Civilization’s Last Chance
The Planet Is Nearing a Tipping Point on Climate Change, and It Gets Much Worse, Fast.
By Bill McKibben

Even for Americans — who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now.

It’s not just the economy: We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it helps send the price of a loaf of bread shooting upward and helps ignite food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem … how best to put it, right.

All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.

There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, NASA’s chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — that “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it’s a tough diagnosis. It’s like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don’t bring it down right away, you’re going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you’re lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It’s like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.

In this case, though, it’s worse than that because we’re not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas — hard. Instead of slowing down, we’re pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year — two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.

And suddenly the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. It appears that we’ve managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost, and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.

And don’t forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car; and Americans are buying TVs the size of windshields, which suck juice ever faster.

Here’s the thing. Hansen didn’t just say that if we didn’t act, there was trouble coming. He didn’t just say that if we didn’t yet know what was best for us, we’d certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

His phrase was: “if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever-more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada’s efforts to comply with the Kyoto protocol, which was already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta’s tar sands.)

We’re the ones who kicked the warming off; now the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun’s heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis ***uyama had in mind.

And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them — to reverse course. Here’s the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto accord (which, for the record, has never been approved by the United States — the only industrial nation that has failed to do so). When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty — a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2.

If we did everything right, Hansen says, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out, we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.

More likely, though, we’re the coyote — because “doing everything right” means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they’re supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way U.S. automakers made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.

It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal.

It’s possible. The United States launched a Marshall Plan once, and could do it again, this time in relation to carbon. But at a time when the president has, once more, urged drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it seems unlikely. At a time when the alluring phrase “gas tax holiday” — which would actually encourage more driving and more energy consumption — has danced into our vocabulary, it’s hard to see. And if it’s hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as Americans do.

Still, as long as it’s not impossible, we’ve got a duty to try to push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality. In fact, it’s about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced.

After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can’t do this one lightbulb at a time.

We do have one thing going for us — the Web — which at least allows you to imagine something like a grass-roots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that “350″ stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.

Hansen’s words were well-chosen: “a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not.

Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won’t exist, at least not for long, as long as we remain on the wrong side of 350. That’s the limit we face.

Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author, most recently, of “The Bill McKibben Reader,” is the co-founder of Project 350, devoted to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. A longer version of this article appears at Tomdispatch.com.

© 2008 Los Angeles Times
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/11/8875/

Thanks for sharing that. I'm sending the link to that site to everyone I know, I hope others will do the same. Awareness is the first step, and it's sad to think the majority of people are just going through their busy lives without even believing or caring that global warming is real, alot of people I know think it won't happen in their lifetime, but it probably will if nothing is done to stop the insanity.

Actually humanity faces much bigger problems than climate control. The massive problem facing the world in the not so distant future will be that of peak oil as we are rapidly running out of ALL fossil fuels as well as uranium, food and water.

And in the long run, global warming may be good for us. You see, we wont have much fuel to heat our homes, so at least we wont freeze to death as much in a warmer climate.

Have you ever thought about how much your homes are dependent on natural gas for cooking, heating and hot water? Well, we will run out of natural gas in the next few decades, just after have we depleted our crude supplies.

http://www.amazon.com/High-Noon-Natural-Gas-Energy/dp/1931498539

I'm sorry for the polar bears and the penguins, but this is how mankind operates by living outside of natures intended means. All our actions have consequences, and many of our actions produce consequences that end up destroying peace. They destroy our peace as well as the inner peace of others.

Why don't we do anything about global warming...because we can't.

To do anything substantive would cause a financial and population backlash of unimaginable proportions.

And what we could do, even with drastic measures, would not cure global warming but only slow things down.

In addition, there is no one global entity to control all the green house gas emitters. China and India (CHINDIA) plan on adding more dirty coal burning electric plants to feed their burgeoning economies.

Yes, we have Kyoto, but...the largest polluters of green house gasses have exempted themselves from it.

"As of June 2007, a total of 172 countries and other governmental entities have ratified the agreement (representing over 61.6% of emissions from Annex I countries). Notable exceptions include the United States and Australia. Other countries, like CHINDIA, which have ratified the protocol, are not required to reduce carbon emissions under the present agreement."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol

We can't start wars over green house gas like we do oil...even then we would have to go to war right here at home before we point fingers at other countries.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3143798.stm

As far as foreign wars, many of these newly rich nations seem to be in a war of sorts to see who can build the biggest and the tallest. Well, the bigger the building is the more energy it takes to power it and the more green house gas is given off to pay for the ego behind the monstrosity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_...ld#Tallest_buildings

Thoreau once said when people invited him to dinner they 'put their pride' in how fancy and expensive a meal they could make. Whereas he put his pride in how simple and inexpensive a meal he could make.

Where do we put our pride?

We surely don't put it in living within our means and in balance with nature.

In the US, 93.2% of our electric comes from non renewable, greenhouse gas producing methods.

If we are looking to hydroelectric and renewable sources, 4.46% of our electric comes from hydroelectric and 2.34% comes from renewable energy production.

Out of this 2.34% of renewable sources, an undisclosed portion still contributes to global warming despite its prestige of being a 'renewable energy source' as it involves the burning of wood, black liquor, wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, tires, agriculture byproducts and biomass.

Only a fraction of the 2.34% of renewable electric energy that is produced comes from geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html

Lets say we decided to turn off the coal fired plants for 25% of a 24 hour day to save some fossil fuel.

Saving 25% seems to be a modest proposal.

So they shut the coal fired plants down for 6 hours during peak daytime operation.

And lets say we don't care that all the frozen food in the markets will thaw out and the refrigerated foods will spoil.

And lets say the workforce will sacrifice their jobs for the 6 hours every day while the electric is shut off.

And we put up with the gridlock and accidents from not having traffic lights and the doctors and hospitals all shut down.

And people just hold their noses over the backed up sewage that cannot be processed when the electric is off.

The real problem with trying to implement even a modest 25% fossil fuel saving plan is this - it just can't be done.

Coal fired plants are not of the nature to be turned off and turned on with the flip of a switch.

If a coal fired plant was turned off and completely cooled down it would take many days to bring it back online. If a coal powered plant was shut down even for 6 hours, it would take between 12 hours to bring it back to operational capacity.

In addition, when the plant is started back up, all the fossil fuel that is consumed in the startup does not make electric, it just goes to bring things back up to speed. And during startup, the plant operates at lower temperature and produces more pollution at those lower temperatures. And if that is not enough, startups of that magnitude send out power surges that destroy transformers and cause grid problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_plant

Well, if saving 25% from the coal plants does not seem feasible, what about going to the American public?

Can we cut back on GNP by 25%?

Cut back on utility use at home by 25%

Cut back on driving by 25%?

Cut back on consumption whether it be food or hard goods by 25%?

Cut back on interstate trucking by 25%?

And cut back in all related areas that use energy by 25%?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

The 'public' gets their underpants in a bind when the GNP declines at all...even when it is still in the positive numbers.

They start a panic in the stock market when the GNP is +1%, so how can it survive a -25% GNP drop?.

And as for cutting back on our demands...well it goes against the American dream.

And even if America decided to cut back 25%, that is only a drop in the bucket, as the rest of the world is ever increasing their demands on the environment and would soon make up for such a small decrease in greenhouse gas and fossil fuel depletion.

Are you starting to see the folly of thinking mankind can stop global warming, when mankind is built on such a ludicrous foundation?

There is no 'simple or easy answer' to this issue nor is there even a 'not so simple and hard answer' to our dilemma.

The world is in a death spiral. It is just how we have built our world over the years.

It would be one thing if we all reverted back to rural living, burning trees for fuel and housing and living within our comfortable means allotted to us by nature, as our ancestors did back in the day. But seven billion people can't burn the trees!

The World Coal Institute estimates world energy reserves as follows:

"At current production levels coal will be available for at least the next 155 years compared to 41 years for oil and 65 years for gas." (See footnote #1)

http://www.worldcoal.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=21

Even though this was written a few years ago and it is based on 'current production and consumption' it gives the same haunting message to the generations to come.

We may not see the end of our free flowing energy as we know it - but some of our descendants will in the not so distant future. This is the legacy they will inherit from us.

Mankind is just a little 'too smart' for his environment and learned to live beyond natures intended means. But mankind does not seem 'smart enough' to fix the mess that it has created.

Yes, mankind has done great things over their reign on earth, but we must always remember nature does not bow to us..in the end we all bow to nature.

Our population has grown to levels where it has passed the point of no return for supporting a sustainable human population as we know it today.

And leading the pack of over consumers is the USA.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption

Consumption is ingrained in us and we know no other way.

And even if we wished to amend our ways, how could all our retirement funds take the hit? America is built on borrowed money, spending and consumerism.

And what does all that consumerism lead to?

It leads to the mess we are in now and the bigger mess the world will be in once CHINDIA picks up momentum to copycat the envious lifestyle that they have held in high esteem as the 'American Dream'

The worlds population is out of control.

The problem is not with the earth not having enough land for all its people - the problem is with earth providing ad infinitum for all the needs the people crave.

Our planet is overpopulated in terms of what the planet can sustainably support. The more people born, the more heat is produced from their life and all their cravings, As such, the warmer and more polluted the earth gets and the more energy they all use and the earths resources are depleted.

While I cannot deny the wisdom of promoting life as many religions profess and personal freedom the USA is built on, sometime we must accept the lesser of two evils if promoting life turns into being more destructive to life than 'not promoting' it.

It then becomes a decision whether to choose between the 'greater good for the whole' or the 'greater personal right for the individual'... and the whole be damned. (Whole meaning entire human population of our planet.)

For instance, on a farm if the plants are planted packed like sardines (or 'packed like sushi' as they say in Japan) the plants do not flourish.

In nature, trees that are overcrowded weed themselves out by nature's decree. But if man forced the trees to not weed out and forces crowding the trees may die from disease due to a forced and unsustainable growth plan.

So it goes with how our planet is evolving...a sad but exactly true statement.

Fueling the problem of consumption is the games the Federal and World banks play with interest rates. They manage the economies in ways to fuel consumption and mask the real trend. Witness the recent cries for Federal bankers to lower interest rates...so the stock market can go up...fueled by spending of the consumer.

It is drug habit that Greenspan got us hooked on and we just can't get away from.

Our economy is not based on sustainable health - it is based low interest credit to encourage compulsive spending, debt and living a life of constant consumption with a 'disposable mentality' when it comes to durable goods.

Lets look at CHINDIA, two up and coming giants. Are they built on the compulsive spending habits of their people to foster a healthy economy? No, they are built on producing products and services and selling them to the USA and the world. Sure, their home consumption is a factor, but it is not the main factor as it is with the USA. The US GDP is based 70% on consumer spending.

The USA is built on consumer consumption to artificially fuel our economy to make our retirement funds only go up. All this worldwide consumption contributes to more and more global warming and the depletion of our natural resources. Then the governments juggle the numbers to make the inflation figures seem artificially low, so everyone's retirement portfolio will make them happy so they will continue to buy and consume more...and on it goes....IT IS ALL WE KNOW

You see, no other animal destroys its environment except mankind. We are the only ones that do not accept and live within our comfortable means. We not only debt with our finances we debt with our environment. What we are borrowing in terms of petroleum, coal and natural gas takes millions of years for nature to make. Yet we are using it all up in just a couple hundred years...we can never pay it back.

The scary thing is CHINDIA is just starting to bloom with their demands for fossil fuels We haven't seen anything yet with the meteoric rise of gas, energy and over consumption.

In China the per capita car ownership rate is 40 car owners per 1000 persons. In India it is much lower, running 8 cars per 1000 people. As these two giants evolve more of their population will want cars...in India, they are making a $2500 car as well.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/percapita_car_o.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20394364/

But what can one say about the problem unless people just cut back reproducing?

Everyone has a desire to have some sex stimulation and through that stimulation comes more and more people. And everyone has a desire to keep warm when it is cold or to keep cool in the heat or move about the earth and wear clothes. And it is from all those desires that global warming fueled through the expenditure of fossil fuels takes place.

But the sad reality is even if people cut back having babies, we are only delaying the inevitable and that alone will not fix the problem. It can be compared to men stuck underwater in a crippled submarine. The more they move around, the quicker they run out of air and die. The less they move, the longer they can live...but the end result is the same.

Now maybe some genius will come up with a replacement for petroleum, natural gas and coal to meet all out needs. But it is unrealistic to think we can grow enough corn to fuel all the trucks, airlines, cargo ships, cars and other needs we humans have in addition run all the power plants and factories, heat and cool our homes.

From this list we can see that we are still massively depend on crude for our non sustainable lifestyle even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels this instant. There is no replacement for crude...crude is in the details of our life.

A partial list of products made from Petroleum. One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline. The rest (over half) is used for petrochemical needs to make things like:

Solvents Diesel Motor Oil Bearing Grease
Ink Floor Wax Ballpoint Pens Football Cleats
Upholstery Sweaters Boats Insecticides
Bicycle Tires Sports Car Bodies Nail Polish Fishing lures
Dresses Tires Golf Bags Perfumes
Cassettes Dishwasher Tool Boxes Shoe Polish
Motorcycle Helmet Caulking Petroleum Jelly Transparent Tape
CD Player Faucet Washers Antiseptics Clothesline
Curtains Food Preservatives Basketballs Soap
Vitamin Capsules Antihistamines Purses Shoes
Dashboards Cortisone Deodorant Footballs
Putty Dyes Panty Hose Refrigerant
Percolators Life Jackets Rubbing Alcohol Linings
Skis TV Cabinets Shag Rugs Electrician's Tape
Tool Racks Car Battery Cases Epoxy Paint
Mops Slacks Insect Repellent Oil Filters
Umbrellas Yarn Fertilizers Hair Coloring
Roofing Toilet Seats Fishing Rods Lipstick
Denture Adhesive Linoleum Ice Cube Trays Synthetic Rubber
Speakers Plastic Wood Electric Blankets Glycerin
Tennis Rackets Rubber Cement Fishing Boots Dice
Nylon Rope Candles Trash Bags House Paint
Water Pipes Hand Lotion Roller Skates Surf Boards
Shampoo Wheels Paint Rollers Shower Curtains
Guitar Strings Luggage Aspirin Safety Glasses
Antifreeze Football Helmets Awnings Eyeglasses
Clothes Toothbrushes Ice Chests Footballs
Combs CD's Paint Brushes Detergents
Vaporizers Balloons Sun Glasses Tents
Heart Valves Crayons Parachutes Telephones
Enamel Pillows Dishes Cameras
Anesthetics Artificial Turf Artificial limbs Bandages
Dentures Model Cars Folding Doors Hair Curlers
Cold cream Movie film Soft Contact lenses Drinking Cups
Fan Belts Car Enamel Shaving Cream Ammonia
Refrigerators Golf Balls Toothpaste Gasoline

(net source)

...and even nuclear power is dependent on the mining of uranium and has limits as to how long the supply will last.

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4287300/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves


What is in store for us in the not so distant future?

Without energy our country is open for takeover ... no jets...no tanks...no transport on the ground or in the air. Luckily we will still have nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers as long as the uranium holds out. But the jets on the flattop all use jet fuel. All the supplies for those subs and carriers petroleum dependent. So long before the crude dries up the government must 'secure a supply' of crude for it own needs.

Other countries such as Russia that have a good supply of crude may not be so kind to keep on selling it to us and we need a 'local and continual' source somewhat within our borders. You see, jet fuel as well as gasoline deteriorates and cannot be stored indefinitely. So we must always be producing some of it to replace the stale stuff to supply the military. But, that's why we elect politicians to deal with these troubles

As our world changes and our drug supply dries up, things will only get worse. And the bigger the city - the bigger the hellhole it will become. And this time RIGHT NOW is the defining moment as to whether most of our population will die off or not in the crisis that awaits us in the not so distant future.

When it comes to the future, I see people living in miniature houses (the lucky ones that survive that is, after all most of the population died off long ago from starvation, freezing to death or from the riots) with roofs shingled completely with solar material.

They drive up to their house on an electric scooter that is recharged from their solar roof. If they are higher up the totem pole they may have a solar golf cart. But in either case, luck must still be on their side for without the sun shinning to charge it, their transportation sits idle. (Not much lead left to build big batteries...China gobbled it all up, so we have to make due with very small storage cells.)

They work for the government and in exchange the government feeds and clothes them from their warehouses. You see, we have become a sort of 'Communist Democracy' for without that bold leap and a desire 'to put our country first' Russia or China would have stepped in to acquire some new real estate.

The warehouses are fed from government owned coal fired steam locomotives. Diesel dried up long ago, so it was either wood or coal to fuel the trains. It did not take our government long to realize this. the electric plants only had to shut down sporadically for 8 months so until they could build the first of a large fleet of steam locomotives.

This was a 'slight' government oversight. They never figured that the coal fired power plants were fed with 'diesel powered' locomotives. They kept concentrated on the prediction that we had a hundred of years of coal left, but were oblivious as to how that coal is delivered to the power plant. But all these changes have some bright spots in them. As the coal producers were able to hire many more workers to manually mine coal, as the diesel powered mining equipment sit idle from lack of diesel fuel.

Now some of the states or bigger cities had the foresight to build one or two electric rail trolleys for public transport. Your only problem is getting to the main road to catch the trolley and then it is a straight ride to the government warehouse.

What happened to Private industry & Money?

Money is nothing more than stored energy. But since the crude dried up, the 'real energy' behind the money has vanished...and so did private industry. What about the coal mines...all government owned. If you want to eat you work..it is that simple.

So, what is money good for nowadays...to wipe your ass?

Not really, the government supplied toilet paper works better than that.

Martha Stewart syndrome died out long ago, now people are happy to eat rice and beans and get a clean glass of water to drink.

After all, the government can't afford to fool around decorating everyone's house, they can hardly produce enough food to keep a fraction of the population alive. Yes, tractors, reapers and farming is very crude intensive...but no one bothered to think about that as they continued to squander the worlds petroleum resources.

On a positive note, since most of the population died off from 'natural causes', the government does not have to worry about passing 'population control' any longer. They tried to get that universally opposed program passed for many years, but the public just would not go for it...too UN-American...goes against our religious upbringings...too controversial and all of the rest. We can still hear the cries now...Communist!...Atheist!...Baby Killer....Hitler....Impeach the President!!!!

Such objections are only subjective and prejudicial states of mind. As such, all problems related to 'controversial subjects' such as this are problems created in the mind...the mind of ego based, prejudicial man. If you find yourself being distracted with such thoughts as 'too controversial' just ask yourself if the proposed controversy is true, false or I don't know?

This introspective method may help you become truth based and not ego based. You will have made a 'choice divorced of need'...you wont 'need your ego' to support the truth...the truth will be able to stand on its own.

But nature helped us humans out with that hard decision - for nature does not discriminate nor find the truth too controversial or provocative or opinionated to be true. And in the end, nature settled the dispute of population control with even handed justice of 75% of our population dying off, ever reminding us all that nature does not bow to man...it is always man that bows to nature.

But, people hold no grudges against nature and are more in harmony with nature and enjoy a simpler life nowadays. People pick pine needles from trees to make their tea, since there is no jet fuel to import any Darjeeling tea or coffee. Once in a while people are able to kill a bird, a rat or cat to supplement their diet - so we still can find a place of gratitude in our life for such gifts.

Of course one problem still haunts the world?

The last remaining buckets of crude will soon be gone and they have still not found out how to make the tires for the solar powered golf carts and scooters without that critical ingredient of crude oil?

http://www.coaleducation.org/lessons/twe/mcoal.htm


Postscript

"Who Killed the Electric Car?"

This documentary not only discuses electric vehicle in depth, but cover hydrogen fuel cells, ethanol, methanol and biodiesel. A truly outstanding educational tool for anyone interested in this subject.

Get the DVD from your library today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F


Also See:


http://www.amazon.com/Out-Gas-End-Age-Oil/dp/0393058573

http://www.amazon.com/Hubberts-Peak-Impending-World-Shortage/dp/0691116253

http://www.lastoilshock.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-...uction/dp/0805055762

http://www.amazon.com/Long-Emergency-Converging-Catastr...-First/dp/0871138883

http://dieoff.org/

http://www.crudeawakening.org/

allenwrench,

How about just posting a link to one of the many threads here where you've previously posted this ridiculoulsy long message instead of hijacking threads to repost it again and again, every time you get the urge to claim your concern is more important than the subject at hand?

Just a thought.

Wayne

PS: I believe that your idea that "global warming may be good for us. You see, we wont have much fuel to heat our homes, so at least we wont freeze to death as much in a warmer climate" is just a common piece of climate change denier hog-wash. There is no silver lining to the global warming cloud.

I think it is possible for an individual to cut their energy consumption by 25 %, it can be done. Allenwrench, your saying there is no hope, so just give up? That's taking the easy route, which is what created this problem to start with. Change is never easy, but it is possible. If people made small changes here, like making their kids ride the bus to school instead of carting them around, that would help. Carpooling would help, Turning off lights when we leave the room helps, recycling helps. We can't just give up, there is too much at stake. If people could have forseen the problems they were creating when the industrial revolution began, maybe they wouldn't have done it. True, we are all too spoiled now to make major changes, but just little changes might help.

I think the world would be a much better place, had oil never been found..Much more simple, fewer wars, less chaotic...pre 1900s were hard, but honest good times..People worked for what they had, You didnt steal cause nobody had anything to steal. Oh maybe a chicken or so here and there from a weary traveler..But hey, he was hungry. Trains ran on water and wood. We didnt bitch about the heat, cause there was no a/c. Didnt know what a cool room was. Go inside and raise the windows, It was cooler than setting in the sun. Or hang out in the evenings under the shade trees till it was cool enough to go in the house..I grew up in the 70s and 80s, Can you believe my folks never had central air. We had a window unit, but seldom used it..Costs too much to run..so what if we loose some of our luxuries..It would probably be good for us...Make you appreciate what you HAD...But it would not be the end of life...

Yada, Yada, Yada.
McKibben is just another greenhouse fearmonger who can't seem to make up his mind regarding which pending global catastrophe will destroy the planet first.
I get a kick out of his breathless deference to James Hansen's work; the same James Hansen whose own computer models in 1971 predicted a coming ice age within 50 years. Now his models predict just the opposite.
You'll excuse me if I (yawn) seem a bit skeptical.