- iaindryden1
Vital news...
This week I heard the worst news ever. It was so awful, so far reaching, that my usual positivity withered in seconds. I wished to share what had disturbed me, but hesitated, convinced my tiny readership would switch off. Then I realised that this problem will have a bigger effect on us all than the birth of Christ has had over the centuries.
That’s enough to put you off reading what now looks like exaggerated dribble from a wonky mind.
Ha, you’re still reading. OK. Here goes.
I heard it buried in a BBC programme, to be exact, two minutes in to Radio4’s ‘The Meat Paradox’, to be aired again tomorrow, 9.45am, Friday 3rd February. Underscoring my deeply felt concern is the strange fact that such an enormous bit of reportage has not, to my knowledge, been taken up or even repeated anywhere. Despite its enormity, our global system is so keen to keep moving forwards as it always has done that this dramatic fact has been shelved.
But then why be surprised, we have been doing so for so long now that we are experts at being ostriches whose heads dive in to the sand as soon as there’s any hint of our having to change our ways. As far back as the 1970’s people such as the US President Richard Nixon were concerned about this topic. Yet we ignored them. I know. Amongst so many, I was part of the effort to try to wake people up to the problems outlined in this BBC Radio4 programme.
Again, I hesitate to divulge this information in a time when so many nasty and destabilising things have changed what felt like a stable world. But today’s announcement that one of our oil companies has this year made a profit of £32 billion, finally made me realise that those in power, be they on Shell’s board or in our many governments world-wide, don’t give a toss.
I will end this blog by giving you the news and leaving you to either dig your head in the boiling quicksands, or to spin it out to your friends, asking them to do the same and so hopefully starting a groundswell of concerned anger that will force those who can to act and to act quickly.
So here goes:
The UK’s chief adviser on this potent subject, Chris Stark, CEO of our much lauded Committee on Climate Change, made a public announcement in Parliament. He stated, that, looking at the recent and current response to the most urgent need for economic change in the face of rising CO2 emissions, we are falling woefully. Only one of the UK’s 25 legal Climate Change commitments is anywhere near on target. With this record worldwide, we will not get anywhere near net zero by 2050. Humanity will struggle to prevent a rise to 4C*. Chris Stark said we should quickly start preparing for this reality.
Civil society, what we vaguely enjoy right now, will probably not exist as those lands coping with Climate Change will be inundated by starving, desperate immigrants. Maybe you will be one of them, or your children.
There we are. Take it as it is. Do what you want.
Our current lack of response to the greatest news EVER means that we are choosing this scenario. Remember, though, we have choice.
We can change our combined future. We, you, me, everyone we each know, everyone they know, all the multiplications of this message spreading out, 2x4x8x16x32x64 and so on = all of us!
If you are concerned, and any sane person will be, hurry, time to stop this absolute disaster, the end of life and civilisation as we know it, is very very short, (that’s no exaggeration).
Bored of me harping on about CC, you will probably never read my blogs again.
*A rise of 4C will render the vast zone between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn scorched desert, India will be uninhabitable, Spain and Italy will be part of the expanded Sahara. The world’s greatest rivers will dry up - as did many in Europe and East Asia last year. Enormous, hungry populations will shift polewards, that is to places such as here from where I write, seeking food and water. The Ice Caps and all glaciers will melt, rising sea levels by 10 metres, drowning New York, Tokyo, Rio, Shanghai, Lagos, London and more. Nature will suffer catastrophic devastation, collapsing ecosystems everywhere.
#2050
