the now-escalating number of cases worldwide such as the Marshall Islands, the salinisation of low-lying islands worldwide, the Inuits , and even the polar bears could all teach us, but simply are illusorily ‘too small’ and ‘too distant’ for most see as signifiicant, to read the implications for us all .

Most bizarrely connected of all is that our economic system itself is at fault , not only in ‘robbing’ the poor to make the rich even more lazy, but because power-hungry men ‘make money’ from its engineered ‘financial’ instability and it thus can and does shut down industries and farms in the name of transient money-survival of the richest repossessions in UK are up 50% and we still do not change the absurd monetary system which is capable of shutting down the industry and farms we live by in the name of ‘economics’ [and in fact it did so in the 1930's in USA , but we have insisted on reforming it and private greed now manipulates even world governments, mass media, industry ... ] … the absurdity is that for no reason other than our allowing faulty theories of economics to run our lives ,[creating the rat-race, slumps and boom-times, wars, and decimating the poor] we can and will lose very suddenly the industry and farms on which any response to the grand trap depends… modern economics has a (systematically concealed) fault which springs into action just at the point of our needing to act , paralysing the means of response for no other reason than that is our familiar false way of measuring value and allowing inequality in our world, we cannot change it quickly …
Equally it is obvious that the exploited will justifiably revolt increasingly as their means to life is shut down to conserve the false ways of economics, feeding most from this planet to the already monetarily rich… and one is back to senseless destructive wars which prove nothing because men seem incapable of learning from them , and only close the jaws more tightly on us all.
Equally then , a ’seemingly separate issue’ from the fallacies of modern economics, the seas are dying now, not just from overfishing , but from pollution with man-made CO2 and nitrate … and the fertility of the land depends upon the seas , sea and land are integrated in nature, not separate … this matter is just as urgent as global warming and peak oil and monetary reform and reestablishing equality in the world, and getting governments to govern …

The problem is that we are already in a global emergency of unfamiliar massive scale that negates most beliefs of most people [and the beliefs of the governments of most people] , but seemingly very few people who have a voice that anyone hears even glimpse the number of different dimensions to this unholy trap that we made for mankind , all features exquisitely coming together at once to destroy our means to live , principally our food supply from nature, but all factors engineered by mankind’s unwillingness to accept that we could be fundamentally wrong about our familiar way of life, denial even now we know they are unsustainable and thus are ways of death of the many, if not indeed of all mankind.

To me the most insidious aspect of it all is that people have become proceduralised in rich countries , they simply do not feel that they have to look outside the limited process of their ‘jobs’ to see, let alone respond to, the wide picture … unheeded then the countless clues from the world that nature has been driven manyfold beyond what she can take if still to support mankind , these clues to all are treated as someone else’s problem , but of course they are not …

If the will were there to learn then one could use our massive world media to re-educate mankind , but how does one wrest control of it from the few power-mongers who know their (unsustainable) way of life through empty riches (thus their way of death , since the unsustainable must end sometime) depends upon it - if nothing else their very deliberate delaying of allowing even their limited truth (about their monetary scam on the world) to emerge could itself allow the jaws of the grand trap to close upon all mankind.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&q=%22money+as+debt%22&total=25&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

I started warning people of this trap ,that we continue blindly towards ,over twenty years ago and am weary in extreme of being laughed to scorn by most, who think that unsustainability is OK because the problems will not affect them … people do not often see the truth behind their laughter , that this is indeed our problem, and is the most massive intricate situation mankind has ever faced, made worse by the disasters of a decade from now being made inexhorable by today’s inaction , in other words that it is a spring-loaded trap and people mostly won’t respond until the pain hits them, too late by far … the poor see more of the pain already and so see more of the truth of the failure of our normal ways than the blind complacent rich of this world - but the poor are disenfranchised from doing anything about this knowledge until the masses revolt; bravely too there are movements finally to cause such wisdom to come to the fore , but it is part of the trap that they are not allowed much voice by the rich until they become disruptive and their suppression hits the headlines , but how many read the message to all?

The whole then is almost too big for the mind of men , and insisting of ’scientific truths’ before one acts has become another aspect of delay which allows the jaws to close, for ’science’ too is manipulated for sake of power … only the willfully blind could seriously fail to act on the massive ammount of information that we have already , widely available now through the internet, that our ways are already threatening to make possible decimation or even extinction of mankind into inevitability… that our normal ways are already killing off people worldwide by making life impossible for those who live closer to ‘poverty’ [of our false money values] and who once were able to live on the margins of human life, we are destroying the very people who hold the knowledge which will be in short supply when the last of mankind struggles to survive in the world we are already well into committing to destruction [and still not turning from our normal ways] .

Focussing on one aspect of the problem is the common way, the means by which power-mongers control us in ignorance ,complacency, indifference to the whole… Our real problem is manifold, indeed all-encompassing, challenging our very way of living in every one of its aspects … this is by no means only about peak oil and climate change , it is about challenging human greed and iinhumanity before it destroys us … or not doing so … and there is very little enthusiam yet among the monetarily rich to do anything nuch but carry on killing the poor and denying we are doing so for our very transitory ‘convenience’ in life…

The overall problem is spiritual then, whetehr we can admit what we have become and change, or, as is increasingly likely, not feel sorry about what we are until we are dying at our own hands… and maybe it just starts again , but how will anyone know then about why it all went wrong if at least a few don’t survive the already-visible-but-ignored terrible consequences of our inaction now ?

One could say “Wake up!” but there are none so deaf as those who will not hear, even to make their own future more possible…

having been active on the climate issue since the mid ’80s, (when
Europe’s largest new coal-fired power station at Fawley in Hants, was blocked by a well-concerted local action) I share your concern at the myopia of many climate campaigners.

What fraction are focussed on advancing the critical terms of a
“Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons”, whereby all nations’ tradable GHG emission rights may be agreed to converge, over time, to per capita parity, thus allowing agreement of the annually contracting global emissions budget to limit warming to less than 2ºC?

And what fraction of us focus instead on the second & third order
issues such as on promoting “non-fossil” (”renewable”) energy supply & conservation, (leaving fossil fuels on the international market for
others to buy at a marginally reduced price) and on pushing those high tech options (Prius ?) that some wealthy westerners just might afford (but which are simply irrelevant to the developing billions in the global south) and on advocating energy efficiency, with its venerable damnation known as Jevons Paradox ?

That said, I’d add that I first heard of oil depletion from the
renowned Fritz Schumacher back in ‘72 and became (much later, for a while) a Senior Moderator at Peak Oil dot com, and that strategic myopia seems no less common amongst avid “peaknics”.

For instance, the idea that peaking oil benefits the climate campaign seems almost as common as it is groundless, particularly in view of the rise of agri-biofuels, tar-sands, oil shales, coal, CTL and nuclear hype, since oil left the comfort zone below $30/bbl.

Furthermore, it is sadly rare to read of the perception that peak oil is in reality geographic both in national sequence and date — in that various nations are well past their peak supply already — (e.g.
Marshall Is. have just declared a state of emergency over now-unaffordable fuel and food imports).

Moreover, the popular comparative evaluation (voiced by my good
friend Ben B. above) overlooks certain points :

“Acting (now) in response to climate change requires the individual to be a long-term thinker and altruistic. Humans are short of this type right now. On the other hand, people acting (now) in response to peak oil need only be short term thinkers and selfish.”

Notably, the current impacts and looming threats of climate change are intensifying apace (we’ve just had unprecedented rains that have even torn the turf and soil from hillsides, exposing patches of more than an acre of useless & vulnerable subsoil & stones) indicating that this is already an immediate rather than simply a long term issue. Also, the requisite mutual welfare sought in agreeing mitigation via the mutual restraint of pollution is neither predictably selfish nor predictably altruistic, any more than is the mutual welfare sought in agreeing the mutual restraint of energy usage.

In addition, given that “saving energy” unilaterally actually leaves
it available for others to buy and burn, mitigating the energy issue
requires just as long term an outlook as does the climate issue in
terms of developing the requisite global treaty to restrain energy usage.

I hope that the proper linkage of these issues, be that as “filler
cap & tail pipe,” or maybe as “Scylla & Charibdis,” may soon become
more widely recognized, so that creative effort can be poured into
achieving the necessary and sufficient integrated treaty to ensure
both that nations’ subsistence energy supplies are affordable and that their compliance with declining allocations of GHG outputs rests on stable incentives.

Regards,
Backstop

Not sure why it is ‘apart from and above’ the GW imperative though - seems to me they both point very much in the same direction, but maybe that is what you meant by this.

Interestingly, there is an important distinction here that is not widely recognised. While climate change is essentially a problem of ultimate total emissions (the difference in impacts based on when emissions take place is minimal) peak oil is essentially a problem of flow rates, not ultimate reserves (as tar sands advocates should be regularly reminded).

The graph you mention above highlights not simply that emissions must reduce below pre-industrial levels, but that we must draw down carbon from our atmosphere.

As also mentioned above, this post is an extract from the Transition Timeline project which is indeed examining exactly how we can go about addressing those massive changes in our cultural stories and practices to which you refer. The project will be published in late 2008 (as soon as I can manage!)

The Transition Towns movement is a rapidly growing force in addressing the imperative to keep temperatures at a level to which life on Earth can adapt. As you highlight our Government is not currently addressing the same question, and only massive popular demand for a future can change this.

To my mind, the barrier to such overwhelming demand is not the lack of a desire for a future for ourselves and our children, but rather a lack of widespread understanding of the emergency we face. It is to the amelioration of this that this post is dedicated.

As I outlined in a previous post, I do believe that it is still realistic to change our perspective sufficiently to enable that future, and to answer your question directly my present best assessment would be that we need to stabilise global emissions levels by 2012 and start rapid reductions from there in order to achieve this (though climate change is not our only challenge).

It is perhaps relevant to note here that the physical limits to fossil fuel supply rates mean that continuing the current rate of increase in anthropogenic emissions is impossible anyway (see here and here) - the current cultural paradigm is meeting its limits today, in ways that are being experienced in present, direct and immediate ways. The tussle we must engage with is in providing the stories that will succeed it. In this humanity faces our last chance to choose the consequences we desire, for ourselves and all of Nature.

“I am always surprised when people get depressed rather than energised to do something. It’s not too late to stabilise climate… I am not about to give up” – NASA’s Dr. James Hansen (Sept 2007)

I notice that we are already committed to 1.4 degrees C of eventual temperature rise, which is a long way already toward the 2 degrees C which some regard as a point we really should not exceed …

I note also that CO2 concentrations are not just increasing but accelerating upward in uncontrolled manner .

The lowest graph above indicates that to bring CO2 down again under control that we simply must bring CO2 emissions below pre-industrial levels , something with absolutely massive implications for our way of thinking , our work, and our lifestyle, changes which are being currently almost completely ignored by our governments.

So how few years do we have to act to prevent eventual disaster of 2 degree C temperature rise and what is involved if we do change our ways and act to save ourselves?

Is it even possible in any realistic plan for the whole world to change so much in those few years when in fact we are still going the wrong way by increasing CO2 output, not reducing it ?

What then are the real targets we need to guarantee reaching and time frame involved to stop catastrophic human deaths beyond say ten times the current unacceptable levels ? … since it would seem that we will not treat the matter as urgent and initiate emergency changes until we know in a format many can understand, that is before the results are felt painfully by most and have become irreversible .

The problem it seems is that we have walked blindly into a trap , since global warming continues long after we act to slow it… but we are still looking at the comfort of our lifestyle now rather than the misery and death we are buying for our future by inaction, the real inevitable consequences of inaction are not being seen by most, nor the rate of response required for acceptable mitigation of human loss of life.

One study (below) indicates that we are already committed to a further 0.5 degrees C rise even if we were to control emissions to year 2000 levels , which we are not doing … is the implication then that we are already committed, by inaction, political inertia, to future catastrophic damage to our home planet’s ability to support human life… the death count simply determined (exponentially with time , up to human extinction) by our level of inaction in the next few years. Why would an intelligent species not minimise the long-term risk of catastrophe to itself ?

http://www.ifm-geomar.de/fileadmin/personal/fb1/p-oz/mfrank/Bard_and_Frank_2006.pdf

Death rate from global warming is already recorded at WHO and already unacceptable ,but what is not stated is how many future deaths are already inevitable as a result of damage already done which we know has worsening consequences for centuries to come :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Well, increasingly, by applying my understanding of change, i am left with the inevitable conclusion that the point of no return has past long ago.
What we are observing, is in fact the beginning of the end.
There is no power commanded by the human race, that can reverse the effects we have instigated.
Each small change in the ecosystem has knock on effects in a billion tiny ways that we may/may not ever understand, and the situation is now so complex that we have no idea whether any attempts we make will prevent or accelerate the collapse of our planetary ecosystem.
As such, we should now focus on understanding medical systems that use no product, and martial systems that require no ammunition.
The Simplification is upon us.
Prepare to fight over food.
Learn to swim and light fires.
Brush up on simple carpentry skills and forging, learn a few more languages.
Assume electricity and hydrocarbons are soon to be unavailable except that which you can provide independantly.
Get used to eating fish.

Also he believes that in 6-7 years one could put things straight IF there were any response to the wake-up call , but there is not …

That is then a prediction of short-term rapid catastrophe which will catch out all the government control mechanisms since they rely on slow response to continuous change [cannot cope with sudden change and are not looking forward to predict and avoid it]]