Grim, Yet Strangely Fascinating

Every now and then you stumble across something that was hiding in plain sight. In my case it was the discovery of the BBC.com site, Future.  There are some really good, thought-provoking essays to be had at BBC Future.  Definitely worth a browse.

For starters let's look at two essay's from the site's "Deep Civilization" section. The first asks  "Are we on the road to civilization collapse?" The author is Luke Kemp, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge. The second is "How Western civilization could collapse" by Rachel Nuwer.

Both are long but fascinating reads. I'll just touch on a few highlights of Kemp's essay. I'll save Nuwer's for another day but you can read it for yourself at the above link.

Kemp works from research he has done at Cambridge.

Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives. 

...Our deep past is marked by recurring failure. As part of my research at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, I am attempting to find out why collapse occurs through a historical autopsy. What can the rise and fall of historic civilisations tell us about our own? What are the forces that precipitate or delay a collapse? And do we see similar patterns today?

Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. Public services crumble and disorder ensues as government loses control of its monopoly on violence. 

Virtually all past civilisations have faced this fate. Some recovered or transformed, such as the Chinese and Egyptian. Other collapses were permanent, as was the case of Easter Island. Sometimes the cities at the epicentre of collapse are revived, as was the case with Rome. In other cases, such as the Mayan ruins, they are left abandoned as a mausoleum for future tourists.

Kemp maintains that the lessons of earlier, agrarian empires are relevant to our modern industrial civilization.  While we may view the idea of collapse as apocalyptic, Kemp and others argue that history reveals it's entirely normal.

Societies of the past and present are just complex systems composed of people and technology. The theory of “normal accidents” suggests that complex technological systems regularly give way to failure. So collapse may be a normal phenomenon for civilisations, regardless of their size and stage. 

We may be more technologically advanced now. But this gives little ground to believe that we are immune to the threats that undid our ancestors. Our newfound technological abilities even bring new, unprecedented challenges to the mix. 

And while our scale may now be global, collapse appears to happen to both sprawling empires and fledgling kingdoms alike. There is no reason to believe that greater size is armour against societal dissolution. Our tightly-coupled, globalised economic system is, if anything, more likely to make crisis spread.

What are the culprits, the usual suspects, behind civilization collapse. There are common threads. See if any of these sound familiar.

CLIMATIC CHANGE: When climatic stability changes, the results can be disastrous, resulting in crop failure, starvation and desertification. The collapse of the Anasazi, the Tiwanaku civilisation, the Akkadians, the Mayan, the Roman Empire, and many others have all coincided with abrupt climatic changes, usually droughts. 

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION: Collapse can occur when societies overshoot the carrying capacity of their environment. This ecological collapse theory, which has been the subject of bestselling books, points to excessive deforestation, water pollution, soil degradation and the loss of biodiversity as precipitating causes. 

INEQUALITY AND OLIGARCHY: Wealth and political inequality can be central drivers of social disintegration, as can oligarchy and centralisation of power among leaders. This not only causes social distress, but handicaps a society’s ability to respond to ecological, social and economic problems.

COMPLEXITY: Collapse expert and historian Joseph Tainter has proposed that societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity and bureaucracy. Societies are problem-solving collectives that grow in complexity in order to overcome new issues. However, the returns from complexity eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. After this point, collapse will eventually ensue.

EXTERNAL SHOCKS: In other words, the “four horsemen”: war, natural disasters, famine and plagues. The Aztec Empire, for example, was brought to an end by Spanish invaders. Most early agrarian states were fleeting due to deadly epidemics. The concentration of humans and cattle in walled settlements with poor hygiene made disease outbreaks unavoidable and catastrophic. Sometimes disasters combined, as was the case with the Spanish introducing salmonella to the Americas. 

RANDOMNESS/BAD LUCK: Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age. Evolutionary biologist and data scientist Indre Zliobaite and her colleagues have observed a similar pattern in the evolutionary record of species. A common explanation of this apparent randomness is the “Red Queen Effect”: if species are constantly fighting for survival in a changing environment with numerous competitors, extinction is a consistent possibility.

Let's go back to pictures. Kemp offers this graphic.

 That's not looking very good, is it?

Offsetting these gloomy indicators, Kemp argues are a few good things we have going for us. He cites global economic diversity and innovation as enhancing the resilience of nations to weather the forces of collapse.

There are some reasons to be optimistic, thanks to our ability to innovate and diversify away from disaster. Yet the world is worsening in areas that have contributed to the collapse of previous societies. The climate is changing, the gap between the rich and poor is widening, the world is becoming increasingly complex, and our demands on the environment are outstripping planetary carrying capacity.

The author concludes that our fate, grim as it may appear, is in our hands. There is much we can change, perils we can avert, if only we have the stomach to save ourselves.

The collapse of our civilisation is not inevitable. History suggests it is likely, but we have the unique advantage of being able to learn from the wreckages of societies past. 

We know what needs to be done: emissions can be reduced, inequalities levelled, environmental degradation reversed, innovation unleashed and economies diversified. The policy proposals are there. Only the political will is lacking. We can also invest in recovery. There are already well-developed ideas for improving the ability of food and knowledge systems to be recuperated after catastrophe. Avoiding the creation of dangerous and widely-accessible technologies is also critical. Such steps will lessen the chance of a future collapse becoming irreversible. 

We will only march into collapse if we advance blindly. We are only doomed if we are unwilling to listen to the past.

Ask yourself where is the political will so critical to implementing the changes needed to stave off collapse?  It certainly isn't to be found in the ranks of the Tory troglodytes. Unfortunately there's precious little political will for change among the Liberals either.

It's Not All Killer Heatwaves and Crop-Killing Drought. Another Facet of Climate Change.

To many, perhaps even most people, the impact of climate change on infrastructure is not well understood. We've seen the dramatic stuff - cars stuck in flooded underpasses or roads washed out - but climate change is going to make its presence known where we might not expect it.

Take Britain's Luton airport. It's a newish terminal that worked quite well - until it didn't. It was designed to withstand certain conditions but it wasn't designed to handle today's conditions and so it became overwhelmed by a torrential deluge.



See, Luton airport is not Anthropocene-friendly. It was not designed for the era in which we now live.

Where I live our homes, or at least the recent structures, are built to withstand earthquakes given that we never know when the Big One will hit. Those preparations aren't going to be of much comfort when it comes to flooding or wildfires or any other impacts climate change has in store for us.  And don't count on your governments to intervene proactively. They haven't got the funds for a massive overhaul of essential infrastructure for something that may or may not occur some time.

Sorry, you're on your own. Just do stay away from Luton when it's raining.

Seppuku?

It's not the Texas book depository but this will fuel conspiracy theories for a long time. American Satyr Jeffrey Epstein is dead, apparently by his own hand. It's reported he was found hanging in his cell in New York this morning.

Epstein was reported to have made an attempt on his life last week and was supposedly put on suicide watch. That must not have lasted very long.  Jail officials seem to have left him with everything he needed to hang himself.

Conspiracy theorists will argue he didn't kill himself, he was killed because he threatened the reputations of any number of powerful people from Alan Dershowitz to Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, even Donald J. Trump.

I can't help but wonder if there were many sighs of relief as the news of Epstein's death came out this morning.

I'm guessing that none of the tainted rich white men will be crowding the front row of mourners at Epstein's funeral. Still, this isn't going to end when Epstein is potted.  Prosecutors recently estimated his assets as worth well over $500-million and Epstein is survived by neither wife nor child. $500-million buys a lot of squabbling and that sort of thing invariably drags in no end of other lurid stuff.

From CTV News:

Attorney General William Barr said he was "appalled" to learn of Epstein's death while in federal custody. The FBI and the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General will investigate, he said. 

"Mr. Epstein's death raises serious questions that must be answered," Barr said in a statement.

Cameron Lindsay, a former warden who ran three federal lockups, said the death represents "an unfortunate and shocking failure, if proven to be a suicide." 

"Unequivocally, he should have been on active suicide watch and therefore under direct and constant supervision," Lindsay said.

There Really Is a "Hole In the Bottom Of the Sea"

It's not so much a hole as a tear in the 600 mile long Juan de Fuca Plate and, scientists conclude, it could mark the end of the tectonic plate that the people of the Pacific Northwest fear so much.

If the subduction plate goes that means that the mega-quake threat goes with it, right? Not so much, apparently. As I eagerly devoured the report I came to the punchline, right at the end. Juan de Fuca's days may be numbered but the number is a few million years off.

All You Ever Needed to Know About America's Sleazebag in Chief

One photo captures the grotesque sleaze who serves as America's president. Donald Trump and Melania using a baby orphaned in the El Paso massacre as a prop for a 'thumbs up' photo op. 

For some reason the name Ceausescu comes to mind.

Is Complacency Our Achilles Heel?

Over the years I've watched as any number of really important reports and studies are published then broadly reported across the mainstream news outlets only to disappear down the Memory Hole in just a few days. Gone, forgotten, ignored.

On their own many of these reports should have sparked some public reaction or some form of response from our political leadership but, no, nothing. Few seem to grasp that those reports are cumulative. One merely adds to those before it. Collectively, they should have sent us into the streets with pitchforks and torches but, no, nothing.

I've become convinced that our politicians don't respond to these alarming changes except in the most gestural way because that would interfere with their other plans.  You can't truly mobilize to fight climate change and build 60-year pipelines. Just because you say you can doesn't mean you're not having us on. It's what I like to call horse shit.

Why do they get away with feeding us horse shit? Because we let them.

Complacency, that's what it's about. Yesterday the Washington Post published an op-ed from US foreign service officer, Chuck Park, explaining his decision to resign his post.

Park said all the talk about a "Deep State" is nonsense.

They have it all wrong. Your federal bureaucracy under this president? Call it “The Complacent State” instead.

...In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, I spoke of American openness and friendship at consulate events as my country carried out mass deportations and failed thousands of “dreamers.” I attended celebrations of Black History Month at our embassy in Lisbon as black communities in the United States demanded justice for Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and the victims of the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. And in Vancouver, I touted the strength of the United States’ democracy at the consulate’s 2016 election-night party as a man who campaigned on racism, misogyny and wild conspiracy theories became president-elect.

Since then, I have seen Trump assert the moral equivalence of violent white nationalists and those who oppose them, denigrate immigrants from “shithole countries” and separate children from their parents at the border, only to place them in squalid detention centers. 

But almost three years since his election, what I have not seen is organized resistance from within. To the contrary, two senior Foreign Service officers admonished me for risking my career when I signed an internal dissent cable against the ban on travelers from several majority-Muslim countries in January 2017. Among my colleagues at the State Department, I have met neither the unsung hero nor the cunning villain of Deep State lore. If the resistance does exist, it should be clear by this point that it has failed.

Instead, I am part of the Complacent State. 

The Complacent State sighs when the president blocks travel by Muslim immigrants; shakes its head when he defends Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; averts its gaze from images of children in detention camps. Then it complies with orders. 

I’m ashamed of how long it took me to make this decision. My excuse might be disappointing, if familiar to many of my colleagues: I let career perks silence my conscience. I let free housing, the countdown to a pension and the prestige of representing a powerful nation overseas distract me from ideals that once seemed so clear to me. I can’t do that anymore. 

My son, born in El Paso on the American side of that same Rio Grande where the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter were discovered, in the same city where 22 people were just killed by a gunman whose purported “manifesto” echoed the inflammatory language of our president, turned 7 this month. I can no longer justify to him, or to myself, my complicity in the actions of this administration. That’s why I choose to resign.

The complacency that led Park to resign isn't confined to the US State Department or to the United States for that matter. It hums along in the background in many places, including our country and Canadian society.

We're complacent. We put up with nonsense that we should openly and loudly rebuke. We don't act and those who lead us down this dead-end lane know we'll let them off the hook. Because they have no other choice, they'll consult us this October knowing most of us will vote for whatever guy we find somewhat less offensive than the other guy. That's why they don't add "none of the above" to the ballot.

Complacency is somewhat less than luke warm. It is embedded in our hearts and our minds and we need it for it is how we look away. And so long as it rules us, we'll never get out of this murderous rut.

What's Really Killing Us?

Global warming is a symptom of the disease. Overpopulation is another symptom of the same disease. The degradation of our farmland, the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, the freshwater crisis, the collapse of populations of wildlife both terrestrial and aquatic - they're all symptoms of this killer disease.

So what's this disease? It's pretty simple. It is us, mankind, and our abject refusal to live in harmony with nature. This cascade of threats trace back to our insatiable appetite for ever more. Neoliberalism is all about "ever more" - the pursuit of perpetual exponential growth. Justin Trudeau is a disciple. Andrew Scheer is a disciple. The Republicans and their Democrat rivals are all disciples.

These symptoms are nature's way of saying "no" to our demands for ever more. There's no more to be had. We're already consuming resources at 1.7 times our biosphere's ability to replenish them, 1.7 times Earth's ecological carrying capacity.  We've gone through the current account into our savings and, even as our savings dwindle, our overdraft increases.

It's not just that we're taking more than the planet can deliver. That's not the worst part. It's our absolute dependence on ever more, that's the worst part.  The UN FAO predicts that by 2050 we'll need to produce 50 per cent more food to meet the needs of an insanely large population. OPEC and the IEA foresee us burning 30 to 40 per cent more fossil fuels by 2040. We were supposed to be largely carbon-free by then.

Why, with all this evidence, of this looming multi-faceted existential threat aren't we racing to respond to avert the worst? My guess is that's not the way humans work. We're not inclined to work cooperatively, even when the writing is on the wall.

We react when we're directly affected. Take climate change. We don't all experience the same thing at the same time. The coming decade is expected to bring a new type of warming called "climate departure." It's predicted to set in around 2023 but not where we're at. It will begin in more equatorial regions. Closest to home will be Central America and some Caribbean island states.  Those living in these first affected areas will have two choices: die in place or migrate poleward to a place of refuge. Let's not dwell on how that plays out.

In this "what's in it for me?" world, global solidarity is hard to visualize. We have no global consensus and there are powerful but narrow interests working very hard to see that never happens.

So, if we're not going to avert climate catastrophe, what then? That depends on where you live. If you're in the developed world or at least the northernmost nations of the developed world and if you can prevent some nuclear exchange, your best bet might be to ride it out and simply become bystanders to a Great Die Off of the little brown people in distant lands.

Those who study these things suggest the world's carrying capacity, as far as humanity goes, is now about two billion people. It was three billion back in the early 70s but things change. We're now at eight billion heading, by some projections, to nine, ten billion or more.  We can do that by burning massively more fossil fuels and getting our already degraded soils to increase output by 50 per cent. Yeah, right.

If you subtract two billion from eight billion that means six billion simply have to go. That's when those six billion go from being our fellow human beings, kumbaya, into our scourge.

The lucky two billion won't get off scot-free. We'll also be hammered, just not quite as bad as the unlucky six or at least not as soon. We'll be dealing with our own problems which means we're not apt to be willing, in our weakened condition, to worry about their problems except to the extent they threaten us.

The only effective solutions are global but we simply can't, more properly 'won't,' respond at that level.  The advantaged who are also best positioned would have to make the greatest sacrifices and, face it, we won't hear of it.

Festung Europa, meet Festung El Norte.

Well, Let's Add This to Our Growing List of Dire Warnings

Another day another warning that humanity is pushing its luck, overstressing this Earth, our one and only biosphere.

For those of you who can't handle stress, don't fret. It'll be down the Memory Hole by the end of the weekend at the outside.  We've already forgotten Tuesday's dire warning from the World Resource Institute about the dire freshwater crisis that has beset a quarter of humanity.  So many crises, so little time, how is a girl supposed to remember them all?

Dirt. Who gives a damn about dirt? Apparently the UN does.  The latest report from its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, visits a recurring theme - soils degradation.

It's a topic that's been considered in depth before. Agronomists have been howling their warnings for years. We're exhausting our stocks of arable land, the soils we need to grow our food. It finally led the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to issue a report in 2014 warning that we were heading toward a collapse in agricultural production within 60 years. Even the best remaining farmland, the agency claimed, were already somewhat degraded. We even got a map showing the then state of soils degradation. Then - whoosh - straight down the Memory Hole.

That 2014 report was followed up by another in 2018 that seemed to disappear into that hole of oblivion even faster. With it was a report warning that we would need a 50 per cent increase in agricultural production to feed the herd in 2050. Damn, if we were just a tiny fraction as good at responding to these warnings as we are at ignoring them, and we're so very good at ignoring them, we might just have some hope. Yeah but ignoring them until we've completely forgotten about them comes just so naturally to us. It's effortless and demands nothing of us and,  when it comes to change, our favourite flavour is nothing.

Today's report layers man-made climate change atop man-made soils degradation. I suppose you've guessed it's not good news.

The climate crisis is damaging the ability of the land to sustain humanity, with cascading risks becoming increasingly severe as global temperatures rise, according to a landmark UN report compiled by some of the world’s top scientists. 

Global heating is increasing droughts, soil erosion and wildfires while diminishing crop yields in the tropics and thawing permafrost near the poles, says the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Further heating will lead to unprecedented climate conditions at lower latitudes, with potential growth in hunger, migration and conflict and increased damage to the great northern forests. 

The report, approved by the world’s governments, makes clear that humanity faces a stark choice between a vicious or virtuous circle. Continued destruction of forests and huge emissions from cattle and other intensive farming practices will intensify the climate crisis, making the impacts on land still worse.

What came through for me in reading those four paragraphs was how bland the message. It's almost as sterile as the soil itself and it's from The Guardian!  I know, ask George. Monbiot calls this report a miserable failure.

The problem is that it concentrates on just one of the two ways of counting the carbon costs of farming. The first way – the IPCC’s approach – could be described as farming’s current account. How much greenhouse gas does driving tractors, spreading fertiliser and raising livestock produce every year? According to the panel’s report, the answer is around 23% of the planet-heating gases we currently produce. But this fails miserably to capture the overall impact of food production.

The second accounting method is more important. This could be described as the capital account: how does farming compare to the natural ecosystems that would otherwise have occupied the land? A paper published in Nature last year, but not mentioned by the IPCC, sought to count this cost. Please read these figures carefully. They could change your life.

The official carbon footprint of people in the UK is 5.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year. But in addition to this, the Nature paper estimates that the total greenhouse gas cost – in terms of lost opportunities for storing carbon that the land would offer were it not being farmed – of an average northern European diet is 9 tonnes a year. In other words, if we counted the “carbon opportunity costs” of our diet, our total footprint would almost triple, to 14.4 tonnes.

Okay, well, I'm not sure we're ready to give up meat, poultry, even fish for a diet of swill and soya. I could be wrong but I just don't see it. Still, I like Monbiot's closer:

Are we prepared to act on what we know, or will we continue to gorge on the lives of our descendants?

But wait, there's more. We can avert the worst of the worst. All it will take is a little sacrifice.

However, action now to allow soils and forests to regenerate and store carbon, and to cut meat consumption by people and food waste, could play a big role in tackling the climate crisis, the report says.

Such moves would also improve human health, reduce poverty and tackle the huge losses of wildlife across the globe, the IPCC says.
Burning of fossil fuels should end as well to avoid “irreversible loss in land ecosystem services required for food, health and habitable settlements”, the report says. 

“This is a perfect storm,” said Dave Reay, a professor at the University of Edinburgh who was an expert reviewer for the IPCC report. 

“Limited land, an expanding human population, and all wrapped in a suffocating blanket of climate emergency. Earth has never felt smaller, its natural ecosystems never under such direct threat.”

Didn't you just know that our fossil-fuel economy would get in there somehow?  We know we've got to shut it down but even our Eco-warrior prime minister has other plans. He wants to take us in exactly the opposite direction. Burn baby, burn.

Prof Jim Skea, from the IPPC, said the land was already struggling and climate change was adding to its burdens. Almost three-quarters of ice-free land was now directly affected by human activity, the report says. 

Poor land use is also behind almost a quarter of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions – the destruction of forests, huge cattle herds and overuse of chemical fertilisers being key factors.

Emissions relating to fertilisers have risen ninefold since the early 1960s. Rising temperatures are causing deserts to spread, particularly in Asia and Africa, and the Americas and Mediterranean are at risk, the report says. 

One of the most stark conclusions in the IPCC report is that soil, upon which humanity is entirely dependent, is being lost more than 100 times faster than it is being formed in ploughed areas; and lost 10 to 20 times faster even on fields that are not tilled. 

The report recommends strong action from governments and business, including ending deforestation and enabling new forests to grow, reforming farming subsidies, supporting small farmers and breeding more resilient crops. Many of those solutions, however, would take decades to have an impact, the IPCC says.

Decades. We haven't got decades to turn this around. Not unless we act now to buy more time.  That could begin by at least exploring new economic models to replace our current three-pack-a-day neoliberalism with its impossible growth-centric focus. And shutting down fossil fuels as fast as possible would be a great help. That could begin by putting an abrupt end to high-carbon fossil energy, thermal coal and bitumen.

The key to all of these crises is quite simple. Mankind has to accept the mortal need to live within the sustainable limitations of our very finite planet, Earth. We're way beyond that now and we just want to grow bigger, faster, all the time. If we can't find and adopt ways to again live in harmony with this, our one and only biosphere, it will surely eliminate us. And that is suicide.

In El Paso, This Says It All -

How the Liberals and the Conservatives Jumped Into the Bag for the Fossil Energy Giants

They'll feed you no end of horseshit about how fossil fuels are critical to the Canadian economy. They don't want to tell you why they never have much, if anything, to show for it. They prefer not to dwell on why they collect minuscule royalties a fraction of what other nations demand. It's absolutely off-limits to delve into the hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for cleaning up the West's Tar Sands, tailing ponds and orphan wells.

Leaving bitumen out of the equation entirely, Alberta has shipped more conventional oil than even Norway. Yet Norway has translated their oil bounty into the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. Alberta, by contrast, bounces like a pinball between prosperity and poverty. It doesn't make any difference how much they gross, they can't hold onto it. They simply can't handle money.

When Justin Trudeau talks oil, it's horseshit. When Andrew Scheer or Jason Kenney or Scott Moe talk oil, it's horseshit. All of them are in the bag for the fossil energy industry.

The Guardian's George Monbiot explores how the world's filthiest industries managed to corrupt politics.

The tragedy of our times is that the gathering collapse of our life support systems has coincided with the age of public disservice. Just as we need to rise above self-interest and short-termism, governments around the world now represent the meanest and dirtiest of special interests. In the United Kingdom, the US, Brazil, Australia and many other nations, pollutocrats rule. 

The Earth’s systems are breaking down at astonishing speed. Wildfires roar across Siberia and Alaska – biting, in many places, deep into peat soils, releasing plumes of carbon dioxide and methane that cause more global heating. In July alone, Arctic wildfires are reckoned to have released as much carbon into the atmosphere as Austria does in a year: already the vicious twister of climate feedbacks has begun to turn.
Torrents of meltwater pour from the Greenland ice cap, sweltering under a 15C temperature anomaly. Daily ice losses on this scale are 50 years ahead of schedule: they were forecast in the climate models for 2070. A paper in Geophysical Research Letters reveals that the thawing of permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic now exceeds the depths of melting projected by scientists for 2090.

...A recent paper in Nature shows that we have little hope of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating unless we retire existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Even if no new gas or coal power plants, roads and airports are built, the carbon emissions from current installations are likely to push us past this threshold. Only by retiring some of this infrastructure before the end of its natural life could we secure a 50% chance of remaining within the temperature limit agreed in Paris in 2015. Yet, far from decommissioning this Earth-killing machine, almost everywhere governments and industry stoke its fires. 

The oil and gas industry intends to spend $4.9tn over the next 10 years, exploring and developing new reserves, none of which we can afford to burn. According to the IMF, every year governments subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of $5tn – many times more than they spend on addressing our existential predicament. The US spends 10 times more on these mad subsidies than on its federal education budget. Last year, the world burned more fossil fuels than ever before.

The Trudeau government admits to subsidizing fossil energy producers to the tune of a couple of billion a year.  The International Monetary Fund pegs the real value of those subsidies at $46 billion every year.  The IMF is accurate and honest. The Trudeau government is peddling horseshit.

As for Monbiot's comments about retiring fossil fuel assets (beginning with the dirtiest of them all - thermal coal and bitumen), that's not happening.  Recent projections by the International Energy Agency, OPEC and academics at the University of Calgary all conclude that the fossil fuel industry is looking at a rosy future into 2040 and beyond.

In 2011, the IEA gave this grim warning.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure. 

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this "lock-in" effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

OPEC added this in 2018.

Opec expects global oil demand to reach nearly 112m barrels per day by 2040, driven by transportation and petrochemicals. That is up from almost 100m today and higher than last year’s projection.

Coal will continue to be be burned in record amounts, despite concerns about its impact on climate change. Opec estimates that coal usage in the OECD countries will plummet by a third by 2040, but it will increase by 20% in developing countries to reach five times the volumes burned in the west.

In its 2018 World Energy Outlook, the IEA added this.

In the New Policies Scenario, global energy needs rise more slowly than in the past but still expand by 30% between today and 2040, the equivalent of adding another China and India to today’s global demand. A global economy growing at an average rate of 3.4% per year, a population that expands from 7.4 billion today to more than 9 billion in 2040, and a process of urbanisation that adds a city the size of Shanghai to the world’s urban population every four months are key forces that underpin our projections.

George Monbiot continues:

An analysis by Barry Saxifrage in Canada’s National Observer shows that half the fossil fuels ever used by humans have been burned since 1990. While renewable and nuclear power supplies have also risen in this period, the gap between the production of fossil fuels and low-carbon energy has not been narrowing, but steadily widening. What counts, in seeking to prevent runaway global heating, is not the good things we start to do, but the bad things we cease to do. Shutting down fossil infrastructure requires government intervention.

But in many nations, governments intervene not to protect humanity from the existential threat of fossil fuels, but to protect the fossil fuel industry from the existential threat of public protest.

It was Trudeau's own minister, Carr, who suggested the Liberal government was ready to call out the army to deal with concerned British Columbians who might obstruct development of the Justin Trudeau Memorial Bitumen Pipeline.

Because the dirtiest industries attract the least public support, they have the greatest incentive to spend money on politics, to get the results they want and we don’t. They fund political parties, lobby groups and thinktanks, fake grassroots organisations and dark ads on social media. As a result, politics comes to be dominated by the dirtiest industries.

We are told to fear the “extremists” who protest against ecocide and challenge dirty industry and the dirty governments it buys. But the extremists we should fear are those who hold office.

It couldn't be more obvious. We're at a crossroads, perhaps our final crossing. We are supposed to be going left, slashing emissions, instituting the "induced implosion" of the fossil energy industry as Schellnhuber cautioned in Paris in 2015. Instead our leaders have chosen to turn right, ramping up production and distribution of ever more fossil energy, including the dirtiest varieties - coal and bitumen.

If they won't even shut down the worst fossil fuels, the highest carbon, lowest value, garbage stuff - by which I mean bitumen and thermal coal - then they're in the bag. And, yes, your government is in the bag. It isn't even thinking of intervening to stop this climate-wrecking madness. That pipeline isn't going to pay for itself. Their goal is to ramp up bitumen production and to flood world markets with this low-value, high-carbon garbage. What does that say except "let'er rip" and "burn baby, burn"?

They're at war with life on Earth. They're at war with humanity. Ultimately they're at war with us - you and me. And, right now, they're winning.

Manhunt Over

RCMP announce the bodies of Schmegelsky and McLeod have been found in northern Manitoba.

Trump Isn't the Cause. He's the Manifestation.

Mass Shootings - Finally, a Consensus.

A Boy and His Toy

In 'Murica, the 2nd Amendment and mass shootings go hand in hand. It's right up there with 'mom's apple pie.'

There are enough mass shootings in the US, roughly 1.2 per day, that a consensus is emerging on what constitutes a 'mass shooting.'

Stanford University MSA Data Project: three or more shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrators, at one location, at roughly the same time, excluding organized crime, as well as gang-related and drug-related shootings. Mass Shooting Tracker: four or more shot in one incident, at one location, at roughly the same time. Gun Violence Archive/Vox: four or more shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrators, at one location, at roughly the same time. Mother Jones: three or more shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrators, at a public place. The Washington Post: four or more shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrators, at a public place. ABC News/FBI: four or more shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrators, at one location, at roughly the same time.[10]Congressional Research Service: four or more shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrators, at a public place, excluding gang-related killings and those done with a profit-motive. 

It sounds as though four or more shot and killed is becoming the consensus.

I don't want to be flippant and I apologize for the coarse language but this graphic really does seem to capture the moment in America, 2019.

Let's Stop Feeding Ourselves a Diet of Terrible Lies

It finally struck me that you can only go so far with climate blogging.  At first there was some utility to it, relating the latest science showing that it's real, we made it, and there's going to be Hell to pay if we neglected the warnings. It was important to get the word out, in circulation.

I took online courses, even with Germany's Potsdam Institute, and I devoured the reports as they at first trickled in and then gently came in and then, finally, gushed in. It wasn't just global warming any more. The dangers evolved, became more complex. There was talk in some corners of mass extinction. Too late, it seems, came warnings of a collapse of biodiversity and the loss of wildlife. Sea ice, glaciers and ice caps that we were warned might be lost by the end of the century began to recede at rates no one had anticipated.  Every year seemed to bring a new deal, always more intractable, ever more urgent.

I think we've been at this juncture for a while but have been unwilling to accept the unacceptable.  We must not impede the economy, so we're told. We must preserve the economy, at least until the environment crushes our economy.  Only we won't acknowledge that we're hastening that outcome.

As I write this I now realize that I'm speaking to an audience with an entirely different mindset from those of today's young people who see this catastrophe heading for them.  Not for us. Why we'll probably be gone by then. It won't be long, they'll think of something.

We speak of climate change in the context of our sense of it. No matter how concerned we imagine ourselves, whether you're thirty or eighty, you know there's a reasonably good chance you'll get out relatively unscathed.  Those kids - today's grade-schoolers and teenagers, their reality is not the same. Climate change has a far greater significance to them. It will shape their lives. It may even end them.

Why, when it's their necks on the line, should we tailor our response to climate change and other existential threats to our wants and needs - the same wants and needs that created the mess these kids will endure? Isn't that akin to simply writing them off? And for what?

What would our policies be if they were tailored to the preservation of a viable future for today's under-20s? What if they were the priority, not us? Would Trudeau be boasting shamelessly that no one would leave that bitumen in the ground when leaving that bitumen in the ground is precisely what climate science tells us we must do out of regard for humanity?

When we discuss climate change it is not only in the context of the 30 to 80 year old population but also in the narrowed focus of Canada. We don't consider how many people will be displaced or suffer any of a number of scourges such as food insecurity or will simply die from our quest to reap the illusory rewards of bitumen. People in distant lands are already losing their homelands and, in some cases, their lives. How much meaning does that hold for Mr. Trudeau or, for that matter, the rest of us? Not much at all.

Our political caste have intertwined climate change with the petro-economy. One, the need for action on climate change, must not impair the other, our economy.  Would we be falling for that depraved nonsense if the consequences were more immediate, say five years? Of course not. We would be storming the Bastille of Parliament Hill demanding we be spared that scourge. Only we see those very consequences as a problem for the future, 30 or 40 years down the road. Not-Our-Problem.

Canadians are a self-congratulatory lot. We enjoy our myths about supposed Canadian values. We see ourselves as exemplars to the world. It's a rich diet of self-serving lies.

It's reached a point where Canada's petro-economy is becoming ghoulish. The ghouls - Trudeau, Scheer, Kenney, Moe have us on the road to climate disaster. Consider their policies in light of this from The Washington Post.

On Monday, scientists officially pronounced July 2019 the warmest month the world has experienced since record-keeping began more than a century ago. 

How hot was it? 

Wildfires raged across millions of acres in the Arctic. A massive ice melt in Greenland sent 197 billion tons of water pouring into the Atlantic Ocean, raising sea levels. And temperature records evaporated, one after another: 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit in Cambridge, England, and 108.7 in Paris. The same in Lingen, Germany.
Scientists found that the planet is headed for one of its hottest years, and the period from 2015 to 2019 is likely to go down as the warmest five-year period on record (the next four years are predicted to be hotter yet). 

“July has rewritten climate history, with dozens of new temperature records at [the] local, national and global level,” Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in announcing the month’s historic implications. 

“This is not science fiction. It is the reality of climate change. It is happening now, and it will worsen in the future without urgent climate action."

And if you think this looming disaster doesn't have our political leaders' fingerprints all over it, think again. Better yet, ask David Suzuki.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, many people we elect to represent our interests aren’t acting quickly enough — and some not at all. Even those who speak to the necessity of reining in global heating continue to promote further fossil fuel development, ignoring alarming statistics about temperature rise and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. 

Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg recently told French politicians she never hears journalists, politicians or businessmen mention the dire numbers. 

“It’s almost like you don’t even know these numbers exist. As if you haven’t even read the latest IPCC report, on which much of the future of our civilization is depending. Or perhaps you are simply not mature enough to tell it like it is. Because even that burden, you leave to us children,” she said. 

Rather than advocating for economic diversification and growing clean tech opportunities in the face of climate chaos and declining prospects for coal, oil and gas, many Canadian politicians continue to exaggerate the economic importance of dirty bitumen and fracked gas and downplay the negative consequences of processing, transporting and burning them. 

Even proven methods for slowing global heating, such as carbon pricing, have become contentious. 

We no longer have time to piss around. There’s room for discussion about the most effective ways to address the climate crisis, but ultimately we have to deploy every solution available and keep developing new ones — including energy conservation and efficiency, carbon pricing, public transit, vehicle and industrial electrification, clean energy technologies, education and family planning to empower women and slow population growth, reducing consumerism and more.

Scheer, Kenney, Moe, and, yes, Trudeau - they don't have the answers we need. They're the problem. 

It's the Opposite of a "Watery Grave"

No surprise here.  A quarter of the world's population is in "extreme water stress." There's not enough to go around.

Experts at the World Resources Institute (WRI) warned that increasing water stress could lead to more “day zeroes” – a term that gained popularity in 2018 as Cape Town in South Africa came dangerously close to running out of water. 

Qatar, Israel and Lebanon were ranked as the most water stressed countries in the world, with Badghis in Afghanistan and Gaborone and Jwaneng in Botswana the world’s most water-stressed regions.

“Water matters,” said Betsy Otto, global director for water at WRI. “We’re currently facing a global water crisis. Our populations and economies are growing and demanding more water. But our supply is threatened by climate change, water waste and pollution.” 

The global research organisation compared the water available to the amount withdrawn for homes, industries, irrigation and livestock. 

In the 17 countries facing extremely high water stress, agriculture, industry, and municipalities were found to be using up to 80% of available surface and groundwater in an average year. When demand rivals supply, even small dry spells, which are set to increase because of the climate crisis, can produce dire consequences.

It's the sort of thing that can cause deep social unrest which is not a good thing for those murderous swine running Saudi Arabia. The Saudis still have plenty of oil but water, not so much.

One Saudi groundwater expert at King Faisal University predicted in 2016 that the kingdom only had another 13 years’ worth of groundwater reserves left. 

“Groundwater resources of Saudi Arabia are being depleted at a very fast rate,” declared the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as far back as 2008. “Most water withdrawn comes from fossil deep aquifers, and some predictions suggest that these resources may not last more than about 25 years.”

But, surely, if you've got oil and a coast, there's always desalination, right? Yeah only that's proving to be a double edged sword.  Using sea water it's possible to extract 40 per cent by volume of freshwater but then you're left with the waste water, brine. That has to be pumped back out to sea.

Brine is a lethal cocktail of concentrated salt and every other toxin normally found in sea water. When it's pumped back into the sea it can wreak havoc on the marine food chain.

Desalination plants release 142 million cubic meters of salty brine every day, 50 percent more brine than formerly estimated. Brine is water containing large amounts of salt and often includes chemicals such as chlorine and copper used in desalination. The salty brine is mostly released into the sea. 

Edward Jones is the lead writer of the report. He explains that brine can cut oxygen levels in seawater and cause serious harm to sea animals, including shellfish. This harm leads to observable damage throughout the food chain.

But you don't have to go to the Middle East to find water stress. Most of the US southwest is water insecure.

A handful of US states – including New Mexico and California – are facing significant strains on their water supplies that will only intensify with global heating, according to new rankings.

New Mexico tops the list and is the only state with “extremely high” pressures on its water availability. The state’s score is on par with the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East and Eritrea in Africa, the World Resources Institute (WRI) found. 

California ranks second, followed by Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska.
“We’re stretching our water supply pretty much as far as it can go… and even further,” said Leah Schleifer, a spokeswoman for WRI’s water program. 

Experts with WRI said the data shows a global water crisis. 

“The picture is alarming in many places around the globe, but it’s very important to note that water stress is not destiny,” said Betsy Otto, WRI’s global water director. “What we can’t afford to do any longer is pretend that the situation will resolve itself.”

Then there's the High Plains aquifer, a.k.a. the Ogallala, that supports eight States that comprise the bulk of America's grain belt. A 2009 article in Scientific American warned that water, equivalent to 18 Colorado rivers, was being pumped to the surface for human needs, especially farming. But, don't worry, the Ogallala will recharge - in 6,000 years.

With a liquid treasure below their feet and a global market eager for their products, farmers here and across the region have made a Faustian bargain—giving up long-term conservation for short-term gain. To capitalize on economic opportunities, landowners are knowingly “mining” a finite resource.

Gee, a Faustian bargain - giving up long-term benefits for short-term gain - that sounds familiar, doesn't it? That's precisely what underlies the attitude of our Liberals and Conservatives on the Tar Sands. Make hay while the sun shines, kids.

If You Don't Like "Illiberal Democracy" How About "Christian Liberty"?

In Hungary there's talk of re-branding authoritarian illiberal democracy with something more palatable, less jarring - Christian Liberty. That does sound mighty fine, eh?

In his Demokrata editorial, András Bencsik says that by reframing his idea of illiberal democracy as ‘Christian liberty,’ the Prime Minister made clear that by illiberalism he meant more love, not less freedom. Orbán himself explained to his audience, Bencsik recalls, that Christianity expects its followers not to do to others what they don’t want to be done to themselves. The pro-government pundit interprets the difference between Prime Minister Orbán’s Christian liberty and liberalism as the difference between an organic democracy as compared to a doctrinaire democracy. One form of doctrinaire democracy was communism, he explains, while another form is liberal democracy, which puts the individual in the centre of liberty. Individuals, however, cannot exist on their own. Whether they realise it or not, they are part of a larger community, Bencsik concludes.

Organic democracy. More love, not less freedom.

How Do You Like Them Odds?

A somewhat different way to view climate change is by losers (many) and winners (few).  Which species will tough it out. Which won't. An article from BBC explores this subject. Hint - Cockroaches and bull frogs, they've got a solid future. Pandas and humans - not so much. In fact, we could be among the first species to go.

Even with our extraordinary capacity for innovation and adaptability, humans, it turns out, probably won’t be among the survivors. 

This is partly because humans reproduce agonisingly slowly and generally just one or two at a time – as do some other favourite animals, like pandas. Organisms that can produce many offspring quickly may have a better shot at avoiding extinction. 

It may seem like just a thought experiment. But discussing which species are more, or less, able to survive climate change is disturbingly concrete.

...And, of course, there is an alternative: we humans could get our acts together and stop the climate crisis from continuing to snowball by adopting policies and lifestyles that reduce greenhouse gases. But for the purposes of these projections, we’re assuming that’s not going to happen.

...Heat tolerant and drought resistant plants, like those found in deserts rather than rainforests, are more likely to survive. So are plants whose seeds can be dispersed over long distances, for instance by wind or ocean currents (like coconuts), rather than by ants (like some acacias). Plants that can adjust their flowering times may also be better able to deal with higher temperatures. Jen Lau, a biologist at Indiana University Bloomington, suggests that this may give non-native plants the advantage when it comes to responding to climate change.

...Importantly, though, the uniquely devastating nature of the current human-made climate crisis means that we can’t fully rely on benchmarks from the past. 

“The climate change that we see in the future will differ in many ways from the climate change that we’ve seen in the past”, notes Jamie Carr, an outreach officer for the Climate Change Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.

Cockroaches have built-in survival advantages. They know how to seek shelter beneath and behind things. They learned to burrow underground. They also eat just about anything. Koalas, on the other hand, are dead meat. They eat eucalyptus trees and climate change won't be kind to their sole source of food. So, they're gone.

..The future will have not only more extreme environments, but also more urban, human-altered spaces. So “resistant species would likely be the ones that are well attuned to living in human-modified habitats such as urban parks and gardens, agricultural areas, farms, tree plantations, and so on”, says Arvin C Diesmos, a herpetology curator at the Philippine National Museum of Natural History. 

CIFOR’s Nasi sums it up. “The winners will be very small, preferably endotherms if vertebrates, highly adaptable, omnivorous or able to live in extreme conditions.” 

In the words of the IUCN’s Carr, “It doesn’t sound like a very pretty world.”

Of course, to some extent we already know what’s needed to limit the bleakness of the future natural world. This includes reducing greenhouse gases; protecting biodiversity; restoring connectivity between habitats (rather than building endless dams, roads and walls); and reducing interrelated threats like pollution and land harvesting. Even species that are close to extinction, like Saiga antelopes, can be brought back from the brink with enough conservation effort. To reflect the power of sustained conservation, scientists are developing a Green List of species on the road to recovery and full health, to complement the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species. 

The political barriers are daunting. But scaling them, it seems, would beat surrendering the planet to the microbes.

The Amerikan Disease - White Supremacy

It's a disease as old as the United States itself, probably older - white supremacy.

Georgia Southern University prof, Jared Yates Sexton, writes that it's now a full-blown epidemic.

It is an epidemic aided by the vast and inescapable twisted political propaganda that is aimed at mobilizing an aggrieved based of white voters, but this messaging has particularly struck a murderous cord with disturbed, young white men who are taught, from a very early age, that any encroachment on their wants and in inherent privilege must be answered with violence. 

This is fueled by the Republican Party, stoked by their propaganda wings in cable news, radio airwaves, and in websites both mainstream and on the fringes. It is an epidemic fostered by and triggered by Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America. 

This epidemic is blatant, and yet, the sickness continues undiagnosed. When the next inevitable massacre is committed and a community grieves, the networks will frame it as a singular tragedy and blame the latest lone nut. We’ll say, my god, how could this happen, while our impotent politicians copy and paste their public statements from the last tragedy, from the tragedy before that, from the tragedy before that.

...We don’t want to say the words. We don’t want to admit that America has festered with white supremacy for more than 240 years. We can’t confront the fact that, before it was mass shootings, it was mass lynchings. We don’t want to confront the fact that there is a direct line to be drawn from the murders in El Paso, Texas on Saturday to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 by white supremacist Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people. We can’t confront that our laws, our customs, and our actions are riddled through with this epidemic and have secured, for generations, a rigid and toxic racial hierarchy. 

But make no mistake, what we face is an epidemic that threaten the very foundation of free society. Every politician and gun salesman who hides behind support of the Second Amendment likes to beat their chest and trumpet the idea of freedom, but what gets lost in the defense is that America is founded on the idea of a free society, a place where Americans should be able to live lives in which they are secure to move about, think any thought they want, say anything they want, and realize the concept of relative safety. Every day that this epidemic goes unaddressed, every day that stepping into a public place amounts to risking your life, another shred of actual freedom, of a free society, slips away, possibly to never return.

Coals to Newcastle? Iran Seizes Tanker Smuggling Oil to Gulf Arabs.

Two questions: from where and to where?

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized a foreign oil tanker in the Gulf that was smuggling fuel to Arab states, Iran’s state TV reported, adding that seven sailors onboard had been detained. 

“The IRGC’s naval forces have seized a foreign oil tanker in the Persian Gulf that was smuggling fuel for some Arab countries,” the broadcaster quoted the IRGC commander, Ramezan Zirahi, as saying.

Smuggling? What is that about? Arabs selling fuel to Arabs? How does that constitute smuggling? Are these people now out of their minds?

The Murderous States of Amerika.

It's been raining dead Americans over the past 24 hours. Two mass shootings - first in El Paso, Texas, and then in Dayton, Ohio - have left 30 dead and scores of wounded in hospitals.

Talk about a fitting tribute to the efficacy of American and Russian assault rifles. They do get the job done, especially when they're rocking those high-capacity magazines. Security photos of the Texas shooter show him carrying an AK-47. The Ohio shooter is said to have used the 'made in America' option, the .223.

Washington is going full bore "thoughts and prayers" mode. A fittingly grotesque insult to the dead and their survivors from a hopelessly corrupt, 'bought and paid for' Congress.

And it's not even a holiday weekend in the States although today is "Coast Guard Birthday" day whatever in hell that means.

The Texas shooter is in custody. The Ohio gunman brought the death toll to an even ten.

Well it's "go to meetin'" across the United States of America. And those pews will have plenty of rabid 2nd Amendment bottoms in them, praying to Jaysus not to let this be the day when those Washington pinkos come for their guns.

One last thing. The American media (ours also) need to stop calling people who've been shot "injured." They're not injured, FFS, they're wounded. Injury violently inflicted is a wound. When you stub your toe on the furniture, that's an injury.

We're Out of Time. You Have to Choose a Side.

It’s a trite cliché to say the time has long since past the critical tipping point when humanity can no longer have it both ways. Every human must, sooner or later, once and for all, choose which side of the debate they’re on and then accept the consequences of whichever side is chosen.

                                                           - Jerome Irwin

Another day, another climate scientist pouring her heart out. Theirs is about the most miserable profession of the lot. Highly educated, determined, and living with the reality that no matter the peril to humanity the decision-makers will ignore the science no matter how dire the warning. Nowhere is this more burdensome than inside the petro-states, the fossil energy giants.

Joelle Gergis is a climate scientist and writer from the knuckle-dragging capital of the southern hemisphere, Australia. If you glance at the charts in the previous post you'll see that Australia is neck and neck with Canada when it comes to carbon production and emissions. Shame on you, Australia.

Here are a few of the more telling excerpts from Ms. Gergis' address:

Preparing for this talk I experienced something gut-wrenching. It was the realisation that there is now nowhere to hide from the terrible truth.

...The results coming out of the climate science community at the moment are, even for experts, similarly alarming.

We know that CO2 concentrations have risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to approximately 410 ppm today, the highest recorded in at least three million years. Without major mitigation efforts, we are likely to reach 560 ppm by around 2060. 

...When the UN’s Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015, it defined a specific goal: to keep global warming to well below 2°C and as close as possible to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (defined as the climate conditions experienced during the 1850–1900 period). While admirable in intent, the agreement did not impose legally binding limits on signatory nations and contained no enforcement mechanisms. Instead, each country committed to publicly disclosed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce emissions. In essence, it is up to each nation to act in the public interest.

So how is the Paris Agreement actually panning out? 

...To restrict warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to triple its current emission reduction pledges. If that’s not bad enough, to restrict global warming to 1.5°C, global ambition needs to increase fivefold. 

...Increasingly after my speaking events, I catch myself unexpectedly weeping in my hotel room or on flights home. Every now and then, the reality of what the science is saying manages to thaw the emotionally frozen part of myself I need to maintain to do my job. In those moments, what surfaces is pure grief.  ...Being willing to acknowledge the arrival of the point of no return is an act of bravery. 

But these days my grief is rapidly being superseded by rage. Volcanically explosive rage. Because in the very same IPCC report that outlines the details of the impending apocalypse, the climate science community clearly stated that limiting warming to 1.5°C is geophysically possible.

...Although the very foundation of human civilisation is at stake, the world is on track to seriously overshoot our UN targets. Worse still, global carbon emissions are still rising. In response, scientists are prioritising research on how the planet has responded during other warm periods in the Earth’s history. 

The most comprehensive summary of conditions experienced during past warm periods in the Earth’s recent history was published in June 2018 in one of our leading journals, Nature Geoscience, by 59 leading experts from 17 countries. The report concluded that warming of between 1.5 and 2°C in the past was enough to see significant shifts in climate zones, and land and aquatic ecosystems “spatially reorganize”.
These changes triggered substantial long-term melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, unleashing 6 to 13 metres of global sea-level rise lasting thousands of years. 

Examining the Earth’s climatic past tells us that even between 1.5 and 2°C of warming sees the world reconfigure in ways that people don’t yet appreciate. All bets are off between 3 and 4°C, where we are currently headed. Parts of Australia will become uninhabitable, as other areas of our country become increasingly ravaged by extreme weather events.

...There is a very rational reason why Australian schoolkids are now taking to the streets – the immensity of what is at stake is truly staggering. Staying silent about this planetary emergency no longer feels like an option for me either. Given how disconnected policy is from scientific reality in this country, an urgent and pragmatic national conversation is now essential. Otherwise, living on a destabilised planet is the terrible truth that we will all face.

We still have time to try and avert the scale of the disaster, but we must respond as we would in an emergency. The question is, can we muster the best of our humanity in time?

What I would ask you to do after reading the preceding post and this is to consider who, with a shred of concern for Canada and our young people, could support the handmaidens of the petro-state, Scheer or Trudeau, this October.  There is "nowhere to hide from the terrible truth" of what they are doing. Parliament's declaration of a climate emergency is nothing more than a dark farce, a sop to appeal to the environmental vote. Scheer is reprehensible. As for Justin, his words mean nothing. His deeds speak for themselves.

As Jerome Irwin writes, you have to choose which side you're on. Humanity can no longer have it both ways.

h/t Graeme Decarie
h/t The Arbourist

The Triumph of the Fossil Fuelers.

It's come to the point where, if we don't stop them, we're toast.

For a couple of years, OPEC and the International Energy Agency have projected big increases in fossil fuel consumption over the next 30 years. Sure, alternative clean energy will grow but, with the indifference of governments such as our own and their insistence on continuing to give fossil fuels a leg up, the green energy transition is looking like an illusion.

In today's National Observer, Barry Saxifrage reviews the latest "BP Statistical Review of World Energy."

Despite decades of promises to prevent a climate crisis, the primary cause of it — global fossil fuel burning — continues to increase rapidly. Last year's record-breaking burn was a doozy. 

And renewable energy — a hoped-for climate solution — has not only failed to halt the explosive rise in fossil carbon burning, it's falling ever-further behind.

Saxifrage has drawn a few illustrative graphs from BP's stats. The first depicts global fossil burn going back to 1990 when the world dutifully agreed that we must do something about this.

Not very pretty, is it?  Our 1990 consumption has grown by roughly two-thirds. Next up, Canada. Here's a chart showing fossil fuel burn per capita by country. Hey, hey - look at that, we're Number Two, right behind Saudi Arabia.

The next two charts show change in per capita fossil fuel burn since 1990 and then Canada's overall fossil fuel consumption to 2018.

So, unless you enjoy the sensation of smoke being blown up your ass it's time to accept that Andrew Scheer and, yes, Justin Trudeau are very much petro-statesmen. That means they'll lie right into your face and smile while they're doing it.

Canadian politicians like to say that we are world leaders in the climate fight. 

The energy data in this BP report shows the opposite. It shows that Canadians burn more fossil fuels per capita than almost any other country. And it shows that instead of cutting back as required to prevent a full-blown climate crisis, we just keep burning more and more.

If Canadians want to pass along a safe and sane climate system to our future generations, we will need to quickly change course. Many of our peer countries peaked fossil burning years ago and have policies we could adopt.

Aren't you tired of the steady diet of their horseshit? You should be. If we're going to stop this we'll have to work around these petro-pols. That starts this October.