GEORGE MONBIOT WROTE TUESDAY AT ALTERNET: “It doesn’t matter how many windmills or solar panels or nuclear plants you build if you are not simultaneously retiring fossil fuel production. We need a global programme whose purpose is to leave most coal and oil and gas reserves in the ground, while developing new sources of power and reducing the amazing amount of energy we waste.”
In short, if we don’t stop taking petroleum materials out of the ground, our efforts at alternative energy amount to tilting at windmills. It is not climate change that is our nemesis, but a catastrophic climate collapse.
Monbiot decries that individual members of governments across the world concede the facts of the problem, but their governments take no meaningful action. In the very moments they publicly bemoan their dependence on fossil fuel, they foster and concede to the corporations that contribute most to the horrific risk indicated by the recent comprehensive report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Immense changes are already in progress. Left to continue unabated, “hundreds of millions of people will be displaced, will starve, and will die,” as Thom Hartman, also oatn Alternet, wrote Sept. 26. “It means wars … famines … raging forest fires and the death of grasslands. (It will bring) acidification of our oceans and destruction of … ecosystems. … we stand on the edge of tipping points that hurtle (us) toward extinction.”
A typical denialist response will be that this is a scare tactic foisted by people who want to ruin the world economy and dispossess our “most successful” classes of people. How sad to hear people shrivel up and turn inward to defend their own status and property instead of helping to preserve the world we have known, in which we came to exist.
Looking out at the world, considering companies like TransCanada, Exxon-Mobil, BP, Valero and others, there appears to be such heavy investment in inertia as to prevent significant change in any meaningful time frame. Our world is not equipped to make comprehensive and binding decisions and execute them quickly. Our little efforts, so far, at sustainability, are mere rearrangements of deck chairs on the Titanic.
Let the band play on, but we haven’t got enough boats clear, and we’re sinking inexorably. There is no way to equip and stock your own life-yacht, even if you’re the Koch brothers. We’re all going down together.
Our optimistic hullabaloo about electric cars verges on silliness, however well meant. The electric grids are fed by carbon, with only a tiny fraction from wind and water or new-tech intelligence. Until the grids are powered largely by alternative means, an interim generation of hybrid cars is much more sensible than a leap straight into totally electric transportation. Otherwise, we turn on the pumps full speed to pull seawater straight into the Titanic’s hold, to make her sink even more quickly!
Robert Shelby was poet laureate of Benicia from 2008-10.
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Al Gore predicted in 2007 that by 2013 the ice would have melted in the north pole. Nice try Al. It just ain’t happening. I, for one, would be all for alternative fuels or energy when they are ready for prime time and if they can be created exclusively by us. We don’t need any other foreign dependency. As of yet, they are not. The wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine all the time. Electricity has to be made some way. When some auto manufacturer figures out a way for me to haul my big old honking trailer that weighs 12000 pounds down the road with something other than my big old honking diesel truck, I am all ears.
At the height of any vacation-worthy time of year you can travel along Highway 80, along Highway 5, or along any given U.S. Highway, and chances are you will encounter a veritable caravan of fuel gulping RVs traversing these routes. RVs piloted by portly folks fast approaching an AARP subscription age and who are popping Lipitor like fiends. I’m not talking about routine RVs with just the basic necessities. It has become increasingly more requisite that these RVs are equipped with large, noisy and polluting backup generators that serve to power satellite dishes, large screen TVs, steaming hot showers, blenders , microwaves, and other kitchen appliance, work stations, bug zappers, etc. Sometimes, you may even see a small vehicle in tow, such as Suzuki Samurai or an ATV. The typical reason for the auxiliary vehicle is to make getting back and forth, along the 300 yards to and from the general store at the campground/RV park, that much easier. Having all this, of course, makes these Super RVers (and the campers around them) appreciate the great outdoors that much more.
However, what I see are folk that can’t shake the mentality to over indulge. Mostly likely, earlier along their life paths, these individuals made strides to feed their need to overindulge with such thing as one last cocktail, a cigarette, or another bump or two. In other words, out-of –control chemical dependency. Later in life these dependencies just manifested themselves elsewhere in their psyches. The only difference is the chemicals consumed to feed the over indulgence. Fifths and eight balls have been replaced by hydrocarbons. What is striking about all this, is that either stage, these behaviors can be seen as forms of gluttony. Most folks know the inevitable price for a lifetime of gluttony.
Sorry you can not afford it.
Really? Did you somehow gain access to my banking records?
JLB, why don’t you take a deep breath, have a cuppa coffee, pull your head outta the FOX NEWS & VIEWS crack and take a much better look around than you ever have, before? Try a team of donkeys for your diesel truck. They are all ears, too. As for concern with inconstancy of wind and sun, the future is in combinations. We’ve really got to start putting it all together, and with new stuff, too. By pulling oil and gas out of the ground we are burying ourselves. Ooooh, yeah — you’ll say you don’t see anything wrong, especially with your investments in carbon and conventional trucks.
Shelby, can’t you respond without personal attacks?
Unfortunately he is not capable. I have pleaded with him to stop but it doesn’t look like it is going to happen. He is probably not a very happy person so needs to pour his misery out on others in the form of verbal vomit from behind the protection of his keyboard. I can guarantee you he wouldn’t be saying that to my face!
I think you said 5the same thing of me. But it appears we may be on the same wave length. Robert Shelby is no more than 5’2″, believe me he is no threat to anyone.
I read your responce on the other run. Thanks for the comment. Yes we are on the same wave. Again thanks.
There’s no point avoiding personal remarks. You people’s ideas are scarcely worth discussion.
Because they don’t agree with your point of view?
I think it;s just not in you to converse without name calling, at least on the internet.
Robert America is the #1 energy producer {read the WSJ}. Renewable energy is far to expensive and a long ways off. California and other states are putting in new regulations to make extraction or fracking clean and safe. Fossil fuel is the future of this state. It will be done in the proper manor. I know that does not make you happy. It will provide the revenue for health, education, infrastructure and for sure jobs to help all levels of income. The scare tactics of the article scare no one except maybe you.
We have much energy resources right here within our own borders that it is ridiculous that we take any from any other country. The government is in the way of getting to it. We know how to do it cheap and if the government would stop stifling progress and start letting us drill, fuel prices would plummet. That would provide us plenty of time to perfect the alternate sources.
P.S.: Al Gore didn’t make all that up out of thin air, the way you guys like to pretend. He had results of many, long studies to draw on. You of course run on hearsay, having never read even one of his really fine, intelligently written books. You ought to look ’em up and get with it.
RMS,
Defending Al Gore is so yesterday. The man had his day in court and lost, big time.
OK let say that Al did base his remarks on major studies. What we know then is that those studies were crap! As is the case with all of the other ones that have “supposedly” led to the believe that we humans are killing the planet. Volcanoes have been trying to kill the planet for millions of years and they haven’t been successful. How long have we been around as a percentage of that time? Give me a break.
Some of them may be flawed, JLB, but you are certainly not one who is equipped to discern the flaws. You are a second rate, third hander. How’s that for name calling? Whine awhile. Use it to avoid substance.
You are correct, I am not equipped to discern the flaws of the reported data. What I do know is big Al said the polar ice cap would be melted by 2013. Best I can tell, it’s still there and it isn’t going away any time soon. That is enough data for me to figure out that the reporting was seriously flawed despite my lack of equipping to discern the flaws in particular on my own. Al Gore was and continues to blow hot air in an attempt to amass a fortune through the “green” movement. Yes that one that is a solution looking for a real problem. They are throwing the spaghetti noodles agains the wall, hoping one will stick, but it just ain’t happening. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Why don’t all of you take a break and realize that everything you green folks want is happening. Look at the number of wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars etc etc are here versus ten years ago. It ain’t going to happen over night so have patience and we will all get there. In the mean time we are dependent on fossil fuels. So please let normal evolution happen.
Robert Shelby I suggest you read the new article on-line right now about Global Warming/Climate Change by non other than Dennis Lund. I think it will be counter to what you are reporting on. Sorry Robert.
Bobbie, Dennis is like a piece of your defective understanding. He”s the last one to read if you’re trying to do anything but find rhetorical crutches, arguing for bad positions.
“I suggest you read the new article on-line right now about Global Warming/Climate Change by non other than Dennis Lund”. – Que spit-take!
All you pseudo-conservatives are actually death merchants. You’re asleep to yourselves and the world because your awareness is channeled to a dream-like shallowness, just like the Tea Party members of Congress.
My last word, here, to you silly children, is that none of you took issue with anything I wrote in the feature above. If that doesn’t descend to ad-hominem hokyness, I don’t know what does. But, trust one or more of you to come whining about “personal attacks.” HOW ABOUT TEXTUAL AVOIDANCE AND DANCING PAST ISSUES?
RMS stated: My last word, here…
promise?
I responded right out of the gate and wrote in direct response to your article. How quick you are to dismiss and call names. You must have one hell of a miserable existence filled with anger and hate. What happened to you that’s got you so pissed off. At the end, you know we are all in this thing together and no one is getting out alive. Maybe valium would help.
Post-note: “…we are all in this thing together and no one is getting out alive.” That may be the one true thing I’ve ever read from you. Evidently, starting these tea-cup wars is my fault for writing a feature that you guys WHO SEE ME AS YOUR ENEMY can jump in on and kick around. But, how you hate it if I kick back. Who acts more like an enemy? Me or you?
RMS Asked, apparently to no one in particular: Who acts more like an enemy? Me or you?
You.
LOL, better luck next time, you need some professional help.
RKJ: Sonny, I am professional help.
Then act like a pro and not a name calling child
My profession, by the way, is that of a life poet. You don’t imagine what that is. The first thing a lifelong poet of humane life learns takes a long, long time both in and out of schools. It concerns how language and mind work. Degrees are a matter of other people’s opinion. Either language works the mind or the mind works language. I see many of you guys as puppets to the unconscious rhetoric of ill-grasped speech, mis-managed languages. English is no single thing. Learning how to talk has been too much for you. You didn’t get all the way there. You are governed by interests more partial than whole, more egocentric than socio-centric or humanely directed. You have not become viable specimens. You have immense suffering yet to experience, and being incomplete as you are, you will drag others into that suffering.
Huh? That just sounds like a bunch of verbal garbled-e-goop! Interesting coming from someone who professes to be enlightened in the language.
So you are a poet and you profess to be professional help? Lord help us!
There seems to be a lot of Left Wing hate in this run. The funny thing is it is going nowhere. We will still drill for many years to come. The Left Wing will take the benefits gladly without a sound. We will still be the greatest user of energy and all the long having a wonderful life doing it. The revenue producesd by fossil fuel will go towards all the thing we all want. You know what they are. Good health, safety, infrastructure, education, full employment, strong military and yes renewable energy. Fossil fuel production will provide all of that. All along being done safely and healthy. The revenue stream will also reduce our national debt and deficets. We will again rise to the top of the chart on education, health and all other issues that make living in America so great. At the same time setting examples to the world what can be done. I believe we are at a time that this country is going to have an unbelievable econ expansion as never seen before. We will all benefit. So all the scare tactics are a waste of time by the left wing. God Bless America.
Beyond the tit for tat toilet talk
More on acidification of the Oceans.
From the above article:
‘Immense changes are already in progress. Left to continue unabated, “hundreds of millions of people will be displaced, will starve, and will die,” as Thom Hartman, also oatn Alternet, wrote Sept. 26. “It means wars … famines … raging forest fires and the death of grasslands. (It will bring) acidification of our oceans and destruction of … ecosystems. … we stand on the edge of tipping points that hurtle (us) toward extinction.”
A key passage from the article below for the community to consider
In the starkest warning yet of the threat to ocean health, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) said: “This [acidification] is unprecedented in the Earth’s known history. We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already begun.” It published its findings in the State of the Oceans report, collated every two years from global monitoring and other research studies.
Alex Rogers, professor of biology at Oxford University, said: “The health of the ocean is spiralling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth.”
http://www.zcommunications.org/ocean-acidification-due-to-carbon-emissions-is-at-highest-for-300m-years-by-fiona-harvey.html