mini-Dems

Sunday, December 17, 2006

The Sky is Falling!


Over the past few weeks we have had a bit of an exisential crisis; we have seen the future of the world without oil, without democracy and fried by global warming. It wasn't a pretty sight. First, we attended a lecture on Lonsdale by David Hughes, a geologist with the Geological Surevy of Canada, then we watched an Inconvienant Truth by Al Gore, and also watched The American Ruling Class by Lewis Lapham. These men represent scenarios of tremendous environmental and societal change that are backed by empirical observation and confirmed by global events every day. To put it bluntly we have run out of oil and have triggered global evironmental collpase through global warming. Although America, the world super power, has played a significant role in these processes it continues to downplay their existence; worse, its' continued dogged pursuit of material gain and consumption through corporate capitalism and military expansionism ensures that they will not be a benevolent force as this end game plays out. Where then does that leave us if the world as we know it now is set to disappear in the next 2 decades? Check out this link to see what happens to the world if sea levels rise only 7 M. Global warming isn't an theoretical scenario - we're already living it. Google ice pack melting in Greenland and Antartica. The recent drastic changes in temperature, storms, rain fall - it's all happening now. The only question for debate is what will get us first, evironmental or economic collapse? We are already experiencing the effects of decreased oil production. When I started driving only 15 years ago the price for a litre of gas was $.50, now it's over $1. My generation will not reach old age before our world changes. How will this play out and how will we respond? The information is out there, we need to put it all together.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Tonnes of questions, and few answers.... Have a look at http://www.falw.vu.nl/Onderzoekcentra/index.cfm/home_subsection.cfm/subsectionid/9540B939-A42B-EBF2-01EE1BBD3A009E76 to get a sense of what research is being done at the moment in my corner of the globe.

Unknown said...

http://www.falw.vu.nl/Onderzoekcentra/index.cfm/
home_subsection.cfm/subsectionid/
9540B939-A42B-EBF2-01EE1BBD3A009E76

Wow, that's a long link. Copy, paste, clicky-click.

Stefan said...

Where can I get a Google ice pack?