Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Climate change scientists warn of 4C global temperature rise

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Climate change scientists warn of 4C global temperature rise

by Damian Carrington from the Guardian.

A hellish vision of a world warmed by 4C within a lifetime has been set out by an international team of scientists, who say the agonisingly slow progress of the global climate change talks that [restarted] in Mexico [Nov. 29] makes the so-called safe limit of 2C impossible to keep. A 4C rise in the planet's temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse.

"There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global surface temperature at below 2C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary," said Kevin Anderson, from the University of Manchester, who with colleague Alice Bows contributed research to a special collection of Royal Society journal papers published tomorrow. "Moreover, the impacts associated with 2C have been revised upwards so that 2C now represents the threshold [of] extremely dangerous climate change."

Also, read this for one solution offered by climate scientists at Cancun, Mexico.

Also, read a WikiLeaks report about US strategies used to sabotage last year's Copenhagen Accord.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming...and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord",