Try telling this to your typical gas-guzzling, climate change-denying, birth control-withholding right-winger:
World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid “a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills”, warns a major report from the Royal Society.
Contraception must be offered to all women who want it and consumption cut to reduce inequality, says the study published on Thursday, which was chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston.
The assessment of humanity’s prospects in the next 100 years, which has taken 21 months to complete, argues strongly that to achieve long and healthy lives for all 9 billion people expected to be living in 2050, the twin issues of population and consumption must pushed to the top of political and economic agendas. Both issues have been largely ignored by politicians and played down by environment and development groups for 20 years, the report says.
“The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption … or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future,” it says.
Now for a few a few verses of Monty Python’s “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life…”
Remember Paul Erhlich? Remember the movement — “Zero Population Growth” — prompted by his writings? We’ll be in for another denialist push by the rightwingers.
Remember how none of Erhlich’s predictions came true?
And even more than that, notice how that Royal Society item is basically pushing a racist meme here. Because it isn’t “right wingers” that he’s talking about. It’s all those countries in the third world that have high birth rates.
Can’t have all those black and brown people reproducing, now can we!
Malthus said this same stuff 200 years ago and we’re all still here. And in much larger numbers. Which is not to say that the greedy Republican Capitalists aren’t wrong about most everything including war, the enviornment, fossil fuel consumption, contraception, the death penalty, illegal immigrants, women, and so on. The Republicans (and Blue Dog Democrats) are the worst screw ups in human history.
Susie, those denialist rednecks already know about all this stuff. At least the ones I know are primed and ready for apocalypses of all sorts, from pandemics to food riots. Why do you think they’re all so heavily armed? Watch a few episodes of the disaster readiness shows (which names escape me) and find out how far down the rabbit hole some of these guys have gone.
Of course, they think that most of the really bad stuff will happen elsewhere. And they’re hoping for zombies.
Yeah, that’s right we’re still here – fuckin’ the place up day after day because we’re SOOOOOO intelligent that we can’t even see what’s right in front of us. Keep doin’ what you’re doin’ dolts – i’m sure “everything will be just fine.”
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/global-extinction-within-one-human.html
Global Extinction within one Human Lifetime as a Result of a Spreading Atmospheric Arctic Methane Heat wave and Surface Firestorm
Abstract
“Although the sudden high rate Arctic methane increase at Svalbard in late 2010 data set applies to only a short time interval, similar sudden methane concentration peaks also occur at Barrow point and the effects of a major methane build-up has been observed using all the major scientific observation systems. Giant fountains/torches/plumes of methane entering the atmosphere up to 1 km across have been seen on the East Siberian Shelf. This methane eruption data is so consistent and aerially extensive that when combined with methane gas warming potentials, Permian extinction event temperatures and methane lifetime data it paints a frightening picture of the beginning of the now uncontrollable global warming induced destabilization of the subsea Arctic methane hydrates on the shelf and slope which started in late 2010. This process of methane release will accelerate exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century.”
(if you can read, it spells our demise)
here, have some laughs:
http://transitionvoice.com/2012/04/the-gates-of-hell/
(an excerpt so you lazy jerks don’t have to bother readin’ the whole thing)
All the news that’s fit to print
Supporting documentation is far more abundant than revealed by these recent headlines:
Climate change is shaking the world, literally
Global warming borders close to being irreversible, according to conservative scientists
Greenland’s ice will melt at a much lower temperature than previously estimated
It might be irreversible already
U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu claims to be surprised
The Arctic death spiral continues unabated
After all, a carbon time bomb has been dropped in the Arctic
At the other pole, an iceberg the size of New York state is about to break away from Antarctica
For many years, people have been metaphorically stealing glaciers to put into cocktails. Now they’re literally doing it.
Habitat for millions of people will disappear with flooding from the oceans
Water, water, everywhere, but the world’s rivers are failing to make it all the way to the oceans
Oceans are acidifying at an ‘unparalleled’ rate, and will not survive business-as-usual disaster-as-usual
Conveyor belt tipping point has been reached, as I pointed out more than a year ago
As I also pointed out, at the same time under slightly different name, ‘Compost bomb’ is latest climate change ‘tipping point’
Meanwhile, drought in the southwestern United States is intensifying even as U.S. heat waves are set to intensify from New York to Los Angeles
According to tables of flowering dates in 1840s Massachusetts, average temperature already has risen 2.4 C in Concord since the industrial revolution began
Elsewhere in the US, the heat is unprecedented, with 7,000 record high temperatures so far this year
A vital species of tree killed by climate change brings to mind one my favorite lines from Derrick Jensen: “Forests greet us and deserts dog our heels”
The abundance of dire information and a slow news days causes even ABC “News” to point out the weather weirding
Not to worry, Tom.
God and the GOP will take care of us.