The Death of the Earth

OK, let's bring Fluff Friday to a screeching halt.

The IPCC report on global warming is one of the darkest and most hopeless things I've read in a long time. Not only does it acknowledge climate change as a major problem, not only does it confirm with a 90% degree of certainty that it's man-made, but it pretty much says that we're so far gone that it cannot be stopped and all we can do now is prepare for the major challenges to the planet in the future. They of course try to put a brave face on it, but you can almost see the downcast stares embedded in the soundbites. In fact, they admit that.

Global warming is so severe that it will "continue for centuries," leading to a far different planet in 100 years, warned a grim landmark report from the world's leading climate scientists and government officials. Yet, many of the experts are hopeful that nations will now take action to avoid the worst scenarios.

They tried to warn of dire risks without scaring people so much they'd do nothing — inaction that would lead to the worst possible scenarios.

"It's not too late," said Australian scientist Nathaniel Bindoff, a co-author of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report issued Friday. The worst can be prevented by acting quickly to curb greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

The worst could mean more than 1 million dead and hundreds of billions of dollars in costs by 2100, said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of many study co-authors. He said that adapting will mean living with more extreme weather such as severe droughts, more hurricanes and wildfires.

"It's later than we think," said panel co-chair Susan Solomon, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist who helped push through the document's strong language.

The best we can hope for, according to the report, is a 3-degree rise in the planet's temperature by the end of the century. Without acting now and taking drastic measures, that goes up to 11 degrees. That would basically rise sea levels by 23 inches or more, and wipe out entire island nations and tens of thousands of miles of coastline. And this could grow to as much as 20 FEET.

Here's the bold action called for by the world's biggest polluter:

In Washington, Bush administration officials praised the report but said they still oppose mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The problem can be addressed by better technology that will cut emissions, promote energy conservation, and hasten development of non-fossil fuels, said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

They won't even fix the fucking levees in New Orleans, you think they'll get on board with the kind of leadership needed to fight climate change?

Now, I could claim that the science is still sketchy and nobody knows what the future will bring and collect by $10,000 from Exxon Mobil and go home. But if you live within a mile of a major ocean like I do, you tend to take these things a bit more seriously. And there's something that every one of us can do to at least mitigate these effects. They're teaching it in schools in Britain. Wal-Mart is urging its staff to become carbon-neutral and pushing to sell 100 million low-energy light bulbs. Here in California, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine wants to ban traditional light bulbs by 2012 and sell only fluorescents in the state. And the new Attorney General, Jerry Brown, is continuing a lawsuit started by Bill Lockyer against the leading automakers, seeking damages for their selling cars that emit heat-trapping gases. Things are starting to happen, and people are taking responsibility.

But there's a whiff of this being entirely too late. For too long we ignored the effects of driving gas-guzzling cars, of leaving lights on indoors, of allowing major manufacturers to spew soot into the air. For too long we figured that our grandchildren wouldn't be impacted, and anyway winter comes every year, followed by summer, so what's the problem? For too long we had the attitude of myopic idiots like Dennis Miller, saying things like "One degree isn't going to turn the Arctic into Phoenix, capiche?" We acted like Americans are prone to act, caring about nobody but ourselves, and essentially we broke the planet. And even now that it's broken we won't fully commit to the effort to fix it.

Part of me thinks that alarm can often be tempered by advancements in technology (like giant space mirrors!), and you can see positive results like in how we dealt with the now-rare issue of acid rain. But part of me thinks this is such a big and abstract issue that it'll take a million Al Gores to wake up the public. And the sleep is too deep, and the clock has already struck midnight.

There, NOW I've killed Fluff Friday dead!

UPDATE: Mr. Gore goes to Washington:

Former Vice President Al Gore has accepted an invitation to testify next month in a congressional hearing on the highly controversial issue of climate change.

Gore will appear at a joint hearing on Wednesday, March 21. He will be the only witness to appear before the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality and the Science and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. Gore served on both committees during his House tenure representing a Tennessee district.

It'll be interesting to see Gore's reaction to the IPCC report, because he typically strikes a note of optimism about the crisis, that we can do something in the next 10 years to reverse its effects.