Burning World Inspires Recklessness

Last winter was a bad time for me. On the one hand, I was so broke that I was buying whole milk instead of 2% and small cartons of whipping cream to add to drinks so I'd be less hungry and could stand cutting out about a meal a day. On the other hand, there was bad global warming news. Blah, blah, ... passed the triggering greenhouse gas threshold ... blah ... we're losing the Arctic ice in summer in less than a decade and it may never come back ... blah, blah, blah.

I stopped paying attention to climate news for a good couple months. Couldn't read it. Didn't want to know. It was just too much. We've all been there.

Things are better this winter. For me, anyway. The planet, not so much. So in spite of the fact that the news is worse, I've stayed more on top of things.

Which is why I know that my home state of California may go from 5th agricultural producer in the world to barren wasteland and will suffer disproportionately high sea level rises on its coasts in the event of Antarctic ice shelf collapses. I also kept reading to discover that the oceans are dying, and that global warming is locked in for 1,000 years. I know that Australia's both flooding and spontaneously combusting. Livestock has been stranded, probably to starve, and crops are suffering heavy losses. Major fires have left 128 dead, 14,000 homes without power and whole towns have been razed. The temperature there has been hovering around 115 degrees in the fire-stricken areas and some evil-minded arsonist has been able to start a blaze that's been swift and impossible to control given the extreme drought and heat.

Instead of turning off the news, I've noticed myself eating rather more peanut butter. That does seem reckless (or perhaps indicative of suggestibility), but mine is perhaps one of the less spectacular of climate change freakouts.

Indeed, wingnut wailer Glenn Beck seems to have so lost his mind over it that he's accused Al Gore of turning young climate activists into a new Hitler Youth movement. Youth climate activists are not amused.

Climate change long ago drove Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) so wantonly mad that when Secretary Chu recently warned about the likely disappearance of California agriculture, Inhofe encouraged Chu to look at real world data, by which he meant the ravings of discredited fossil fuel industry hacks whom he's no longer sane enough to be embarassed by.

It has driven sensible and widely respected foreign affairs commentator Fareed Zakaria so mad that he invited species traitor Bjorn Lomborg on his show this past weekend to discuss global warming. Lomborg, a statistician without a life or climate science background, holds the batsh*t insane belief that access to clean drinking water can be expanded worldwide, even as increasing extreme drought conditions and the disappearance of glaciers, as well as the draining of aquifers to replace these water sources, rapidly decreases the supply of fresh water.

Warming drove Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) so mad that they've cut billions in green jobs spending from the Senate stimulus bill as 'wasteful' pork. Read at the link for the total cost to scientific and environmental programs of three Republican votes for the overall bill.

And sadly, some scientists have been driven so mad by the prospect, and perhaps the persistant climate denialists, that they're proposing highly-polluting, temporary fixes whose sudden failure or backfiring could leave us worse off than if we did nothing. (Though I disagree with the author's assessment of biochar.)

Vandana Shiva said in her recent book, Soil Not Oil, that, "No society can become a post-food society." It's just good sense, just as we can neither become a post-water nor post-soil society. Yet many people seem determined to ignore the fact that food comes from regular, predictable supplies of water and sunlight falling on good soil, and no amount of market demand will create people who don't need food. They think the climate can go to hell and somehow the wealth of their families or country can save them from the hoary, inescapable truth that you can't eat bank account receipts.

They're nuts. Talking to them will probably only drive you nuts, and perhaps towards acts of insanity more reckless than even eating peanut butter. So if you're concerned about lunatics damaging your calm of mind, consider doing as David Sirota recommended in times when one is faced with such insanity:

... Indeed, I find the best thing to do with such lost souls is to simply repeat what Woody Allen said to Christopher Walken in Annie Hall: "Right. Well, I have to - I have to go now, Duane, because I, I'm due back on the planet Earth."

Anyone who thinks it'd be terrible to see human beings starved off the face of the earth by the billions in the next century needs to care about global warming. It's the number one long-term threat to food security for every nation and every family. I know that might be hard to wrap your head around when job numbers look like this and you probably know at least as many laid off people as I do, but it's true.

Food security is climate security. Not to recognize it, ruinous folly.

Do something. Please.

(Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr.)