We've Been Warned

We're down to the home stretch in the fight to save civilization from the ravages of runaway global warming.   A report in Scientific American warns we're within just one decade of tipping points that will trigger natural feedback mechanisms to drive irreversible warming.

The headline speaks volumes - "Global Warming Close to Becoming Irreversible."

As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests.

"This is the critical decade. If we don't get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines," said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London.

Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world's biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020.

"We are on the cusp of some big changes," said Steffen. "We can ... cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state."

What a time to be under the heel of radical fundamentalist republicanism.   Yet will the opposition rise to this challenge?   The NDP?  The Liberals perhaps?   Hardly.   Those feckless petro-pimps don't see any percentage in doing what's right for the country and the Canadian people much less the rest of the world and mankind.