David Seaton's picture

    Doomsday... is you is or is you ain't?

    By David Seaton on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 3:42am |

    We are looking at the beginning of a new era, which we could call "post-everything". We have found our limits... beyond this point we cannot go. If something isn't done about global warming soon, with its shortages of water, food, air and energy, it is going to lead to unheard of levels of worldwide instability producing endless conflict. If not arrested, the trend of climate change will lead to a multiplication of the sort of failed states that provide refuge for "non-state actors" (read Al Qaeda).

    If humanity, and a few other species, are to survive, there are going to have to be some very strict rules and they are going to have to be very strictly enforced. The question is how that is going to be done democratically... because it is going to be done one way or another.

    This global warming thing either is or it isn't: if it is true, then, if we are not very careful, and even then, we will probably all end up living under a regime as restrictive as the cold and corrupt German Democratic Republic portrayed in the Oscar winning, "Lives of Others" or, if we are lucky, the warm, corrupt, Cuba of Fidel Castro (where at least the music is good and you can get laid). The true challenge is to escape these alternatives and create something better... we are sliding toward something much, much worse.

    If  "freedom", as interpreted by America's conservatives and libertarian fundamentalists, finally comes to stand for insanity, violent death and poverty, more and more people all over the world, but eventually even in America itself, will be ready to "make other plans" and there will never be a lack of people to "help" them. We are witnessing the baby of liberty being thrown out with the bathwater of freedom.

    Certainly "freedom" as it is envisioned by American libertarians is not going to be on the menu; just as it wasn't during World War Two. The sooner people confront this logical conclusion of Global Warming and begin to debate it, the better. David Seaton

    Comments

    The picture looks like my last high school reunion!


    by Richard Day on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 3:14pm

    Sheeeeeeeit!!!! Dawg!!! We mussa gonna same skool....Cool


    by David Seaton on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 4:08pm

    I think it's a vision of what the halls of Congress will look like if the republicans win both House and Senate.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 5:23pm

    Well I think there was a movie about this very subject made in 1973 called Soylent Green. A tale of Earth in despair in 2022...12 years from now no less. If you're too old, it's time to meet your maker. The question is...what's too old? In the movie, Roth (Edward G. Robinson, his last film),  opts for assisted suicide, or Palin's death panels no less, at a government clinic, a process referred to as "going home".


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 5:18pm

    Oddly enough, I just saw Soylent Green a few weeks ago.


    by Donal on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 7:13pm

    Climate change is real.  Nothing will be done to mitigate it because it's too late.  We needed to act decades ago, and even the most, ahem, ambitious proposals for doing something about it, like returning to 1990s levels of emissions within ten or fifteen years, are locked up in prisoner's dilemma-like proceedings on the world stage.  In other words, we lack the political institutions to enact even tepid reforms that wouldn't halt climate change anyway.  I've written about this before here.

    No, we've punched this ticket.  Returning to 1990s levels of emissions, even if that were "politically possible" at present, would not help.  Let's remember that the evidence of climate change was with us in 1990.  And then there's the whole thing about the half-life of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere.

    As for what will happen as a result, no one can be sure.  Many predictions have been made.  GCMs will continue to be refined and run, but no one can predict the future.  Perhaps the wisest thing that can be said about the future of climate is that we are entering a new era of fundamental uncertainty.

    But it's done.  Forget halting it.  Probably forget mitigating it, too.  We've already changed the climate.


    by DF on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 5:25pm

    Funny, I was just reading an article by a guy who thinks Peak Oil will save us from Climate Change. I suppose the question is, save how many of us for what sort of life? But then a lot of people claim that our advanced society isn't making us happy anyway.

     

     


    by Donal on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 6:29pm

    I don't even know how I would respond to such claims.  Weird that the article says he only even heard of the concept of peak oil after he got done working on a book on climate change.  You would think the question of petroleum supply would cross a curious mind when studying greenhouse gases.

    For my part, my answer is that I don't know.  And I don't think anyone else does either.  We know oil is finite, but we don't exactly when and how that rears its ugly head.  We also know that climate change is a fact (again - look at the atmospheric half-life of CO2 - the climate is already changing and would continue to change even if all emissions stopped yesterday, which they didn't and peak oil won't change that).  What we don't know is how all of this plays out.

    In fact, we know what the future holds no better than we know what makes us happy - or even if we're supposed to be.  For instance, happiness might have nothing to do with my DNA's plan to propogate itself.  In fact, given the capacity of women to create personal misery at whim, I'm not so sure happiness is even part of the plan. ;)

    FWIW though, I think peak oil is what will put the brakes on emissions.  We just don't have the capacity to act any sooner.  But climate science doesn't say we can wait 10 or 20 years to reduce or even eliminate emissions.  Climate change is here, the atmosphere is packed full of CO2 and nothing short of a powerful method to reverse that process is going to change that now.


    by DF on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 7:47pm

    If you read me, http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/2010/09/fascism-is-coming-to-usa-li...

    I have the view that what we will get is the same one percent of super rich that we have now living like they do now, albeit with more security, more gates etc, and the rest of us living in third world squalor.Think Mexico City or Lagos, Nigeria. This is not the end of the world as McPherson suggests just the end of the American model of a middle class society. A world all Prada and no Wal-Mart.


    by David Seaton on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 1:29am

    Aww, David, why do you bait me?   I think I'll pass on this one.  Progressive eschatology is just too depressing.  What fun are end times if there is nothing to look forward to on the other side?


    by EmmaZahn on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 5:41pm

    hahahahaahahah

     

    I hereby render unto Emma, the Dayly Cartoon of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of Emma from all of me. hahahha


    by Richard Day on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 5:42pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHsx1cvACkY

     


    by LisB on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 1:33am

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