In a four-degree warmer world “Heat waves of undreamt-of-ferocity will scorch the Earth’s surface as the climate becomes hotter than anything humans have ever experienced. At that time, there were two miles of ice on top of where I’m sitting right now in New York City. That was during the last ice age, the Wisconsin Stage (26,000 to 13,300 years ago). But our ancestors experienced a four-degree cooler world. Humans have never experienced a rise of 4 degrees in average temperatures. Four degrees might not seem like much, but make no mistake: Such an increase will be catastrophic for our species and most others. Given its length, several sittings or a printout may be required to complete reading.Īs soaring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions drove global CO2 concentrations past 400 parts per million in May 2013, shell-shocked climate scientists warned that unless we urgently adopt “radical” measures to suppress GHG emissions (50 percent cuts in emissions by 2020, 90 percent by 2050) we’re headed for an average temperature rise of 3 degrees or 4 degrees Celsius before the end of the century. We consider Richard Smith’s article foundational to understanding the world we live in.
The following is an updated version of an article that originally was published in the Real-World Economics Review. The results are in: No amount of “green capitalism” will be able to ensure the profound changes we must urgently make to prevent the collapse of civilization from the catastrophic impacts of global warming. This article, originally published January 9, 2014, shows why this patently phony delusion is, nonetheless, so attractive, and why “green capitalism” is a plan for the collapse of civilization and global ecological suicide. Yet the powers that be, governments and their corporate masters, tell us that growth and consumption must grow even faster if we want to keep our jobs, but “not to worry” because their “green jobs,” “carbon taxes” and the like will brake the slide to ecological collapse.
In what scientists have called “The Great Acceleration,” the engine of global capitalist economic development since 1950 has now engulfed nearly the whole world and accelerated at an ever-faster speed, overwhelming our small blue planet’s finite natural resources and limited ability to withstand pollution in a last great fire sale of global upper and middle-class overconsumption.
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