You may wonder why I am choosing to share this article today that a wise and courageous friend — thank you Dave Sheill — just passed on to me. (And it does take courage, a lot of it, to know the truth of where we are at.) But in the meantime, and without knowing, you may think that we should just be focusing on Biden or Trump and celebrating or being angry, depending on which political party you may align with. But no, I need to share this article now.
I do so because of our children. And because of Audrey who is 1, Ethan who is 2, Eleanor who is 3, Carsten who is 4, and Oliver who is 5. These are our precious grandchildren.
I also give voice to the long denied urgency of where we are at because of my caring and love of all children everywhere. And because of all the species everywhere, who have been dying at an unprecedented rate for some time now. (We are, after all, in the midst of a sixth major extinction.) I share the truth because of my deep, deep love and reverence for life and for our Earth Mother.
I share this vital article because we are totally, absolutely totally, out of time to not address this extreme planetary emergency we're in with the greatest and most fierce national and global coordination, commitment, courage, caring, and consciousness humanly possible. We have already waited far too long. We can wait no longer.
We need to courageously peel back the layers of our denial and distractions and disinformation and recognize that we must act on behalf of all that we love and cherish today. Part of this, for me, is to again and again and again be relentlessly shouting the truth of the climate crisis which imperils not just human civilization, but all life on Earth.
We are all connected, all related. What imperils one part of the whole imperils us all. We need to know this. And we need to channel our horror, trauma, grief, and overflowing love into standing in every way possible in protection of Earth's life support systems. And we need to do this now.
And, no matter the outcome of this great collapse that we're now in, we humans need to recognize and dismantle the obstacles we carry in our hearts and minds which impair our capacity to love, to be empathic, to hold one another with caring and compassion in the turbulent times of today and those to come. We are truly all in this together. And we are all planetary sisters and brothers, all family. All the divisions, all the appearances of separation, are illusion. And once we feel the depths of our interrelatedness, all that is left, and regardless of how things unfold, is to love and care for each other.
Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated.
Meanwhile, we are in the fight of our lives — a fight which makes the struggles to defeat Trump or to get control over a global pandemic totally pale in comparison. This is my 2 cents worth. — Molly
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| 9 of the 15 known Earth tipping points have been activated |
Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated.
Australian National University emeritus professor Will Steffen (pictured) told Voice of Action that there was already a chance we have triggered a “global tipping cascade” that would take us to a less habitable “Hothouse Earth” climate, regardless of whether we reduced emissions.
Steffen says it would take 30 years at best (more likely 40-60 years) to transition to net zero emissions, but when it comes to tipping points such as Arctic sea ice we could have already run out of time.
Evidence shows we will also lose control of the tipping points for the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the Greenland ice sheet in much less time than it’s going to take us to get to net zero emissions, Steffen says.
“Given the momentum in both the Earth and human systems, and the growing difference between the ‘reaction time’ needed to steer humanity towards a more sustainable future, and the ‘intervention time’ left to avert a range of catastrophes in both the physical climate system (e.g., melting of Arctic sea ice) and the biosphere (e.g., loss of the Great Barrier Reef), we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse,” said Steffen.
“The fact that many of the features of the Earth System that are being damaged or lost constitute ‘tipping points’ that could well link to form a ‘tipping cascade’ raises the ultimate question: Have we already lost control of the system? Is collapse now inevitable?” .....
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These are more highlights from this article:
- “The evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute.”.....
- Schellnhuber, one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change, said that if we continue down the present path “there is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow but we will destroy almost everything we have built up over the last two thousand years.”....
- “It is becoming abundantly clear that (i) this system is incompatible with a well-functioning Earth System at the planetary level; (ii) this system is eroding human- and societal-well being, even in the wealthiest countries, and (iii) collapse is the most likely outcome of the present trajectory of the current system, as prophetically modelled in 1972 in the Limits to Growth work."....
- .... the Limits to Growth model’s predictions were coming to pass: “30 years of historical data compare favourably with key features of a business-as-usual [BAU] scenario called the ‘standard run’ scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century.”....
- “Vested interests and corrupt politicians combined with a population happy to deny problems overwhelm those that are trying to promulgate truth and facts,” said Turner.....
- “Capitalism is quite good at dodging bullets and escaping temporary challenges to its legitimacy and viability. But its condition, I feel is terminal.”....
Please go here to continue reading and for the full article: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-08/collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists/
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