Ten million people in the Horn of Africa have been hit by the worst drought in 60 years, with some areas on the verge of famine and thousands on the march in search of food and water. A poor rainy season coupled with rising food prices have led to severe food shortages in countries including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda. Cattle and sheep are dying at higher rates than usual, reaching up to 60 percent of mortality in some areas. Food prices are soaring with grain prices in some parts of Kenya up to 80% higher than the five year average, while in Ethiopia, the consumer price index jumped about 41 percent. As a result, malnutrition rates are also rising.
Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years. All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions now afflicted the ocean environment. Three main drivers are sickening the global marine environment, and all are a direct consequence of humans activity: global warming, acidification and a dwindling level oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia. "We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime."
The ocean is a living system that makes our lives possible... our lives depends on its' existence. With every breath we take, every drop of water we drink, we are connected to the sea.
If the oceans are in trouble... and no doubt they are... we are all in trouble.
Atmospheric levels of CO2 are now *394.35ppm (in 1955 they were less than *320ppm)....in the past decade, 47% of CO2 emissions accumulated in the atmosphere, 27% were absorbed by land and 26% were absorbed by the ocean. Upper safety limits for atmospheric CO2 is *350ppm (levels have continued rising and stayed higher than *350 ppm since early 1988). Transport is the second leading source of CO2 emissions, yet the number of cars and light trucks globally is projected to triple by 2050. *When we reach 450ppm, we will arrive at a critical threshold beyond which catastrophic and irreversible change will occur.
Scientific research confirms that, so far, humankind has raised the Earth's temperature one degree Celsius, and a much greater rise is to come. If you had a satellite view of the planet in summer, there is about 40% less ice in the Arctic than when Apollo 8 in 1968 first sent back those photos of Earth. Oceans are 30% more acidic than just 40 years ago.
Climatologists tell us unless we get off gas, coal, and oil, that number will be four to five degrees before the end of this century. If one degree is enough to melt the Arctic, we'd be best not to hit four degrees!
There will be more common events like the 30,000 - 50,000 people who died in Europe in 2003 due to the heat wave there. Increasing temperatures also cause more air pollution, due to photochemical reactions that increase with higher temperatures. This will cause more morbidity and mortality from pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases.
Populations will be much more 'on the move' as food and water production is threatened.. these so-called 'environmental refugees' will be in increasingly greater numbers than the world has already seen. Diseases that have yet to arise will begin to develop as the planet continues warming. The biggest threat is the disease we're not yet expecting, but that will develop and we'll be ill equipped to handle.
As fancy as our technology is, we still cannot live without clean water, air, and food, and we rely on our environment for these. Climate change is the most health-damaging problem humanity has ever faced. With extreme weather events increasing in intensity and continuing around the world, there are huge health effects which will persist.
Every degree increase in temperature decreases the wheat harvest by 10%. Food cost has increased between 70 and 80% in the last year for basic grains. For millions around the world, they are already affected by not having enough.
Another important factor contributing to climate change is global overpopulation. The UN has set October 31 of this year as the date the Earth's population is expected to surpass seven billion people... and the world's population is growing by roughly 80 million people per year. At current rates, the world's population is on a trajectory to double in 49 years.
We have 225,000 people at the dinner table tonight who weren't there last night, so to maintain our current population we're already over-pumping underground aquifers. India is over-pumping, and we have over 100 million people in India dependent on over-pumping, so this can't be sustained. And climate change is making this all even more untenable, as the glaciers in the Himalayas that provide water for India and China are melting rapidly.
Unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently revealed that greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year to the highest carbon output in history, despite the most serious economic recession in 80 years. This means the aim of holding global temperatures to safe levels are now all but out of reach. The goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius, which scientists say is the threshold for potentially 'dangerous climate change' is now most likely just 'a nice Utopia.'
Population is the multiplier of everything else... climate change cannot adequately be addressed until the overpopulation problem is solved.
There is also the problem of extreme biodiversity loss. The key issue is the large populations of plants and animals that make the planet inhabitable. We need oxygen to breathe and water to drink. A three billion year evolution of plants and animals have made the planet habitable, and we are systematically destroying this biodiversity by plowing, cutting, and burning areas.
All of this together means the future of humanity, even with assumed innovation, has some very serious concerns. None of these problems are made easier by adding more people. The only way to achieve sustainability is to hold population growth, and have it decline. Everybody should be adopting an emergency response geared towards ending our reliance on fossil fuels.
We're not hearing this as dramatically in our 'controlled' MSM (main stream media). We SHOULD because it is as dangerous as hell... and I'll bet LOTS that it ain't going to take till the end of the century to get there.. (we'd be lucky if it isn't by the end of the next decade!!).
We should all be increasingly concerned about what the future has in store for us if climate change continues unabated, as it currently appears to be doing, given that most governments continue to fail to implement an actionable plan to avert it, as corporate interests restrict action.
People think technology is going to save us from climate change, but there is no technology on the horizon that will allow us to adapt ourselves out of this terrible mess. We can physiologically adapt to higher temperatures, but all that adaptation is not going to save us unless we also get the climate stabilized.
As long as our governments won't stand up to all the corporate powers in the fossil fuel industry, we must all fear the long road ahead of us. As climate change continues unabated, this planet will not be habitable by most all the species that are on it, including humans. It will be a very different planet... one that is not very conducive to human life.
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given some time, we could handle each of them ...this one is the real deal for all the marbles...
...we gotta stop f-n around with this!!
Climate Change: It's Bad and Getting Worse | Common Dreams
