A Terrifying Truth

[RedEarth]

A Terrifying Truth

by Dave Lindorff



It wasn’t too long ago that the death of socialism, the triumph of capitalism and the end of history were being widely hailed.

What a difference a few years and a few fractions of a degree in world temperature change makes!

We may still be contemplating the end of history, but of a different sort. It is suddenly becoming painfully obvious that the pursuit of profit and the philosophy of growth for growth’s sake and of dog eat dog is about to kill us all off.

Now that it has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the earth is headed for a global heat wave the likes of which hasn’t been seen in hundreds of thousands and perhaps tens of millions of years–the kind of killing heat that in the past has led to mass extinctions–it is ludicrous to talk about things like carbon trading and raising vehicle mileage standards.

We need a revolution in the way we human beings live and the way we treat each other.

There is no way that the world’s 6.5 billion people–and especially the 2 billion of them who live in wealthier societies–can continue to consume energy at even close to the level that we have been consuming it. There is no way we in the developed world can continue to live the way we have been living, in oversized houses, heated in winter and cooled in summer. There is no way in the northern hemisphere we can continue to have teakwood or mahogany-floored living rooms and eat strawberries in December.

There is no way that we can continue to squander trillions of dollars on war and military spending every year.

No way, that is, if we plan on leaving a livable world for our children and grandchildren

......more.......

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/11/444/print/



Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist whose work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net and www.counterpunch.org. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His home will be submerged when the Greenland icecap melts.

[Speck Tater]

1. Surely he's kidding

Like the whole of humanity is going to suddenly come to its collective senses and do the right thing. Right! Like the global warming deniers are suddenly going to change their minds and give away their billions in profits for the sake the what they probably see as "little brown people in the jungle." It's not going to happen. The human race is fatally flawed, and its unwillingness to cope with the onrushing disaster is but one symptom of humanity's lack of what it takes to survive as a species.

Sadly, the human race it doomed to extinction, and there's not much point in denying that, any more than in denying global warming itself.

[Delphinus]

2. I'm not disagreeing with you -

but am curious - why do you say the human race is "fatally flawed"? In what way?

[BeFree]

3. Most people

Aren't the cause of the problem. Most people live a more or less sustainable lifestyle. These are the kind of people who will end up surviving the coming changes.

The rest of us will end up fighting for the last barrel of oil and the last good farmland. Those that can subsist on meager luxuries will remain to repopulate the earth.

'Course they'll not have the oil to grow their civilizations as our's has grown. But in about 500,000 years they'll find something.