We rarely post other peoples’ articles, but we do post some from Guy Dauncey, who speaks for us in Canada along with the wonderful David Suzuki.
Among Guy’s nine books are The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming, and his current book – almost finished – is his first novel, City of the Future – The View from 2032, where he shows us a sustainable future is possible.
"Creating a positive, inspiring vision of the future is an essential pre-condition for change," he says. "By seeing images that present such a future, people become more hopeful and motivated to make it happen."
Although we cover a lot of negative, hard-to-read news, this is our vision that we try to get across to you.
Here is Guy’s reaction to the news that his federal government approved the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline, which would run through the heart of his home, British Columbia.
Sadly, Canada’s Prime Minister Harper is joining with Australia’s Prime Minister to oppose international action on climate change at the all-important 2015 UN Climate Summit. And just when the rest of the world seems prepared for serious action.
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by Guy Dauncey
So, Canada’s federal government has finally approved construction of the proposed Enbridge pipeline that is intended to carry bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat, and thence by ocean to China.
If we do not go ahead, the Prime Minister warns us, Canada’s economy will be in grave danger. "No country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country," he declared a week ago, in a joint statement with the openly climate denying Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott.
But what if none of this is true? What if there were two possible directions that Canada’s future economy could take, not just one? What if there was another future built on clean technology, renewable energy, sustainable transportation and zero-carbon buildings, in which Canada could prosper without the tar sands and the unwanted pipelines, and without all the fracking, the oil-polluted waters, the exploding trains, the waves of public opposition and the legal challenges from First Nations?
To Stephen Harper and his supporters, such a future is unthinkable. He would far rather we dwelled on the danger of not supporting fossil fuel expansion than the far graver danger of a world that is four, five or even six degrees warmer due to the carbon released by the fossil fuels.
1894: Danger – Horse Manure Ahead!
120 years ago, our economy was so dependent on horses that unless something was done, we were warned, we would drown under a sea of horse-manure. But what happened? Change happened – we invented our way into a different world.
And change is happening again. The Age of Fossil Fuels, which started with coal-fired steam engines, is winding down. Around the world, financially viable oil is running out; investors are beginning to walk away. By 2030 it may all be over, and the Solar Age will have stepped in to take over.
Once upon a time, iron replaced stone. Then cars replaced horses, and fossil fuels replaced whale oil. Today, renewable energy is replacing fossil fuels. The transition is upon us: you just need to know where to look.
Young people want a different world
Young people are growing up who want a different world, with more sharing, instead of debt; more community, instead of commuting; more solar and wind energy, instead of fossil fuels; more organic food and farming, instead of chemicals; more cities with decent bike lanes and public transit, instead of noise and stress; and more suburbs with decent light rail transit and railways, instead of highway frustration.
In Holland, thanks to an investment in safe, separated bike lanes, over 30% of the Dutch people use a bicycle as their main mode of transportation, creating jobs by spending their money on culture and restaurants instead of fossil fuels. In 2001 there were just one or two city bike-sharing schemes around the world; by 2012 there were 400 schemes. Where there are hills, electric bikes are making gravity disappear.
In 1998, just 905 people belonged to car-share groups around the world. By 2012, that number had increased two thousandfold to 1.78 million. By 2020, car-sharing revenues are set to hit $6 billion, with 12 million members worldwide.
In 2009, a mere 10,000 electric vehicles were sold globally. Within the last four years the number has increased 20-fold to 210,000 a year; Norway alone is increasing the number of EVs on its roads by 1,000 a month. By 2020, the IEA’s Electric Vehicle initiative expects to see 24 million EVs on the road. EV batteries? Since 2009 their price has fallen 500%, from $1,000 to $200/kwh. By 2020, expect to be able to buy a cost-competitive EV without need for subsidy.
"Those Romantic Hippies at Barclays Bank"
In 1980, installed solar PV cost $100 a watt. Today, the price has fallen to $4. Before 2010, just 50 GW of solar had been installed globally. A mere four years later, global solar capacity is approaching 200 GW. By 2020, if the price falls as predicted to $1.60 a watt, a solar tsunami will sweep the world. Bill McKibben recently wrote that "those romantic hippies at Barclays Bank downgraded utility bonds precisely because of rapid advances in the storage of solar-generated electricity, arguing that for many customers it would be as "cheap or cheaper" than utility-generated power within four years."
Back in 2004, investors sank $54 billion into clean energy. By 2011, this had ballooned five-fold to $302 billion. By 2030, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance CEO Michael Leibreich, clean energy will total 73% of all global energy investments. Just last week, Warren Buffett announced that he was doubling his $15 billion investment in renewable energy.
Another Canada is possible
Another Canada is possible. Picture a future in which our prosperity is driven not by oil, but by investments in renewable energy; in which Ontario has become an electric vehicles innovation hub and renewable energy from Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba is being exported to cities in the US; a future in which British Columbia’s expertise in clean tech innovation is sought all over the world; a future in which we no longer need to spend billions every year subsidizing the oil industry and where the money spent on renewable energy remains here in Canada, creating demand and supporting new business activity.
It’s a good future, and it sets us on the path to a long-term future that is fairly amazing, since renewable energy is not just clean – it will also never run out. The curtains will fall on the Age of Fossil Fuels after just 300 years. The Solar Age will last for as long as the Sun sends us energy.
So the next time you hear a politician warning that if we don’t develop the tar sands and the pipelines, all hell will break loose, remember that there is an alternative. We have two options, not one. And while we may be metaphorically drowning in political horseshit, we never did drown in actual horse-manure.
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Learn more about Guy Dauncey and his work:
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I heartily agree that a 100% Transition to Renewable energy is beginning for the sake of democracy as well as energy demand and the need for a viable biosphere. I recently started a petition at Care2 for that very purpose. The staff at Care2 asked me why I felt so strongly about demanding a WWII style massive transition to 100% Renewable Energy. This was my answer:
Dear Care2 Staff,
I am writing to answer your question as to what motivated me to start my petition hoping that you too will sign the petition, as it concerns the health and welfare of all humans as well as the biosphere we depend on.
I have a science background and have been reading about Global Climate Change since the 1980s. I retired from the Federal Aviation Administration several years ago and have a lot of time on my hands to read the plethora of valuable information now available on the internet ( I am referring to serious, peer reviewed information devoid of sensationalistic or mendacious material). I have discovered that we-the-people have been lied to and used for over a century by the fossil fuel interests for their profit while the biosphere has become, because of dirty fuels like fossil and nuclear, increasingly degraded.
In my research I have discovered many unconscionable acts by the fossil fuel industry and associated chemical industries during he last century. These are not “conspiracy” theories. they are quite well documented but not generally mentioned in grade and high school history texts or the news media.
I have, in my forum http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/index.php , written on these matters with the appropriate irrefutable references. I use comical animations to liven up a rather dry subject for most people. I invite your staff to look it over and see for yourself how much we have been lied to for profit over planet. This modus operandi of the war loving fossil fuel, and now nuclear power, dirty energy corporations continues to this day with slick propaganda campaigns to keep the public deluded about the 24/7 fleecing they receive at the hands of these energy corporations that have undue influence on government policies.
I have written much, but just to give you the greatest evidence I have uncovered of the totally unnecessary reliance we have on dirty energy, let me quote from this peer reviewed book by Dilworth titled “Too Smart For Our Own Good”. Notice the time period the book quote refers to. Then think about all the unnecessary hysteria disguised as prudent preservation of our “energy resources” for “national security” which conveniently (for the fossil fuel industry) is used as a justification for endless wars for oil and the accompanying human misery. Our energy “dependence” on oil, as well as scaremongering price shocks, are contrived, not real!
Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
“As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.
In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.
So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. ”
Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.
This totally unjustified profit, never mind the needless lose of lives, then increases the power of the fossil fuel corporations to perpetuate a biosphere harming dirty fuel status quo. How? By “funding” politicians with rather large “donations” to keep renewable energy from competing with dirty energy.
If all this was just about power politics, I might not be that concerned. Humans, particularly the overly ambitious and aggressive ones, have always fought and schemed to control and fleece the population at large.
But now we know the future of our planet is at stake. Now we know the entire edifice of dirty energy is a knife in the back of the biosphere that will destroy our species and many others.
THAT knowledge, once I became convinced of it, is what has spurred me to warn everyone out there that we must not let the wool be pulled over our eyes by bought and paid for politicians in the service of profit over planet predatory corporations. It is madness to think infinite growth of dirty energy economies can occur in a finite biosphere. In fact, it is easily labeled a form of delusional criminal insanity what has gripped our world today. The sensible and logical thing to work for is a steady state edconomy. But Wall Street is in too much denial to see this obvious truth.
The planet and the biosphere, according to serious, objective, proven environmental science, will become uninhabitable if we do not stop burning fossil fuels within a couple of decades . As things are right now in June of 2014, the scientific community has estimated that it will take over one thousand years, even if we stopped all dirty energy use today, to get our atmosphere back to 350 ppm of CO2. And that is without even taking the other greenhouse gas dangers like methane into account.
The intransigence of the fossil fuel industry in this matter is a given. They wish to avoid liability for the damage they have caused so they have, for several decades, (See the George C. Marshal Institute) launched a campaign of disinformation to claim there is NO climate threat whatsoever.
Not only do they deny climate change, they scare monger people into thinking we are running out of oil! Well, hello? We are supposed to stop using it, aren’t we? Now who do you suppose would want us to feel we were “running out” of something so we would VALUE it more? The truth is that oil is a liability, not an asset. But that is precisely what the propagandists work mightily to prevent the people form realizing. If somebody tells me we are running out of a something that , when you burn it, poisons the atmosphere, I’m rather pleased we are running out of it! But for some amazing reason, that obvious truth never makes the news either.
The worsening weather will be the ONLY thing that will spur change and even then we already passed the point a couple of decades ago when bioremediation was going to be fairly straight forward.
Dr. Hansen said oceanic inertia (acidification from CO2) is nearly 100 years. I had thought it was only about 30 years. That means we are experiencing NOW the effects of our generated pollutants (if you say the incubation inertia conservatively is half of 100 years) as of 1964!
Consider all the pollutants that have poured in to the biosphere since then and you start to understand why brilliant people like Guy McPherson are so despondent. There is NO WAY we can stop the pollution/bad weather clock from CONTINUING to deteriorate for another 50 years (or 100 if Hansen is right) even if we STOPPED using all fossil fuels today.
I’m not in charge and neither are you. But clinging to this fossil fuel fantasyland of cheap power and all we “owe” it for our civilization is not going to do anything but make things deteriorate faster.
If enough people reach the 1%, maybe they will wake up. It’s all we can do in addition to trying to foster community.
The system, as defined by the fossil fuel fascist dystopia that currently runs most of the human affairs among the 1 billion population in the developed world that is saddling the other 6 billion, who are totally free of guilt for causing it, with this climate horror we are beginning to experience, IS quite stubborn and does not wish to change the status quo.
Mother nature will force it to do so.
Whether it is done within the next two decades or not (i.e. a switch to 100% PLUS bioremediation Renewable Energy steady state economy) will dictate the size of the consequent die off, not only of humans but thousands of other species as well.
We are now in a climate cake that has been baked for about 1,000 years according to atmospheric, objective, proven with experimental data, science.
If the crash program to switch to renewable energy is to begin soon, I expect the trigger for the crash program will be the first ice free arctic summer (according to my estimates) in 2017.
So I would use that future melting now as a rallying point to wake people up and join in the effort to ban fossil fuel burning and internal combustion engines from planet earth. Expect the fossil fuelers to counter that polar ice melting catastrophic reality with propaganda about what a “wonderful” thing it is to have a new ocean to shorten ship traveling (i.e. TANKERS) distances. So it goes.
If things, by some miracle, go well for humanity and the 1% galvanize to save the biosphere and their stuff, we will witness the dismantling of the centralized fossil fuel infrastructure, it’s use and, more importantly, the relinquishing of political power worldwide by big oil.
15 April 2013
James Hansen
1. Exaggeration?
I have been told of specific well-respected people who have asserted that “Jim Hansen exaggerates” the magnitude and imminence of the climate threat. If only that were true, I would be happy.
“Magnitude and imminence” compose most of the climate story.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exaggerations.pdf
The main reason that large dirty energy industries DO NOT want to transition to Renewable energy is because It has NEVER been about ENERGY beyond CONTROLLING the spigot to we-the-people.
That’s why the fossil fuel industry simply didn’t switch to the much more profitable and economical renewable energy technologies long ago (they certainly have the money to do so); they simply could not figure out a way to retain POWER and CONTROL with a distributed, rather than a centralized energy system.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: In the next decade there will be an epic battle for survival for humanity against the forces of ignorance and greed. It’s going to be Armageddon, represented by the oil industry on one side, versus the renewable industry on the other.
And people are going to have to choose sides – including politically. They will have to choose sides because oil and coal, they will not be able to survive – they are not going to be able to burn their proven reserves.
If they do, then we are all dead. And they are quite willing to burn it. We’re all going to be part of that battle. We are going to watch governments being buffeted by the whims of money and greed on one side, and idealism and hope on the other.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/06/interview-with-robert-f-kennedy-jr-on-environmental-activism-democratization-of-energy-more/
The fossil fuel industry and those who side with it, regardless of appearing to take a pro-environment position in their personal lives, are hurting our chances for a viable biosphere.
Those who, instead, simply stand their ground on the settled climate science and state unequivocally that fossil fuels must be BANNED from human use forever and the fossil fuel industries dismantled while a massive transition to a lower carbon footprint and 100% plus renewable energy economy takes place, are the only hope Homo sapiens has.
The question is, which side are you on?
Typical phases of resistance to renewable energy, as described by Dr. Herman Scheer are as follows:
Phase 1 – Belittle & Deny the Renewable Energy Option
Phase 2 – Denounce & Mobilize Against the Renewable Energy Option
Phase 3 – Spread Doubt & Misrepresent the Challenges in the Disguise of General Support
(Note: reaching Phase 3 doesn’t mean that Phase 1 & 2 will disappear.)
I wrote the following about a year ago. It was key to my realization that there MIGHT be hope for us to transition rapidly and safely out of dirty energy for the sake of future generations. I sent a copy to Senator Sanders of Vermont last November. I have not heard anything back.
Note: The idea of the Green Leaf Star American on my petition came later when I saw a Blue Star Mother WWII poster (it dovetails rather nicely with those “green stars” that Care2 has too!).
Historic proof that manufacturing all the renewable energy machines and infrastructure needed to transition to a 100% Renewable Energy world economy can be achieved in two decades or less: The mass produced Liberty Ships of WWII.
The other day, a knowledgeable mechanical engineer I know stated this concern about the colossal challenge and, in his opinion, impossibility of switching to renewable energy machines in time to avoid a collapse from an energy to manufacture and global industrial capacity limitation in our civilizational infrastructure.
He said:
I admire your enthusiasm, and I agree with many of the points you make. Yes internal combustion engines waste high EROEI consistently, yes fossil fuels and conventional engineering has a warped distorted perspective because of the internal combustion engine, and yes we have an oil oligarchy protecting its turf.
However say we hypothetically made all the oil companies disappear tomorrow and where able to suspend the laws of time and implement our favorite renewables of choice and then where tasked with making certain all of societies critical needs were met we’d have a tall order. The devil is in the details and quantities.
Its the magnitudes, its 21 million barrels per day we are dependent on. Its created massive structural centralization that can only be sustained by incredible energetic inputs. Not enough wind, and not enough rare earth material for PV’s to scale and replace. We have to structurally rearrange society to solve the problem. Distributed solar powered villages, not big cities and surely not suburbia. I fear we’ll sink very useful resources and capital towards these energy sources (as we arguably have with wind) when the real answer is structural change.
I have shown evidence that there are several multiples of the energy we now consume available just from wind power. This data came from a recent study by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Scientists.
He thinks we CAN’T do it even if we had enough wind because of the colossal challenge and, in his opinion, impossibility of switching to renewable energy machines in time to avoid a collapse from an energy required to manufacture and global industrial capacity limitation in our civilizational infrastructure.
His solution is to survive the coming collapse with small distributed energy systems and a radically scaled down carbon footprint. Sadly, that option will not be available to a large percentage of humanity.
Hoping for a more positive future scenario, I analyzed his concerns to see if they are valid and we have no other option but to face a collapse and a die off with the surviving population living at much lower energy use levels.
I’m happy to report that, although the mechanical engineer has just cause to be concerned, we can, in reality, transition to 100% Renewable Energy without overtaxing our civilizational resources.
This a slim hope but a real one based on history and the word’s present manufacturing might. Read on.
[img width=640 height=400]http://www.skylighters.org/troopships/libshipschematic1.jpg[/img]
I give you the logistics aiding marvel of WWII, the Liberty Ship. It was THE JIT (just in time), SIT (sometimes in time) and sometimes NIT (never in time because it was torpedoed) cargo delivery system that helped us win the war.
This was a mass produced ship. These ships are a testament to the ability to build an enormous quantity of machines on a global scale that the U.S. was capable of over half a century ago.
The Liberty ship model used two oil boilers and was propelled by a single-screw steam engine, which gave the liberty ship a cruise speed of 11 to 11.5 knots. The ships were 441.5 feet long, with a 57 foot beam and a 28 foot draft.
[img width=640 height=480]http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/116liberty_victory_ships/116images/116coverbl2.jpg[/img]
[img width=640 height=480]http://www.merchantnavyofficers.com/liberty2/libertyshipsforitaly.jpg[/img]
The ships were designed to minimize labor and material costs; this was done in part by replacing many rivets with welds. This was a new technique, so workers were inexperienced and engineers had little data to go on. Additionally, much of the shipyards’ labor force had been replaced with women as men joined the armed forces. Because of this, early ships took quite a long time to build – the Patrick Henry taking 244 days –
but the average building time eventually came down to just 42 days.
[img width=640 height=480]http://www.skylighters.org/troopships/libertyship-hi-new.jpg[/img]
A total of 2,710 Liberty ships were built, with an expected lifespan of just five years. A little more than 2,400 made it through the war, and 835 of these entered the US cargo fleet. Many others entered Greek and Italian fleets. Many of these ships were destroyed by leftover mines, which had been forgotten or inadequately cleared. Two ships survive today, both operating as museum ships. They are still seaworthy, and one (the Jeremiah O’Brien) sailed from San Francisco to England in 1994.
http://www.brighthubengineering.com/marine-history/88389-history-of-the-liberty-ships/
Today, several countries have, as do we, a much greater industrial capacity. It is inaccurate to claim that we cannot produce sufficient renewable energy devices in a decade or so to replace the internal combustion engine everywhere in our civilization.
The industrial capacity is there and is easily provable by asking some simple questions about the fossil fuel powered internal combustion engine status quo:
How long do internal combustion engine powered machines last?
How much energy does it require to mine the raw materials and manufacture the millions of engines wearing out and being replaced day in and day out?
What happens if ALL THAT INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY is, instead, dedicated to manufacturing Renewable Energy machines?
IOW, if there is a ten to twenty year turnover NOW in our present civilization involving manufacture and replacement of the internal combustion engines we use, why can’t we retool and convert the entire internal combustion engine fossil fuel dependent civilization to a Renewable Energy Machine dependent civilization?
1) The industrial capacity is certainly there to do it EASILY in two decades and maybe just ten years with a concerted push.
2) Since Renewable Energy machines use LESS metal and do not require high temperature alloys, a cash for clunkers worldwide program could obtain more than enough metal raw material without ANY ADDITIONAL MINING (except for rare earth minerals – a drop in the bucket — compared to all the mining presently done for metals to build the internal combustion engine) by just recycling the internal combustion engine parts into Renewable Energy machines.
3) Just as in WWII, but on a worldwide scale, the recession/depression would end as millions of people were put to work on the colossal transition to Renewable Energy.
HOWEVER, despite our ABILITY to TRANSITION TO 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY, we “CAN’T DO IT” because the fossil fuel industry has tremendous influence on the worldwide political power structure from the USA to Middle East to Russia to China.
IOW, it was NEVER
1. An energy problem,
2. A “laws of thermodynamics” problem,
3. A mining waste and pollution problem,
4. A lack of wind or sun problem,
5. An environmental problem,
6. An industrial capacity problem or
7. A technology problem.
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE ABOVE excuses for claiming Renewable Energy cannot replace Fossil Fuels are STRAWMEN presented to the public for the express purpose of convincing us of the half truth that without fossil fuels, civilization will collapse.
It was ALWAYS a POLITICAL PROBLEM of the fossil fuel industry not wanting to relinquish their stranglehold on the world’s geopolitical make up.
It drives them insane to think that Arizona and New Mexico can provide more power than all the oil in the Middle East. Their leverage over lawmakers and laws to avoid environmental liability is directly proportional to their market share of global energy supplies.
They are threatened by Renewable Energy and have mobilized to hamper its growth as much as possible through various propaganda techniques using all the above strawmen.
It is TRUE that civilization will collapse and a huge die off will occur without fossil fuels IF, and ONLY IF, Renewable Energy does not replace fossil fuels. It is blatantly obvious that we need energy to run our civilization.
It is ALSO TRUE that if we continue to burn fossil fuels in iternal combustion engines, Homo sapiens will become extinct. This is not hyperbole. We ALREADY have baked in conditions, that take about three decades to fully develop, that have placed us in a climate like the one that existed over 3 million years ago.
We DID NOT thrive in those conditions or multiply. This is a fact. We barely survived until a couple of hundred thousand years ago when the weather became friendlier and even then we didn’t really start to populate the planet until about 10,000 years ago.
The climate 3 million years ago was, basically, mostly lethal to Homo Sapiens. To say that we have technology and can handle it is a massive dodge of our responsibility for causing this climate crisis (and ANOTHER strawman from Exxon “We will adapt to that” CEO).
Fossil fuel corporations DO NOT want to be held liable for the damage they have caused, so, even as they allow Renewable Energy to have a niche in the global energy picture, will use that VERY NICHE (see rare earth mining and energy to build PV and wind turbines) to blame Renewables for environmental damage.
In summary, the example of the Liberty ships is proof we CAN TRANSITION TO RENEWABLE ENERGY in, at most, a couple of decades if we decide to do it but WON’T do it because of the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold on political power, financing and laws along with the powerful propaganda machine they control.
In other words, what happens, Care2, if my petition or some other effort does NOT succeed in getting our government (and several others too) to engage in a massive Transition to 100% Renewable energy NOW?
What can we expect from the somewhat dismal prospects for Homo sapiens?
1) Terrible weather and melted polar ice caps with an increase in average wind velocity in turn causing more beach erosion from gradually rising sea level and wave action. The oceans will become more difficult to traverse because of high wave action and more turbulent seas. The acidification will increase the dead zones and reduce aquatic life diversity. But you’ve heard all this before so I won’t dwell on the biosphere problems that promise to do us in.
2) As Renewable Energy devices continue to make inroads in fossil fuel profits, expect an engineered partial civilizational collapse in a large city to underline the “you are all going to die without fossil fuels” propaganda pushed to avoid liability for the increasingly “in your face” climate extremes.
3) Less democracy and less freedom of expression from some governments and more democracy and freedom of expression from other governments in direct proportion to the percent penetration of Renewable energy machines in powering their countries (more Renewable Energy, more freedom) and an inverse proportion to the power of their “real politik” Fossil Fuel lobbies in countries. (more Fossil Fuel power, less freedom).
The bottom line, as Guy McPherson says, is that NATURE BATS LAST. Nature has millions of “bats”. Homo SAP has a putrid fascist parasite bleeding it to death and poisoning it at the same time. The parasite cannot survive without us so it is allowing us to get a tiny IV to keep us alive a little longer (a small percentage of renewable energy machines). It won’t work.
But the parasite has a plan. The IV will be labeled a “parasite” (the villain and guilty party) when Homo SAP finally figures out he is going to DIE if he doesn’t fix this “bleeding and poison” problem. Then the real parasite will try to morph into a partially symbiotic organism and Homo SAP will muddle through somehow.
I think that the parasite doesn’t truly appreciate the severity of Mother Nature’s “bat”.
Three future Scenarios:
1. If the parasite (as a metaphor for a fossil fuel powered civilization) does not DIE TOTALLY, I don’t think any of us will make it.
2. If the parasite takes MORE than 20 years to die, some of us will make it but most of us won’t.
3. If, in 2017, when the north pole has the first ice free summer, all the governments of the Earth join in a crash program to deep six the use of fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine within a ten year period, most of us will make it.
A word about political power and real politik living in a fossil fuel fascist dystopia.
It simply DOES NOT MATTER what the ‘real world”, “real politik” geopolitical power structure mankind has now is. It DOES NOT MATTER how powerful the fossil fuel industry is in human affairs. The internal combustion engine and fossil fuels have to go or Mother Nature will kill us, PERIOD.
As a Christian, I take very seriously the commandment to respect my fellow human beings as myself. Because the life giving biosphere is God’s creation, I take equally seriously our responsibility to be good stewards of our home. We have not been good stewards. Help me with this petition and future generations will thank you. We really, really ARE all in this together.
Will a massive public outcry born of demands like the one I make in the petition make a difference?
I think so. I know doing nothing is not optional for a caring human population. It is our thankless task to convince the powers that be that they are on a course for planetary suicide that can only be changed with a paradigm shift involving respect for all life, not just human life.
If we change, if we act to leave dirty and centralized, political power concentrating energy behind, we will give future generations a chance to live in a Viable Biospshere AND a political democracy.
If we don’t, we will perish.
Anthony G. Gelbert
Renewable Revolution Forum/blog
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/index.php
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/general-discussion/you-will-have-to-pick-a-side-there-is-no-longer-room-for-procrastination/msg46/#msg46
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/general-discussion/historical-documentaries/msg1214/#msg1214
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/nuke-puke/no-we-never-needed-lwr-nuclear-power-plants-to-make-nuclear-weapons/msg1332/#msg1332
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-the-u-s/msg353/#msg353
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/how-the-promise-of-chemurgy-was-dashed-by-big-oil/msg3/#msg3
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/how-the-promise-of-chemurgy-was-dashed-by-big-oil/msg89/#msg89
Here’s a link to the petition: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ai3Tb
Thank you
It would be something worth being thankful for those in the northern atmosphere zones to migrate to the all the more southerly zones. As the Carbon is cycled out of the environment, the temperatures would drop conveying longer and colder winters toward the northern scopes and in the end achieve the huge of northern domains. As a general rule non-renewable energy sources are limited assets and unless we design a change to atomic power we will have the life after vitality without the earthy person impedance. Obviously numerous people are likewise contradict to atomic power and clearly think our vitality needs understanding
Gulf states are fully dependent of fossils & American are more reliant on fossil fuels, with 68 per cent of its total electricity from burning organic material dug out from the ground, leaving 19 per cent of electricity generated from nuclear power and 13 per cent from renewables sources.
so it is quite difficult or will take necessary time to shift from them considering the developing countries also.