This Is The End
“It is criminality beyond any language, concepts or laws that we presently have. It’s criminality that places the entire human enterprise at risk. And we simply have not been able to confront inaction that allows the entire human enterprise to slip into catastrophic failure. It really does beggar the imagination to understand why, given the consensus of the scientific community on this issue, why inaction was the order of the day.”
-David Orr, a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College on the failure of world governments to address the climate crisis.
When I last posted to this blog, it was March. Snowmageddon and climate denial were top of mind among most people. The climate talks in Copenhagen had crashed and burned. And, the US Senate was preparing to abandon even voting on an extremely watered-down, “energy bill,” essentially killing chances for even the mildest kind of climate reforms.
A few steadfast souls continued to peddle their arguments for reform, but few would indulge them. Even as 2010 continued to trend as the warmest year on record…snowstorms be damned. The world was seemingly lurching back to its bad old habits and burying its collective head under the sand.
But those sands shifted, and we’ve awoken to a summer from hell: Floods, fires, drought, wheat shortages, civil evacuations, landslides and worldwide deaths from record temperatures.
Despite all this news, this blog will not be updated as it once was. From time to time, I may add updates, but I think this blog has said what it can.
As you read it, you will find descriptions of woefully familiar crises that are playing out this summer, and which, according to climate models, will unfortunately prove routine. Let it stand as a record then, chronicalling the available understanding of climate change between 2009-2010 and how humanity decided to do nothing; when we chose ruin over hope.
