This year’s holiday season comes just after the dismal Climate Change talks in Cancun, Mexico. Mostly, they agreed to keep talking but no enforceable rules. Get one of the many summaries of the talks here:
Report from the Cancún Climate Conference | Union of Concerned Scientists "Modest success, but not enough to save the planet | In the wake of last year’s disappointing U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, some began to question the process and whether the 193-nation talks were the proper forum to produce a viable international climate agreement.” UCS | Union of Concerned Scientists
Jobs and buying stuff and being cheery rule this holiday season--despite the growing realization that only a few (the rich) are going to survive this recession well and the rest of us… not so much. We like our news served hopeful and happily. The possibility that we too have a chance (which is becoming vanishingly remote) to be wildly rich keeps us from focusing on the needs of the majority and our environment. The lottery called the “American Dream” is being challenged by reality.
But we should focus on our environment. It may be dismal stuff to those who think it’s just a left-wing conspiracy, but things will get nasty if we don’t address Climate Change. (Maybe, we can hold the Climate Change deniers, who stall effective actions on Climate Change, accountable.) Here’s a discussion between Dr. James Hansen and Bill McKibben on the perils of Climate Change. What does Climate Change look like and what are we facing now and in the near future? Read a transcript of a conversation between the most influential people on Climate Change:
"From the Desk of Dr. James E. Hansen Conversation with Bill McKibben The paperback version of Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity includes, as an added section, a conversation between Bill McKibben and me".
While you are at it, read this great encapsulation of the Climate Change issue. If I could convince anyone to read just one short article (10 minutes) aboutClimate Change, it would be this. It puts the case before us in the clearest way that our generation should be focused on Climate Change.
A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning - NYTimes.com "Yet, five years after Dr. Keeling’s death, his discovery is a focus not of celebration but of conflict. It has become the touchstone of a worldwide political debate over global warming. When Dr. Keeling, as a young researcher, became the first person in the world to develop an accurate technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the air, the amount he discovered was 310 parts per million. That means every million pints of air, for example, contained 310 pints of carbon dioxide. " The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia
What will all this mean to Rochester, NY’s environment? It means that however successful the media is in marginalizing the most critical issue of our times, when runaway global warming is cheating the young out of a future, Climate Change will change our lives here too. Climate Change, where our environment even in Rochester, NY, is going to be constantly shifting as our atmosphere warms up, making it very difficult to preserve and protect our environment. A prudent citizen would begin thinking Climate Change when they vote, when they buy stuff, and just about everything they do because this isn’t your grand grandparent’s environment.
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