Subject: [Homestead] Do you have your affairs in order?
Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 21:20:20 -0500
Ah, it doesn't really matter. Most of us are likely out of here soon
and those few left will be scrambling to stay alive. Certainly not
much interested in whether the relatives took care of getting that
family trust recorded.
The World at 350
A Last Chance for Civilization
By Bill McKibben
Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always
be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if
necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New
Start -- even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.
It's not just the economy. We've gone through swoons before. It's that
gas at $4 a gallon means we're running out, at least of thecheap stuff
that built our sprawling society. It's that when we try to turn corn
into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and
starts food riots on three continents. It's that everything is so
inextricably tied together. It's that, all of a sudden, those grim
Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about
the "limits to growth" suddenly seem… how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.
There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most
powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As
in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen,
submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The
abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger
language in a scientific paper -- "if humanity wishes to preserve a
planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which
life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate
change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385
ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points
-- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among
them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the
first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may
already be behind us.