2/26/09

Things to Come--A Green Economy or an Eco Nighthtmare?

By Grant Lawrence

"....But what we have seen is that the time since 2000 was a period of rapid economic growth, and it was also a period of time where a large fraction of the economic growth was fueled by electricity based on coal, and coal is the energy source that releases the most CO2 per unit of useful energy that’s released. The consequence of that is that we have seen a very rapid increase in CO2 emissions....
Chris Field, a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the current trajectory of climate change is now much worse than the IPCC had originally projected. (Democracy Now)

Just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is warning that the earth's warming is much worse than previous climate models had proposed, there is the news that some Southern governors are waging a "water war" over the rights to Lake Lanier.

If a water war is beginning in the American South, Dr. Field of the IPCC believes that things could be very bad for the American Southwest.

According to Dr. Field," We basically see a big tongue of area that extends from California to about Oklahoma, where the combination of decreased precipitation and increased temperature, increased evaporation, leads to decreased river runoff. And that decrease is quite large, in the range of 25 to even 35 percent. It really projects a period of extreme stress on water resources, limited availability of water for all of the kinds of water users that are out there, from agriculture to industry to cities to in stream ecological uses."

As the world's climate is drastically changing at an alarming rate, it is imperative that the people of the world demand a real change from our governments in dealing with the climate crisis.

The water war that we are seeing in the American South is surely a sign of things to come.

Still there is also a hopeful sign of things to come in that people, especially young people, may finally be getting the message on the climate crisis. A large protest is being called in Washington DC at a coal fired plant and it promises to be the largest act of civil disobedience against global warming in this country.

The solution to help offset global warming is that a real Green Economy has to be initiated along with conservation. This Green Economy has the potential of moving the world beyond its present economic depression by creating new technologies, investments, and jobs. But this Green Economy will also mean that our children will have a future and that humanity prospers in that future.

Hopefully, President Obama and other leaders of the world will begin to make good on their promises of combating global warming. In the face of an extreme crisis in global climate change that has emerged, even beyond the old projections on climate change, the people need to make Obama and the rest of the world's leaders go Green.

Source: Bodhi Thunder

No comments: