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

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Anthropocene heat, part two: Four degrees of devastation

Click here to access article by Ian Angus from Climate & Capitalism. 
...the climate isn’t just getting warmer on average, the climate pattern is skewing towards heat extremes. That’s critically important, because adapting to the new normal – if that’s even possible – will require responding to extremes, not just averages. For human well-being and survival, the issue is not just how much the average ocean level rises, but how high the biggest storm surges are; not just what the average daily rainfall is, but how severe the droughts are; not just how much warmer it gets on average, but how long and deadly the heat waves become.

If one degree of global warming has made extreme weather significantly more probable, what can we expect in coming decades, as the first full century of the Anthropocene unfolds? A growing body of scientific research has focused on that question, and the answers are consistent: the extreme heat events of recent years will become more frequent and more severe as the century progresses.
(Note: part three is here.)
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