Sneering at Climate Catastrophe

*According to famed conservationist E.O. Wilson, we have entered the Age of Eremocene, or, the age of loneliness. The whales have gone quiet. The mammals, the birds and the insects have vanished. 138 acres of ancient forests are felled every minute. The Man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction is occurring as much as 10,000 times the rate of the previous five others.   Hideous.

Instead of the world leaders being terrified and taking the latest the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and the U.S.4^th Climate Assessment very seriously by ending the annual $5.3 trillion fossil fuel subsidies and reducing fossil fuel emissions now, they are sneering at science.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) latest report forecasts an increase in global petroleum production to 100 million barrels daily en route to 112 million. The U.S. has become the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.

U.S. President Donald Trump refuses to accept the findings of 13 government agencies and their 300 scientists that prepared the 4^th Climate Assessment. Since 2015, Man-made extreme weather events have cost the U.S. cost nearly $400 billion.

President Donald Trump refuses to accept the findings of 13 government agencies and their 300 scientists”

Even more worrisome, if the U.S. Environmental Protecting Agency (EPA) Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler has his way, he will be meddling with the information on the next climate assessment. It’s incoherent, but very much in keeping with the global fossil fuel pillaging and polluting of planet Earth.

Over the past 20 years, rising temperatures, droughts, floods and deadly firestorms from fossil fuel heat has lambasted the Australian continent. Yet, the federal Liberal government, led by newly appointed Prime Minister Scott Morrison, has greenlighted another foreign owned Chinese coalmine in the Galilee Basin, Queensland. And after years of dawdling and negotiating government subsidies, the Indian behemoth Adani Enterprises, is set to break ground on its massive water-contaminating Queensland Carmichael coalmine.

In the meantime, Nature is showing us the irrefutable effects of fossil fuel heat both under the sea and on land – death.

Earth is set to register its hottest four consecutive years. That translates into climate instability. Higher highs along with occasional lower lows as evidenced last week by 400 sea turtles freezing off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Unheard of.

Firestorms across the West are predicted to get far worse and much larger. Already this year, from British Columbia to California a new breed of climate-driven plume fires spawning firenadoes ravaged the forests and incinerated the animals. Hurricane-like winds tore mature trees right out of the earth.

Unprecedented.

Over the past 20 years, rising temperatures, droughts, floods and deadly firestorms from fossil fuel heat has lambasted the Australian continent.”

The unimaginable carnage created by these infernos, in California alone, is horrendous. No amount of blame nor posturing for a timber grabby Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke can undo the horrific death toll from rising temperatures, prolonged droughts with repeated heatwaves that led up to California’s worst conflagration, the Camp Fire. 88 deaths with 150 people still missing and insurance costs expected to top $19 billion.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

My colleagues predict more flooding. That means, for instance, North Carolina, which was slammed with two hurricanes within 22 months, will face more of Nature’s fiercest storms more frequently. By the way, so will the entire east coast of the U.S. along with the Gulf States and other regions around the globe.

And then there’s the failing food system that elevated temperature has begun to lace into. Just ask the German and Swedish farmers about the failing crops and the summer of 2018 heatwaves.

Fossil fuel air pollution is already unbearable around the world especially for children. They are developing Alzheimer’s disease from breathingfetid fossil fuel air. Clean air, fresh water, healthy soils, vibrant ancient forests and oceans replete with coral reefs are their birthrights.

There’s no question that Man is at its crossroads. Business as usual by extracting and combusting more fossil fuels means the collapse of civilization quickly.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We have a flawless blueprint to follow, Nature. We have the existing zero-combustion technologies, the money and the global workforce to quickly make the transition away from deadly fossil fuels.

The bottleneck resides within the unctuous world leaders and lawmakers that are kowtowing to the planet-killing resource extracting oligarchs.

It’s time for society to embrace the children and their intrepid climate activism by immediately voting these despots out of office!