[dohboi]

World Headed for a High-Speed Carbon Crash

If global carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, humanity will eventually be left with no other option than a costly, world war-like mobilisation, scientists warned this week.

“It’s blindingly obvious that our economic system is failing us,” said economist Tim Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey in the UK.

"Prosperity isn’t just about having more stuff. Prosperity is the art of living well on a finite planet." -- economist Tim Jackson

Climate change, pollution, damaged ecosystems, record species extinctions, and unsustainable resource use are all clear symptoms of a dysfunctional economic system, Jackson, author of the report and book “Prosperity Without Growth”, told IPS.

“It is a travesty of what economy should be. It has absolutely failed to create social well being and has hurt people and communities around the world,” he said.

Emissions need to peak and decline by 2020 to have a chance at keeping global temperature rise to less than 2.0 degrees C, according to the Emissions Gap Report 2013, involving 44 scientific groups in 17 countries and coordinated by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels has raised the global average temperature only 0.85C so far, but even that has produced a wide range of impacts.

[rollin]

This seems to be just another author feeding on the "end of the world" scenarios.
Maybe another Paul Revere type In a land of the deaf. Actually Tim Jackson, is a professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey in the UK. I thought we didn't want more development but transistion.

No one believes we will go into a WWII type response, the governments can't even agree on how to limit carbon pollution let alone actually reduce it's output.
To all appearances civilization will go on parasitizing mother nature until the fossil fuels become so difficult to get they stop and the climate change eats away at their ability to further fund fossil fuel discovery and production.

It's blindingly obvious that our economic system has failed many of us, not all of us. Those who it has not failed are pushing hard to continue BAU. It's also blindingly obvious that the transistion movement is still embryonic when we need it to be at least in childhood by now. We need 100 monkeys and have 1 or 2.

So, much like the lemmings, we will wonder why we are going somewhere with no real destination, just before going under. Keep paddling, that island is just over the horizon and so is nuclear fusion power.

[dohboi]

Nice points, especially:

civilization will go on parasitizing mother nature until the fossil fuels become so difficult to get they stop and the climate change eats away at their ability to further fund fossil fuel discovery and production.

It sure looks like this is how it's going to play out, unfortunately. I still find that I have to look at kind of miracle is needed to have any remote chance of making it remotely possible that we might avoid utter destruction, for some reason.

It's blindingly obvious that our economic system has failed many of us, not all of us. Those who it has not failed are pushing hard to continue BAU.

Well put, and a point I often make. I assume he was talking about our collective future. The super rich may delude themselves into thinking that they and theirs will escape all negative consequences of their and our actions forever; I am dubious.

But yes, for now, some are richly rewarded by their destructive behaviors.


By the way, is your handle partly inspired by this great old song by Randy Newman of the same name?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBux4AlGQzM&feature=kp

[onlooker]

well since i posted a few times already, I would like to say that yes things certainly do seem hopeless in so much as our so called leaders seem reluctant to initiate and be the catalysts for the necessary tough changes required and much of the masses of people are either powerless or uninformed or even apathetic. I do believe if their is any hope it lies in great numbers of people refusing to continue in this destructive system and renouncing consumer society even as they make it their mission to heal earth and cooperate with each other in a harmonious way.

[Subjectivist]

Sermon I heard this morning centered around the fact that real leadership involves leaders publically doing uncomfortable things to demonstrate to the populous that real change is vitally important. The example used was the King of Ninevah who doffed his royal garments for sack cloth and left his throne to sit in ashes proving to his people extreme change was needed by example. As long as Congress and the President continue to live like elite princes nobody else is going to take seriously all the talk about how we need to cut our consumption. At least when Jimmy Carter was President he installed solar water heaters on the White House as an example.

[dohboi]

Good comparison.

I'm getting a bit tired of waiting for them to see the writing on the wall, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_writing_on_the_wall

[onlooker]

Or these leaders can also start by repealing some of these laws that favor multinational corporations and also allow more participation in the political arena ie. more political parties allowed to really participate. Oh lest I forget abolish the stock market and the Federal Reserve. God forbid. The time for talk has passed the time for doing has arrived. Oh and Subjectivist me and girlfriend big fans of Lord of Rings!

[rollin]

Thanks dohboi, that was a great song. Never heard it before but it is very relavent to society.

Pstarr, you missed the metaphor. I did not say that we were like lemmings, just that we will feel the same sense of wonder (confusion) just before we go down.

[ROCKMAN]

Pstarr - Oh...and buy plenty...especially petroleum based. I need to get a new set of tires this month and could use an extra kiss in the next paycheck. I've developed a new Sunday morning ritual...I have spare time since atheists don't have to go to church. I kneel down on my little rug, face Bentonville and thank Dog for the American consumer.

[americandream]

World Headed for a High-Speed Carbon Crash

If global carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, humanity will eventually be left with no other option than a costly, world war-like mobilisation, scientists warned this week.

“It’s blindingly obvious that our economic system is failing us,” said economist Tim Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey in the UK.

"Prosperity isn’t just about having more stuff. Prosperity is the art of living well on a finite planet." -- economist Tim Jackson

Climate change, pollution, damaged ecosystems, record species extinctions, and unsustainable resource use are all clear symptoms of a dysfunctional economic system, Jackson, author of the report and book “Prosperity Without Growth”, told IPS.

“It is a travesty of what economy should be. It has absolutely failed to create social well being and has hurt people and communities around the world,” he said.

Emissions need to peak and decline by 2020 to have a chance at keeping global temperature rise to less than 2.0 degrees C, according to the Emissions Gap Report 2013, involving 44 scientific groups in 17 countries and coordinated by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels has raised the global average temperature only 0.85C so far, but even that has produced a wide range of impacts.

Is there a link to this?

[dohboi]

Sorry 'bout that, ad. Here's the link:

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/11/world-he ... bon-crash/

And don't miss the related shortish video by Kevin Anderson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... umLH9kOpOI

[Keith_McClary]

Good comparison.

I'm getting a bit tired of waiting for them to see the writing on the wall, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_writing_on_the_wall

Their kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians?

[dohboi]

Perhaps today it will be the Russians and the Chinese??

[Hawkcreek]

Pstarr - Oh...and buy plenty...especially petroleum based. I need to get a new set of tires this month and could use an extra kiss in the next paycheck. I've developed a new Sunday morning ritual...I have spare time since atheists don't have to go to church. I kneel down on my little rug, face Bentonville and thank Dog for the American consumer.

Dog will punish you for your irreverent tone. He will cause your wells to dry up.

[ROCKMAN]

H - He already has: lead me to be a geologist instead of an engineer. I just consider it my purgatory time. As our hero Riggs in 'Lethal Weapon' said about Dog: "Hate him back...it works for me".

[Timo]

Sorry for this in advance, but i feel compelled to let my doomer side take over today. Nothing will happen to fight growing carbon emissions or turn the tide on AGW because 1) leadership is required to do anything useful; 2) the smart people who have any sense that it's already too late, and are inclined to do something to further humanity's cause in this respect aren't leaders; and 3) the leaders we do have aren't smart. If smart people were to do anything, they'd have to overrun the rest of the world's leaders, and that involves establishing military order across the planet, and that runs counter to the very principles of democracy, which are in turn beholden to the foundations of capitalism. If anything can be done to reverse our present course, it will have to be forced upon us against our will. Ain't gonna happen.