How much does your government love you? Do they aim to make
your breathing easier, more of a guarantee than a hope? Are they willing to
make the unpopular choices because those choices are in fact the better choices
or do they opt to make the easier choice because it gives you what you want
right now?
A government is not supposed to love you, want your vote
yes, love you? Breathing, well, given choices made thus far, it’s clearly not a
future goal. When it comes down to it, in general, people want what will make
they’re life better today and do not have much interest in tomorrow. We could
have a long debate about why, but let’s just concede that as fact. In general
politicians aim to provide a better tomorrow, maybe extend that a year or two,
but rarely do things that are for generations to come when it the current
generation, that’s the people who voted for them, doing less well. So,
basically, avoiding things shouldn’t impact the daily lives of John or Jane Q.
Public.
Understanding that, is it any wonder that on the 25th
anniversary for the original dire warning to humanity in which 1,700 scientists
from around the world listed the environmental plaques humanity faced, that
this time 15,000 scientists from 184 countries around the world found it
necessary to issue a more dire warning ?
In 1992, the original dire warning was sent out. The
catastrophic losses were listed as follows: stratospheric ozone depletion, air
and water pollution, the collapse of fisheries and loss of soil productivity,
deforestation, species loss and catastrophic global climate change caused by
the burning of fossil fuels.
25 years later has the world changed its tune? Cleaned up
its act? Anything?
25 years later, in 2017, 15,000 scientists have this time
come together and say “Humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in
generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most
of them are getting far worse…Soon it will be too late to shift course away
from our failing trajectory.”
Let’s think about this, we live in a world where there was
the Paris Climate Accord. Wait, but we’re not in it. The last few years the
Great Barrier Reef (Coral reefs are complex structures built mainly from the
calcium carbonate [limestone] skeletons laid down by hard corals. These
reef-building corals are highly vulnerable to rising sea temperatures and ocean
acidification. Slowed growth and loss of hard corals will reduce essential
habitat for many other reef creatures) has gone through a lot, several
bleaching events, some loss from extreme weather, some ocean acidification and
none of it good. The Larsen C Ice shelf collapse, upper ocean temperatures have
increased more than 1 degree, the distribution of penguin colonies has changed,
decline in the krill (a tiny ocean crustacean resembling a shrimp that is the
primary food of baleen whales and other animals that filter their food from
seawater. ), and underneath all that ice that’s no longer there are nearly 100
volcanos – which is another climate change nightmare. We’ve had storms that are
stronger, bigger, and more destructive than ever. But we are the one country in
the world that hasn’t signed the Paris Accord. Remember what I said in the
second paragraph? Well, as long as it is believed by politicians that people
want what will make they’re life better today and do not have much interest in
tomorrow than nothing will ever change. Even though, and I am not positive,
but I know it in my gut, the pentagon has to prepare for Climate Change because
it is a major threat.
It is a major threat-that’s why 15,000 scientists just sent
you a dire warning.
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