A new report (excerpt below) compiled by a very distinguished panel of climate experts is putting out the big warning: we need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions or ELSE. The report indicated that our actions need to be DRACONIAN and they need to happen NOW. It indicated that CIVILIZATION hangs in the balance.
In response to this, the Congress just passed a new Energy Bill. The bill called for two key measures to address global warming and to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. One measure was an increase in CAFE standards from 26 to 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020; the other was a requirement to obtain 15% of our energy from renewables by the same year.
I've posted my analysis previously of just how impotent these measures are but will repeat it here. All numbers below indicate millions of barrels of oil used per day in the US.
Projected US usage in 2020........26.0 million
.....Savings from CAFE................3.0 million
.....Savings from Renewables.......3.5 million
Projected usage after Energy Bill.19.5 million
Current US usage......................20.0 million
Net Reduction by 2020...............00.5 million (2.5% over 13 years or about .2 of 1% per year)
Does the Energy Bill the Democrats just pushed through the Congress, a bill that will help reduce CO2 emissions by 1/5 of 1% per year, sound like DRACONIAN cuts in CO2 emissions to you??? The problem with the bill and the problem with our entire political process is that it is so controlled by big money and so controlled by wanting to "WIN" that it is NOT able to do what needs to be done no matter how great the risks we face are. If Democrats had made an effective case for the DRACONIAN cuts in CO2 emissions WE HAVE TO HAVE and then the republicans voted against them, that would have been one thing. But that is NOT what happened. Instead we had clowns like Levin and Stabenow protecting the auto industry. A worthy cause to be sure but hardly sound policy given the crisis we face. Again, the criticism is not that Democrats should pass legislation if they don't have the votes; the criticism is that they have NOT pushed the harsh conservation measures WE HAVE TO HAVE. Democrats need to push CONSERVATION and wake up Americans to the dire situation we face. They just have NOT done so and are NOT likely to do so. What kind of political system do we have that doesn't put this clear and present danger on the front page of every presidential campaign? This is a deadly serious business and the silence has been deafening.
The program we should start implementing today would lead to DRACONIAN MANDATORY REDUCTIONS in auto use. No, it will NOT be politically popular. What's the alternative????? Winning elections and destroying civilization in the process????? To achieve a meaningful reduction in auto use, we need to build wide-scale efficient mass transit. We need to start re-engineering our entire society. We need to rethink how we live and how we work. The clogging of freeways by people commuting to work in cities has to stop. We need to subsidize neighborhood and backyard wind and solar installations. Money has to be pulled from the defense budget and directed like a laser at this deadly enemy we face. Having the best arsenal of 21st century weaponry is NOT going to protect us from the imminent threat of global warming.
Each of us needs to do much more than we're doing. Changing to efficient light bulbs will NOT be sufficient; we need to change our political institutions that seem unable to call for the DRACONIAN measures we so desperately need. When you see people focused on political campaigns that say little or nothing about these civilization-saving measures, these DRACONIAN conservation measures, know that they are doing all of us a disservice.
source:
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2675747.ece The Earth today stands in imminent peril ...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued what amounts to an unambiguous warning to the world: civilisation itself is threatened by global warming. <skip>
"Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures," the scientists say. Only intense efforts to curb man-made emissions of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases can keep the climate within or near the range of the past one million years, they add. <skip>
The unnatural "forcing" of the climate as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatens to generate a "flip" in the climate that could "spark a cataclysm" in the massive ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, the scientists write. Dramatic flips in the climate have occurred in the past but none has happened since the development of complex human societies and civilisation, which are unlikely to survive the same sort of environmental changes if they occurred now.
"Civilisation developed, and constructed extensive infrastructure, during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12,000 years in duration. That period is about to end," the scientists warn. Humanity cannot afford to burn the Earth's remaining underground reserves of fossil fuel. "To do so would guarantee dramatic climate change, yielding a different planet from the one on which civilisation developed and for which extensive physical infrastructure has been built," they say. <skip>
Dr Hansen said we have about 10 years to put into effect the draconian measures needed to curb CO2 emissions quickly enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperature. Otherwise, the extra heat could trigger the rapid melting of polar ice sheets, made far worse by the "albedo flip" - when the sunlight reflected by white ice is suddenly absorbed as ice melts to become the dark surface of open water. The glaciers and ice sheets of Greenland in the northern hemisphere, and the western Antarctic ice sheet in the south, both show signs of the rapid changes predicted with rising temperatures."
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