A new scientific report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that this last decade on planet Earth was the warmest in recorded history. The report also informs us that each of the last three decades has been warmer than the preceding one. Last June was the hottest June ever recorded. The first half of 2010 continued the warming trend. This year had the warmest average temperature for the period of January through May since record keeping began. So far this year, nine nations have set records for all-time high temperatures. These countries include Russia (111 degrees); Sudan (121 degrees); Saudia Arabia (126 degrees); Iraq ( also 126 degrees) and most appallingly, Pakistan just a tad under 130 degrees.
A new scientific report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that this last decade on planet Earth was the warmest in recorded history. The report also informs us that each of the last three decades has been warmer than the preceding one. Last June was the hottest June ever recorded. The first half of 2010 continued the warming trend. This year had the warmest average temperature for the period of January through May since record keeping began. So far this year, nine nations have set records for all-time high temperatures. These countries include Russia (111 degrees); Sudan (121 degrees); Saudia Arabia (126 degrees); Iraq ( also 126 degrees) and most appallingly, Pakistan just a tad under 130 degrees.
A new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warming seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the very base of the marine food chain, by 40 percent since 1950.
NOAA reports that excessive heat is our number one weather related killer. As we write this in mid August, heat advisories and warnings in the US mid-west extend from lower Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. In early July, a friend of ours recorded an unofficial temperture of 100 degrees in Portland, Maine’s Old Port area. The Old Port is located at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and in summer generally benefits from the cooling influence of that large body of water.
Doing Nothing
Meanwhile in late July, the United States Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change legislation. They didn’t do less than we might have hoped. They did nothing, thus preserving, as environmentalist Bill McKibban put it, “a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action,” clearly signaling to the rest of the world that we, in the industrial west, do not take the welfare of our only planet very seriously. In fact, the Senate majority leader decided not to even schedule a vote on legislation which would have capped carbon dioxide emissions, the major contributor to the greenhouse effect which is causing the over-heating of our planet. Last hour petitioning of the Senate by various groups calling for action had no effect.
Obviously our elected leaders in the Senate do not consider climate change a serious issue. The scientists of the world do, one certainly imagines the citizens of Pakistan do, but the US Senate in its infinite wisdom does not.
This is tough stuff. It’s often hard to feel positive when the people we have elected to lead us into the future don’t seem to be able to grasp the seriousness and the scope of the problems we are hoping to surmount. We in the US, with 4% of the world’s population, are responsible for 25% of global carbon dioxide emissions; more than China, Japan and India combined. Yet we cannot seem to pass legislation limiting our own excesses. We have the means to take a planetary leadership role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but politically we lack the will to act.
Our world is changing. Many people believe we are poised at the edge of a paradigm shift. The next world will be shaped by the decisions and actions we take, or do not take, today. It may be wonderful, or it may be a disaster. It is up to us. As we approach our point of no return, the point at which enough will have been set in motion to preclude a last minute change of course, we see disorder. Some people are clinging to the old as others are celebrating change. We are reminded of the process by which a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. As the creature’s first few cells transition from worm to butterfly, the unchanged cells, thinking the new cells to be invaders, attack and destroy them. Only after a tipping point is reached, when enough cells begin making the change, does the rest of the caterpillar's body realize what is happening and start to transform as well. We have butterflies, so we know this process can work. But will it work for us?
To Fly, We Must Change
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must hatch or go bad.
So here we are, as worms and eggs! If we would like to be able to fly, we must change. We each must begin (or continue) the process of doing our lives differently, living them in ways that are sustainable within the governing constraints of our planetary ecology, an ecology in which everything is connected to everything else, in which we all live down-stream from somebody.
Hints For Flying
Now is a time for visionaries and mechanics, those who can dream the new dreams and those who can make them work. Now is a time for people with creativity and courage to go forth and be that change they wish to see, for if we want saving, we had best save ourselves. What each one of us chooses to do, or not do, at this point in time is incredibly important.
- Eat more locally grown organic food
- Love, laugh and dance more
- Buy less stuff
- Use less fuel, use less fuel, use less fuel
For information about positive news and people actually making creative changes, check out Yes Magazine, www.yesmagazine.org, and perhaps Ode. Focus on your own areas of interest and use the internet to find others who are involved in those fields and are working for creative, ecologically sound changes. Consider joining or supporting them. In Maine MOFGA, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners, www.mofga.org, is a wonderful resource for information about growing healthy food in sustainable ways and finding sources of organic food for those of us who do not grow our own. Schumacher College, www.schumachercollege.org.uk, offers an inspiring collection of courses on how we might change many existing aspects of our current world in order to make them more ecologically sane, more beautiful and more humane. The Northwest Earth Institute, www.nwei.org, offers workbooks for discussion courses on many of the current issues of our world. The Natural Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org, is a dynamic organization which successfully uses legal means to police both our own government agencies and corporations, repeatedly forcing them to discontinue their plundering of the earth and making them operate within the confines of existing laws. The organization has an entire section on the web devoted to global warming, its causes and solutions. NRDC currently works at the international level offering practical solutions to our planet’s rising temperatures. For anyone interested in comparing gas mileage and emissions of hybrid vehicles with both conventional cars and with each other, The Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org offers a nifty comparison chart… and the list goes on, almost indefinitely.
The information we need is available. Now it is up to us to get busy and use it!
We have an overheating planet to cool down.
© Pat Foley, 2010
Pat Foley attempts to live a green/sustainable life just outside of Cornish, Maine. She is the owner of Earthrest, a retreat center operating on solar power, which offers gathering space for groups and individuals. The underlying focus of Earthrest is on following Gandhi’s advice to be the change we wish to see in the world. You may contact Pat at earthrest@psouth or (207) 625-4179.