ever read on THE topic. Sharing and Praying to my Pagan Gods.
That author was really good. I ran across that this week and it really rang my bell.
The quintessential problem with mankind's role in this now accelerating catastrophe is that we have never respected the word "enough" enough. Our excesses and appetites, as opposed to our curiosity and drive to solve problems, are doing us in. We were given minds and need to spend more time living in them, more time reading and thinking and writing and appreciating the maligned humanities and maintaining what we've got rather than giving in to planned obsolescence. The Buddhist proverb says it best: "Enough is a feast."
As for Nature's role, the shifting of the currents, the magnetic pressures, the whims of Ceres, the attacks by orcas, the swan song of the swans, all that is beyond me, but I know I don't need to bury myself in stuff when there is the simple joy of reading good writing and applauding good reporting.
That brings back one of my favorite stories. Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller went to a party in the Hamptons held by a hedge fund wizard, and one of his assistants was giving them a tour of the house, very large and full of expensive - everything. She was extolling the host's great wealth, and Heller turned to her and said that it was all very impressive but that he had something her boss would never have. She said, "What could you have that he doesn't?" Heller said, "Enough."
While I am not PhD scientist I did work in STEM for most of my career visiting research labs. None of my education or experience is needed to realize how we got here today.
I was just watching PBS/Frontline 3pt series The Power of Oil where we were led by industry that climate change ( remember the Greenhouse effect?) was uncertain & too $ to act upon.
When it comes to the bottoming these greedy myopic bastards will never give an inch, or a life. The Kochs succeeded and I am sure onto the next project per AL Senator...just skip voting and turn the country over to our corporate dictators. Sheesh.
There was a time 40 plus years ago when we could have led that change, now...?
Really don't know.
Thank you Tom. Excellent writing and should be read by everyone. Our temperatures in Northwest Oregon have been about average, but we have been under very frequent red flag warnings. It’s very dry and windy a lot. Side note... I’m going to see Oppenheimer this evening.
I'll be interested to hear your response to it.
I thought Oppenheimer was an excellent movie. I was kind of worried about it being three hours, but I really didn’t notice the time while watching it. The acting and directing were superb. I could almost feel the gut wrenching conflict that Oppenheimer experienced. His great achievement, or a grave failure to humanity’s future.
I will let you know.
This article is very detailed and persuasive as to the disaster we are in and the even worse disasters looming. I would like to see another, equally detailed article about the best solutions to reduce as much as possible the future impact of this already existing emergency.
We know them - get rid of carbon-generating energy.
Terrifying, clarifying, urgent call to reorder our priorities.
Truly alarming. We should have listened to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore and others, like Bill McKibbon and James Hansen.
Just FYI, the cofounder of 350.org was Bill McKibbon, along with six others, not including James Hansen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/350.org), who is a climate scientist now at Columbia University, who first testified to Congress in 1988 about the dangers of climate change (https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/)
My mistake. :-)
Even you are not perfect, dear Tom. You come close, though.
Real close.
1988.
1988.
And he was ridiculed and maligned and shunted aside.
Same as Bill McKibben and Katharine Heyhoe and Charles Keeling and many others. The science is clear but doesn’t comport with what Big Oil wants. What confounds me is Big Oil stubbornly sticking with fossil fuels instead of jumping on the renewable energy bandwagon. There is BIG money in a fossil-fuel free future; why not pursue it?
Because American corporations are run by cowards who cannot think even 2-3 years in the future - they have to report profit every 90 days or Wall Street will kill them.
In the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, no sacrifice is too great, including the very planet we inhabit. The obscenely rich don’t give a f*** about the Earth, as long as they can buy the next mega yacht, the next Lamborghini or Ferrari, the next mansion or private jet. We deserve the fate we’re getting, thanks to the oligarchs and the governments they’ve bought, too bad about the collateral damages…the love of money above all else is the true root of all evil.
I take the position that unless it is logically impossible that action can be taken and reduce the climate crisis long-term, it's worth trying to help. Your readers are knowledgeable enough to seek out the type of activism that best suits them, and get involved on a topic they are passionate about. I work with CCL and have had 120 LTEs published in 26 states since 5/2018, etc. Everyone can do more than they think they can. Your passion and knowledge is invaluable and my hat is off to your efforts to inform, which is essential to the motivation of so many others.
Thanks and your advice is spot on
Solidarity, brother.