The news is not good and hasn't been for a long time. We are heading for a 4C increase in global temperature which gets us into an unprecedented situation with uncontrollable weather extremes. There is a diary on the rec list which indicates that we have perhaps arrived at another tipping point. Losing the summer Arctic sea ice is a given and will happen within the next 10 years. A great amount of Methane release from the oceans would be game over and looks like we don't have much time to deal with that either.
Here is what eminent climate scientist Dr. James Hansen says about a 3C increase in global temperate
Three degrees may be the ‘‘tipping point’’, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar and, quoting NASA climate scientist James Hansen, there will be ‘‘no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet’’. Half the world would be uninhabitable. Ocean ecosystems and food chains would collapse.
‘‘And we are talking about how we might adapt to a 4-degree warmer world,’’ Spratt wrote. ‘‘Have we gone mad?’’
Our hope for a comprehensive solution at the UN Climate talks in Durban has brought us face to face with the reality that even if some there understand the urgency there are forces which are working harder to maintain the status quo and unfortunately they are mainly in US. We must now be painfully aware that a comprehensive solution will not come in sufficient time to mitigate the worse effects of climate change.
Politically, we have to gain back control of the house and maintain control in the senate and presidency. We have to fight for the 2012 election as though our lives depended on it...because it does. We have to have better democrats. We have to have more democrats. We have to have them all.
In our efforts to slow global warming we have been sleep walking into calamity. Our efforts have mainly relied on reducing C02 emissions. C02 emissions remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, so even if we went completely C02 neutral today, there would still be the damaging remains of the past use of C02 lingering in the atmosphere preventing us from stopping the most damaging effects of Climate Change. We need to focus on a short term solution which will reduce short-lived warming gases to buy us the time to take the long term solution of reducing C02. Fortunately there is a simple and fast solution Livestock production is a significant contributor to all of the short term climate forcers including: Black Carbon, Methane and Ground Level Ozone. So the solution could not be easier; eliminate or drastically reduce meat consumption. There is no other fast, no-cost solution out there that will buy us the time we need.
I have been writing extensively about this issue for several years. As the US has the highest per capita consumption of meat among large countries the ideal way to reduce meat consumption would be to influence the subsidies that the US gives to produce corn and soy as over- production of these staples have resulted in the animal factory farm culture due to artificial low prices for animal food which have created unsustainable cheap meat production. We are working on trying to do that but again are running into the influence of Big Agri Business in trying to maintain the status quo. This is something we don't need a middle man to control for us. We have the ability to refuse to eat products that will harm the Earth and our health and that will influence the market to lessen production.
I know that many on this site are making a huge effort to reduce their consumption of meat but we need this to go viral. We need to not only reduce our own meat consumption but try to educate and influence our families, friends and social networks to do the same. Such a small change in our lives can have a tremendous effect on our lives and the lives of our children and future generations.