Photo: focalplane

Despite the hoopla over Climategate, don’t go out and buy four Hummers yet. There’s some purty depressing realities out there, including the fact that global warming has outpaced predictions. Yep, that means things are already worse than experts thought they would be at this point. Looks like by the end of this century, sea levels are gonna rise by two meters, or around six feet.

And guess what? We’ve already passed the tipping point. According to Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at Germany’s Potsdam Institute and a widely recognized sea level expert, it’s officially unstoppable:

There is no way I can see to stop this rise, even if we have gone to zero emissions.

Take that, Freakonomics guys.

Author Deborah Teramis Christian describes what exactly that will (not might) look like:

This is not a distant eventuality, but a sea change (literally) whose effects we will see within our lifetimes. By 2050 certain populated coastal areas will be significantly impacted by this impending change in sea level. It is no exaggeration to say entire cities will be flooded or submerged: a 2-meter sea rise will, for example, obliterate built-up urban areas in the southern San Francisco Bay, including parts of San Jose. It will submerge chunks of the Port of Los Angeles, threaten Washington D.C., and drown portions of the densely built Jersey shore and industrial New York waterfronts. Low-lying coastal islands off the Carolinas, Florida, and along the Gulf Coast will simply vanish.

And about 40 million people worldwide live in flood plains. This one’s gonna hit the rich and the poor (though I wonder who will come out less scathed).

Canada, our supposedly green-friendly neighbor to the North, is not helping out with things either. According to George Monbiot:

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced that it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%(1).

He adds that in December 2008, the climate change performance index assessed the environmental efforts of the 60 richest nations, and ranked Saudi Arabia 60th. Canada? 59th. Ouch.

What’s up with Canada? This may come as a major surprise (it did to me), but Canada holds the world’s second largest oil reserves, right after, you guessed it, Saudi Arabia (isn’t it nice how they are working side by side?). Canada actually produces “oil sands” which is a mixture of sand, water, clay, and Bitumen, and the Bitumen ain’t easy to get to. But they are willing to tear up tons of pristine Canadian land to get to it (sound familiar?).

Lastly (for now), if you have it in you, another one of Monbiot’s post – this one a debate with Paul Kingsnorth – is worth a read. The question is, should we even bother trying to save industrial civilization? We’re going to hell in a hand bag, and Kingsnorth pretty much says bring on the apocalypse and move on to greener pastures. Monbiot fears that with several billion people perishing in the process, greener pastures may be a hard thing to come by. Read it for yourself and decide. Or at least contemplate.

What To Do?

Ok, so what’s the positive spin on our newest state of global environmental crisis? Well, if we can stabilize temps (by seriously cutting down on worldwide emissions), then we can hope for only a steady rise in the sea level over the next few centuries, rather than one that rises at an accelerated rate. Ok, not great, or really plausible, but something.

Al Gore also believes we have the tools to stop global warming STAT. Putting a stop to deforestation and setting in place population controls should do the trick.

Maybe we should just shut down Vegas? That would probably cut our energy use in about half.

Yeah, those aren’t so easy for us little people to implement either. So, here we go – it’s time for each of us to think about something big we are gonna give up in the New Year. Something that takes a lot of energy for one person or family to use. That way, we each have control, and can make a big difference.

Here are my two things for the New Year:

• I will only buy local foods for at least three months, and will only eat at restaurants that do not serve local foods max twice a month.
• I will not travel to places based primarily on over-using natural resources such as water and electricity.

What are you gonna do?