Friday, May 10, 2019

"A Globe-Spanning Murder-Suicide" I Guess That Sums It Up.


If you're planning on being around for another two or three decades you'll be witness to a world like you've never known it. What's in store for you is a darker, more dangerous and, ultimately, dystopian world as nature re-calibrates the biosphere. Talk about death by natural causes only on a civilizational scale.

We know there's still time, just barely, to avert the worst impacts of climate change and biodiversity collapse. We know what must be done, that's been clearly spelled out for us. We know what we must do but we're not going to do it.

Recently Bloomberg has reported that the Trudeau government is expected to give the go-ahead for the three-fold expansion of the Trans-Mountain pipeline next month. In a lovely companion piece yesterday, Bloomberg observed that "Even Trudeau's Canada Won't Rid Itself of Coal."

"Even Trudeau's Canada" what is that implying? That Justin Trudeau isn't totally in the bag for the fossil fuel industries - gas, oil, bitumen, coal. He's in it up to his eyeballs. That carbon tax nonsense, that's to make the rubes happy.

Petro-states are notorious liars and Canada is no exception whether it's ruled by Conservatives or Liberals. They're both profoundly dishonest. Both will sacrifice the future, perhaps irreparably, for the present. I'm sorry Liberals but that's true.

A recent article in New York Magazine spoke of a "globe-spanning murder-suicide" now underway.
Human beings are more prosperous and numerous than we’ve ever been, while the Earth’s other species are dying off faster than at any time in human history. 
These two conditions are related. But if the second one persists long enough, we will be following our fellow organisms into the dustbin of geological history.
...Climate change is a major driver of all this death, but burning fossil fuels is far from our species’ only method of mass ecocide. We are also harvesting fish populations faster than they can reproduce themselves, annually dumping upward of 300 million tons of heavy metals and toxic sludge into the oceans, introducing devastating diseases and invasive species into vulnerable environments as we send people and goods hurtling across the globe, and simply taking up too much space — about 75 percent of the Earth’s land, and 85 percent of its wetlands, have been severely altered or destroyed by human development.
Some day you may see prime ministers such as Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau for what are - monsters. By then it will be much too late to do anything about our collapsed ecosystems and the ravages of climate change. The windows of opportunity for dealing with these existential threats are fast closing and, if we were determined to act you would already know about it.

Some hyper-zealous Liberals are fond of extolling fine "Canadian values." Really, what values? We gave up on that decades ago when we succumbed to the embrace of the neoliberal order, something perpetuated today by Mr. Trudeau and almost certain to be continued by the winner of our general elections in October.  If life is not our priority, if the fate being dealt to future generations doesn't guide our planning and policy, our "Canadian values" are, in a word, shite.

A globe-spanning murder-suicide it will be then.  We had a choice. We made a choice. 

6 comments:

rumleyfips said...

Noone wants to recognise it, but if we wipe ourselves out, the earth will survive and nature will survive. Different, but there.

Today, a flightless rail on an atol off Madagaskar has been shown to be extinguished by sea level rise 160,000 years ago and to have evolved from the same antecedents into the same niche again.

Shows to go ya: we are not as important as we think we are.

The Mound of Sound said...


What happened on Madagascar isn't what is underway now. It was one isolated territory that was devastated but species survived elsewhere and eventually repopulated the island.

That's not what's going on today, Rumley. No, this is the Anthropocene, and it brings a devastating climate of our own making. That's where you're wrong again when you contend we aren't as important as we think we are.

This is a man-made existential threat, more than one. The solutions lie in man-made measures necessary for survival. We've got the prescription but we're not willing to accept the medicine.

rumleyfips said...

My point, no matter how poorly expressed was, humankind needs the earth but the earth doesn't need humans. Maybe we should start thinking about saving ourselves. Not me, I'll be dead before the shit hits the fan and I have no kids by choice but I still don't want people to go through a climate triggered extinction.

Toby said...

Unfortunately, the denial machine is in full swing. Witness this post: https://www.castanet.net/news/Letters/255914/Drinking-the-Kool-Aid

A few days ago an Albertan told me that Climate Change is a conspiracy of screaming fanatics. He also told me that the glaciers are not receding.

The frequency that I run across such denial of not just science but what we can see before our own eyes is most depressing. How can we turn this coming disaster around when so many refuse to believe we have a problem?

The Mound of Sound said...


Toby the problem is you're battling "belief" the ultimate faith-based construct. Once you 'believe' something it can be immune to facts, knowledge. That's what fuels climate denialism. 'Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up already.'

Every religious fundamentalist displays the extent to which belief can overpower fact, clearly provable fact. I wish our governments didn't cater to belief-based denialists but those denialists also have the vote and they're so easily manipulated. That's the essence of every Trump rally.

Anonymous said...

Nah!....you have to "pray" more.