We may be entering the high-stakes endgame on climate change. The pieces—technological and perhaps political—are finally in place for rapid, powerful action to shift us off of fossil fuel. Unfortunately, the players may well decide instead to simply move pawns back and forth for another couple of decades, which would be fatal. Even more unfortunately, the natural world is daily making it more clear that the clock ticks down faster than we feared. The whole game is very nearly in check. We also can limit the many other forms of damage beyond the rising sea level (everything from the intensity of droughts to the spread of disease-bearing insects) if we sharply limit carbon emissions now. But the news from the Antarctic does signal, once and for all, that “stopping global warming” is not possible. There is no way to cool the warmer waters that are melting the glaciers. Physics is not going to let us off easily. All our efforts, from now on, must be devoted to keeping things from getting worse than they otherwise will be. Bill McKibben, NYRB nybooks/articles/archives/2014/jul/10/climate-will-we-lose-endgame/?insrc=toc
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 05:16:16 +0000