Compassion Tune-Up: How Hot Will It Get in Their Lifetime?

How how will it get for a child born today?

Every time I turn around, I read or hear "two degrees." Two degrees this, two degrees that. Two degrees has wormed its way into our climate-changed brains as though it's a goal or a target we're aiming for, instead of a temperature rise we don't want to go near.

The Independent: "A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures [is] the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change ...." 

The Conversation: "Two degrees [is] the temperature rise we need to stay under to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change ...." 

European Union: "Limiting Global Climate Change to 2 Degrees Celsius" 

The Guardian: "... the agreed 'safety' limit of 2ºC."

I've talked before (here and here) about the ill wisdom of setting 2ºC as some sort of guardrail, especially when we've got a bunch of yahoos driving the global go-karts. "Guardrail? Yeehaw, let's go for it!" Considering what's happening already with only an additional 0.8ºC of warming, how could anyone wish 2ºC on their progeny and descendants? 

Having said all that, if one recognizes the catastrophic danger that continued global warming poses, then one might find The Guardian's interactive How Hot Will It Get in My Lifetime? of use as a compassion tune-up. For example, here are screenshots for my birthdate versus the birthdate of my beloved niece. This helps me see that it's all inexorable without a huge push for zero carbon emissions.

Warming in my lifetime (click on image to see the whole graph)

Warming in my niece's lifetime (click to see the whole graph)

On current emissions trends (which show no sign of slowing, let alone stopping), when my niece reaches my current age in 2048 (and I'm in the ground or in deep decline), we'll have blown past the 2ºC "guardrail" and will be heading to over 6ºC of warming. 

By the way, here's how I look at that best-case lower limit of the range of warming. If emissions keep rising and the global temperature keeps going up, then there is no "best case." It's just a matter of the speed at which we're committing this greatest of crimes against humanity: progenycide.

96 Days - Go Vegetarian, Cut the Methane, Save Yourself and Your Children

An online correspondent wrote (thanks, Remi!), wondering how we're going to effectively cut methane by getting the world to go vegetarian when we can't even get people to go veg in order to stop world hunger.

He raises a good point. People who eat meat out of habit or superstition also don't tend to consider the impacts of their diet on the environment (pollution and resource depletion), on others in the world today (grain going to feed cattle and other livestock animals instead of to fellow humans), or on future generations (our Western meat-focused diet is a huge contributor of methane and other greenhouse gases).

What if we presented the choice this way: Would you rather voluntarily cut back your meat consumption to virtually zero in the next year thereby giving the world a fighting chance of safeguarding your children's future, or continue eating meat, ensure a future of climate chaos and hunger for your grandchildren, and have your right to meat eating taken away from you by force in the not-too-distant future?

There will come a time (probably not soon enough, sadly) when governments will suddenly start doing everything they can to mitigate global warming. Since livestock is such a huge contributor, it will one day be seen as an easy way to reduce our GHGs.

In North America, we often cite the success of anti-smoking campaigns, but their "overnight" success took decades. We don't have decades to make this huge social change.

Why not just look on it as a sacrifice we have to make for our children — one that is a lot better for us than going to war, and one that can actually be quite fun and delicious.

Or am I dreaming?

124 Days to Copenhagen - Life Without Agriculture

I've discovered that some people who at least are thinking about the climate change emergency are perhaps thinking the wrong things.

Apparently there's a belief out there that we're going to end up back in a feudal system, whereby today's rich people become tomorrow's rich people, and the rest of us become peasants, serfs or slaves. Our toil (rather than oil) then becomes the engine of that feudal society.

The big problem with that prediction is that the feudal system was based on agriculture, but climate change is going to do away with agriculture. If we don't make the transformation to a renewable energy / zero carbon economy fast, then that climate stability that allowed civilizations to flourish (because of agricultural surpluses) will disappear, leaving us basically back in the stone age, if not gone.

The grim irony is that the deniers like to tell their audiences that we environmentalists would have us all living back in the stone age, when it's their foot dragging over at least two decades now that will lead to a climate holocaust and then a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for any that might remain.

It's the physics, folks, pure physics. We're still pumping more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They warm the atmosphere, heating up the surface of the planet, which includes the oceans. If we don't stop very soon and start going in reverse, this will mean disaster for agriculture, disaster for our food security, and disaster for our children's future.

125 Days Left - We Have Become Nature Voyeurs

I live in a beautiful seaside place where we get to see killer whales go past from time to time. Orcas are magnificent animals, and over the years, we've had some very moving experiences with them.

This morning, the rocks by the beach were covered with human animals, waiting to catch a glimpse of these powerful black and white creatures. As we watched the orcas spyhop and blow and slap their fins, I heard someone say, "It's like the paparazzi here, with all the cameras clicking."

And that's when it struck me. In our culture, we tend to "do" Nature, like voyeurs or like athletes, rather than experiencing the rest of Nature as parties to it, as a part of it.

It reminded me of a teenaged tourist about to go off on an Africa safari in Kruger Park, South Africa. "Dad," she complained to her father, "if you've seen one giraffe, you've seen them all."

Actually, no. Spend any time with giraffes — or any other creature on Earth — and you will soon see all the differences between individuals within species and between species that seem quite similar. You'll also discover all the similarities that unite us as living beings on one planet. But we have to take that time.

Part of safeguarding the future is going to entail a slowing down, a rebonding, a relearning of the ancient connection between all living things. 

And the longer we just sit, observing our neighbours of other species, or falling asleep in the sun, or chewing on some grass, the less we're driving about spewing greenhouse gas emissions!

My husband and I have been greeted — eye to eye — by whales, have sung to whales, have watched whales push a sick pod member to the surface, have witnessed a baby whale nursing. We would have missed the privilege of all these fantastic shared moments had we not just slowed down a bit and gotten past the notion that Nature is a "show."

135 Days Left - The Kids, Always the Kids (A Guest Blog)

Today's post is from Lou Grinzo, a new online friend from The Cost of Energy, in response to my suggestion that some compassion towards all the children could go a long way.

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I had a chance to present to 10 classes at a local middle school on the topic of electricity generation. I talked about conservation steps they can take, which fuels we use here in the United States, and how much CO2 each emitted.

I was shocked by the determination of these kids. Their teacher had already covered a lot of ground with them on climate chaos, so they had at least a rough idea of how bad CO2 emissions are. And they were NOT going to listen to some old guy like me telling them it was a tough problem. They wanted me and all the other clueless, can't-work-an-iPod-and-don't-know-Facebook-from-a- hole-in-the-ground adults to get the heck out of the way so they could fix it. NOW!

And this all happened even before I apologized to them. I told them that my generation had really screwed up the planet, and that we were leaving them with a gigantic mess to clean up. The look on their faces was amazing. I guess they're not used to adults apologizing to them.

The one thing they couldn't get their heads around was why things had gotten this bad, and why we (meaning the people running the planet) hadn't started doing a lot more about it 20 or 30 or more years ago. I tried my best to explain that a lot of the emissions, starting with the Industrial Revolution, happened before we realized what we were doing. And by the time we figured it out we had built so much of our economy around burning fossil fuels, and there was so much money involved (as in buying politicians), that it became impossible to make large scale changes until things got really bad - like now.

I came out of those days exhausted and invigorated, saddened and hopeful. I think I learned a lot more from them about our future than they learned from me.

Fix this for the kids. And they are all our kids, whether they carry our DNA or not.

Thanks, Lou. I know what you mean.

144 Days to Go - Let's Do Some Compassion Math

If you watched the David Suzuki speech on the 145 Days post, you'll have heard some sad statistics.

The world's 50 least developed countries (LDCs) have contributed less than 1 one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but are reaping over 95 per cent of the impacts.

Here are those numbers are again:

50 LDCs + <1% ghgs =" ">95% of impacts

And here are those countries (in alphabetical order):

1. Afghanistan
2. Angola
3. Bangladesh
4. Benin
5. Bhutan
6. Burkina Faso
7. Burundi
8. Cambodia
9. Cape Verde
10. Central African Republic
11. Chad
12. Comoros
13. Democratic Republic of the Congo
14. Djibouti
15. Equatorial Guinea
16. Eritrea
17. Ethiopia
18. Gambia
19. Guinea
20. Guinea-Bissau
21. Haiti
22. Kiribati
23. Lao People's Democratic Republic
24. Lesotho
25. Liberia
26. Madagascar
27. Malawi
28. Maldives
29. Mali
30. Mauritania
31. Mozambique
32. Myanmar
33. Nepal
34. Niger
35. Rwanda
36. Samoa
37. Sao Tome and Principe
38. Senegal
39. Sierra Leone
40. Solomon Islands
41. Somalia
42. Sudan
43. Timor-Leste
44. Togo
45. Tuvalu
46. Uganda
47. United Republic of Tanzania
48. Vanuatu
49. Yemen
50. Zambia

Check this UN webpage for the list of criteria for inclusion. Note the recommendation that the Maldives "graduate" from LDC status — I wonder if the fact that their country is disappearing due to global climate disruption and sea level rise will influence that decision.

Please visit Global Islands Network for information on all the small island nations that are disappearing.

My heart goes out to these countries and these people. Imagine this kind of poverty and lack of development exacerbated by the impacts of global warming. Once again, there but for the grace of the Universe go I.

192 Days to Copenhagen - Sharing Some Fantastic Learning Resources on Climate Change

Short and sweet tonight. My action today is sharing with you the following excellent audio/visual learning resources on climate change.

Changing the Chemistry of the Atmosphere is a slide show created and narrated by Dr. Holmes Hummel. She is an expert in climate change policy, based at the University of California, Berkeley. This first segment of the Climate Policy Design Pro-Series is a new and clearly explained 9-minute "primer" on climate change.

Goldilocks and the Greenhouse: Science and Climate Change is a 6-minute video that asks, "What makes Earth habitable?" This LiveScience original, redited to Dave Brody at IMAGINOVA STUDIOS, explores the science of global climate change. By the way, the temperature is indeed poised to rise as high as Arrhenius predicted, if we don't get our greenhouse gas emissions down to zero and start removing CO2 from the atmosphere. There is a time lag of about 30 years between emission of CO2 and its felt impact on the Earth's climate.

With vegetarian followers all over the world, perhaps it is not surprising that Supreme Master Ching Hai truly understands the climate change threat. This spiritual leader is now focusing much of her energy on this emergency. Here, from Supreme Master Television, is a dramatic 5-minute video called SOS Climate Change. (Scroll down on that page if you'd like to watch SOS 2.)

For less than 20 minutes of online "watching," you'll gain a much deeper understanding of the climate change emergency. Please pass these resources on, and watch for them on the GreenHeart Climate Change Primer webpage.