Code Red for Humanity in Daydreaming on the Porch
- Aug. 10, 2021, 3:26 p.m.
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- Public
Headline this afternoon: Greece faces ‘disaster of unprecedented proportions’ as wildfires ravage the country
Code Red That’s the message that comes out of the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, the definitive scientific review of the catastrophic dangers human civilization and all other species of life on Earth face if we don’t drastically curtail greenhouse gas emissions and methane releases.
The headlines have been dire out of this long-anticipated report. They are, in fact, so mind-numbingly bad and so horrndous as not to seem real. Can this possibly be what our future lioks like? Like this summer only much worse?
The psychological tipping point for me has occurred cumulatively over the past six weeks. Pictures of the vast, slowly but inexorably emptying reservoirs in the western U.S. that supply drinking water to 40 million people and enable large-scale agriculture in California and elsewhere; an unprecdented heat wave in the Pacific Northwest; wildfires burning across northern California, and scenes of the Dixie Fire completely consuming an historic Gold Rush mountain town; nightmarish floods in western Europe, China and India; and large parts of Greece and southern turkey beset by the worst wildfires ever in those countries. But the final straw was news that the Gulf Stream and other ocean currents might stop flowing, causing unknown levels of catastrophic change in the world’s weather.
What have we done to this Earth, this precious blue planet of life? I’m normally an optimistic person, but this summer’s weather has been so extreme that it all seems surreal, like some never-ending disaster movie. Yet it’s only too real. How did we let his happen? I have a few ideas.
The air-fouling internal combustion engines that have propelled our cars and lives into the “American Dream” of suburbs and endless highways and growth, now more than ever seem barbaric, crude and corrupt as they have over many decades poisoned our air just as the world’s reliance on coal polluted our atmosphere. The health consequences of this now and in years to come are going to be dramatic.
When I see those huge 10-ton pickup trucks and their huge exhaust pipes and smug and clueless drivers doing a particularly good job of pumping the air full of noxious toxins, I cringe and recoil in disgust. Some people haven’t learned anything. And if we keep burning fossil furls at the current pace, all I can say is pity the coming generation or two that will have to survive in the devastated and despoiled world we have all created.
Vox examines the key points in the climate report:
https://www.vox.com/22613027/un-ipcc-climate-change-report-ar6-disaster
Last updated August 10, 2021
ConnieK ⋅ August 10, 2021
It is of grave concern but we have to band together as a world to combat the problem.
Oswego ConnieK ⋅ August 10, 2021
I’m not sure what will make that happen, short of massive, simultaneous worldwide consequences, like this summer only worse, given how many lost opportunities there have been over the past five decades, and particularly since 1989 when James Hansen was the first eminent scientist to warn us of this.
I pray the world will wake up!
ConnieK Oswego ⋅ August 10, 2021
Goes back to the 60s, actually, but yes, a global response is key...ESPECIALLY corporations who continually break laws with few consequences. While we can get 100 people to lighten their carbon footprint, one rainforest farmer clearing yet another chunk of the forest causes three times as much pollution.
Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 10, 2021
Read close to this somewhere: nothing is more sobering than an atmosphere of money.
I've heard the costs of mitigating the effects of climate change at 70 trillion.
A few years ago global GDP was 90 trillion.
This is so big.
The UN is apparently looking into floating cities in the future and I've heard the continental US will be too dry, hot, and barren to live in in the coming years.
People complain about migration now. What happens when 250 million Americans need to move?
I read a Vice article about how a sufficiently large storm in Miami could crash world financial system.
Insurers spread liability among many different bodies and a large enough storm stacked on other events could cause the insurance payout to be so high nobody can pay.
With no trust in system things fall apart or at the very least they're too overleveraged to continue.
But for me my life is simple. This report is scary but it doesn't seem real, whereas cuts to Healthcare, social services, increased rioting due to emotional distress and aggression caused by heat, crowding, desperation, car insurance costing more due to those companies having business liabilities, increased migration and people arguing, this shit is real.
Anyway thanks for this entry. I'm kinda tired of thinking about it.
Which is another consequence. People are gonna be tired and despairing when their house and home gets destroyed or their kid can't access Cancer treatment.
Oswego Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 11, 2021
Very sobering thoughts. All this news happening elsewhere seems scary in an abstract way until your own house or town gets washed away in a flood or destroyed by a wildfire. Can you imagine what it’s like to lose your home and all your precious belongings in a wildfire? And yet this is becoming the “new normal. I don’t like to think about it, but I can’t turn it off. It’s everywhere and soon to be in our nightmares, too.
Sleepy-Eyed John Oswego ⋅ August 11, 2021
Ya. Indeed.
Since I got rid of FB I don't follow it. I'm choosing to mostly ignore it because I feel disgusted. And maybe I'm just tired of feeling things too.
Oswego Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 11, 2021
I wish I could pretend it’s all just a very bad, dystopian nightmare!! But when it’s 15-20 degrees hotter than normal where you live for days and weeks on end, you can’t ignore it. I wish I could, but it permeates my consciousness. Not healthy, I know, but I’m far from alone in this.
Sleepy-Eyed John Oswego ⋅ August 11, 2021
Ya. I think about it, talk about it. But I just carry on because my own issues take up so much of my headspace and I need to feel good even if everything goes to shit.
Oswego Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 11, 2021
You’ve just said a whole lot in just a couple of sentences. Admirable, indeed!
Kristi1971 ⋅ August 10, 2021
Everyone has to do their part, but not enough ever will. Humans will continue to destroy, because we have never been able to work together on a large enough scale. History tells us so. I feel so bleak about this situation we are in. I do what I can within my home, but I just don't know what else to do. My small part is not enough to matter.
Oswego Kristi1971 ⋅ August 10, 2021
That’s basically how I feel. I’ve never been so discouraged as this summer with all the freakish weather related to global warming. One thing we can do is research and support the shift to alternative sources of energy. But one has to have a certain degree of hope for the future to get motivated to do more than doom scroll endless reports of bad climate news.
Kristi1971 Oswego ⋅ August 10, 2021
So true. I will get behind any alternate sources of energy and the costs, because it will mean a better future for my kids, their kids, etc.
Deleted user ⋅ August 10, 2021 (edited August 10, 2021)
Edited
Call me heartless, but this is why I'm not shedding too many tears over people who refuse to get vaccinated, contract Covid, and kick the bucket. I'm not kidding when I say 8 billion people is about 4 billion too many. Homo sapiens is the only species stupid enough to destroy its own home.
It is just heartbreaking that we're taking so many innocent creatures of earth, air, and sea with us. That atrocity against other living creatures is the thing that makes me want to find my own Walden and never come back.
Oswego Deleted user ⋅ August 11, 2021
I’ve always been mystified how “experts” can say we have thrived in a world of scarce resources, or that we have learned how to feed seven billion people. We haven’t. The problem clearly has been terrible over-population, where a swarming mass of humanity destroys rainforests to grow soybeans and palm oil trees so everyone can eat meat and thus further destroy the living ecosystems on earth by trying to satisfy nations’ desires for endless growth. It’s all so sadly absurd.
The result of all this human folly is global warming and human-induced climate change that will possibly take down our civilization and countless innocent species as well. Human beings are terribly flawed and uncivilized. The proof of that is what has happened this summer. We have altered the planet irrevocably by poisoning it with endless and thoughtless amounts of carbon emissions and pollutants..
Marg ⋅ August 24, 2021
We have become a very selfish nation and COVID has done nothing but emphasised that. Hopefully the extreme weather you guys have been experiencing will make a few more folk wake up and think but I wonder if it’s in time.
Oswego Marg ⋅ August 24, 2021
That’s the big question. Is there time to even mitigate the worst of the effects that are already locked into place because of human folly?
Yes, our extreme weather in the West, and just days ago extreme flash flooding in Tennessee similar to Germany, should at last be a wake-up call, but I’m afraid it will take something apocalyptic for the right-wingers to wake up to reality.
Marg Oswego ⋅ August 25, 2021
I’m afraid you’re right.