What's the Right Word for "Emergency"?

Holy flying freak out! The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide hit over 412 parts per million (ppm) this past week! We're still setting temperature records, especially in the Arctic. Despite fossil fuel CO2 emissions being flat over the last few years, CO2 concentration is still increasing — and at an accelerating rate. Sea level is rising at an accelerating rate. The oceans are heating at an accelerating rate. Unprecedented ocean acidification is increasing at an accelerating rate. And ocean de-oxygenation is on the increase, as well.

If you understand global warming and climate change, you'll understand how distressing all of this is. But if you don't understand it, what can I say to explain that this is an emergency — even though you're not bleeding or in pain? Yet.

Look at this. It's a fuzzy version of what my hubby just presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly. Just note how all the graphs are on the upswing.

All of these data trends point to a planetary emergency ... but still, amongst the public (and even amongst the vast majority of scientists, it seems), there's no sense of panic or urgency. No sense of impending calamity or danger. No sense of crisis or emergency.

What's a gal who cares about the biosphere — and all the children, of all species — to do? What WORD is going to help people grasp the plight we are in? What metaphor will help people get that we're in a doomsday scenario?

Please, I'm begging for help here. Can we put our heads (and hearts) together globally and come up with the right words to say? The right metaphors and analogies? The right graphs and graphics? Can the advertising agencies of the world do some pro bono work in order to help us safeguard the future? Can the artists and musicians come up with ways to wake up the public? 

We are so close to the point of no return (if not already past it) that my plea is a desperate one. 

Can you help solve this problem? Or do you know someone who might be able to?

Our Economic Engine Has Backfired

The way we talk about the economy in our EuroAmerican culture is one long, extended metaphor. It's the engine that drives us. 

"Fuelling America's Economic Engine" 

"Is America's Economic Engine Stalling?"  

"Growth and Renewal in the US: Retooling America's Economic Engine"  

"China's Shorthanded Economic Engine Sputters" 

"Canada's Economic Engine Runs on Energy We Deliver"  

"Canada's Economic Engine Runs Out of Gas" 

"Economic Engine Should Keep Revving in 2013" 

"The UK's Economic Engine is Running on Empty" 

"Firing Up the Economic Engine" 

"Keeping Japan's Economic Engine Running" 

"Has America's Economic Engine Run Out of Steam?" 

"Local Economic Engine Gains Steam" 

"Priming the Economic Engine" 

"The Economic Engine that Could"

Now, even though I took a Car Care course in grade 10 and can change my own flat tires, I have to admit that I don't know much about the internal combustion engine. What goes on under the hood is a mystery to me, akin to magic. But when flames come out of the exhaust pipe and there's a loud bang, well, I know a backfire when I hear one. And our globalized economic engine has backfired on us. 

According to Wikipedia, the term comes from experiences with early unreliable firearms or ammunition, "in which the explosive force was directed out at the breech instead of the muzzle." (Sounds kind of dangerous, no?) 

The term "backfire" then came to indicate a mistimed explosion in a car's cylinder or exhaust. And now it also refers to "something that produces an unintended, unexpected, and undesired result." (Sound like the economic engine we've been test-driving for the last century?)

I had to laugh (as in gallows humour) when I read (again, at Wikipedia) that a "backfire in an automobile engine typically results from various malfunctions related to the air to fuel ratio." Does that strike you as funny? Get it? Our economic engine is using so much fuel that the atmosphere is malfunctioning? Okay, maybe I'm overextending the metaphor now, but you get the picture.

Do you hear that giant explosive kaPOW? That's the sound of our fossil-fuelled economy blowing up in our faces.

*****

"The first commandment of economics is: Grow. Grow forever. Companies get bigger. National economies need to swell by a certain percent each year. People should want more, make more, earn more, spend more – ever more."      — Donella Meadows, co-author, Limits to Growth 

" ... all of us, including scientists, will have to give serious thought to the notion that economic growth and true sustainable long-term wealth may now be antithetical."— Kurt Cobb, "Should Scientists Embrace Economic Growth?" Scitizen, 16 October 2007

Maybe if we all just slowed down a bit, stopped driving ourselves silly trying to get ahead, when getting ahead with our backfiring, sputtering and dangerous economic engine means driving down the road to oblivion?