20 years ago, I learned in school that if nothing is done to stop global warming, we will have record droughts, floods and rising sea levels. I boggles the mind that there are still people denying the reality of global warming when all predictions have become true, some even earlier than predicted. But it's really scary that everyone of us is right in the middle of an apokalyptic scenario right out of sci-fi, and yet only few seem to be aware of it. We will see the beginnings of a future totally different from our own world in our lifetime.
Yeah, Citizen_Kong, and knowing, seeing it happen everywhere, we still have to keep going through our business-as-usual lifes and watch the trainwreck of the human species happen. The funny thing is, as long as there are no sudden and extreme events, everyone will still be doing business-as-usual 50 years from now. The business is going to be harsh, the environment is going to be harsher, but it'll be as-usual. Fuck me, should consider going back to drinking.
I live in an area in the U.S. that is very right wing. Our publicly elected sheriff burns a cross before election season. Normally we have a very wet spring. It rained twice this spring. It rained once again in June, and again a few weeks ago. We have had record breaking temperatures all summer. Where we normally have several feet of snowfall, this winter we had inches. People complain about the weather we're having and I look them in the eye and say, "Climate change." Then their eyes widen and they look scared and don't say anything. Not a single one. They know it, but they can't accept it.
Like the article says, human beings seem to be psychologically unable to grasp such a monumental change until it's upon us.
But it is ALREADY upon us! What more do we need? We have megadrought in California, floods everywhere else, constant need for FEMA intervention... I'll bet if it were actually raining men, Congress would call a special session.
That's actually the funny bit. I remember reading about how, if the temperature rose by a degree centigrade, there would be a specific rise in the sea level. It has now happened. The problem is that not everyone has studied this in school. We learned it as fact. The US (and Americans don't really understand this) is probably the only country where climate change is taken as a debatable issue. What's worse is that climate change denial has been exported by the US to other countries, especially via the internet/cultural discourse, so now there are lay people who think that global warming is something that you can debate about. Most of this, of course, so the US can continue to guzzle oil. I remember when China was shamed for its carbon emissions. Just this year it's actually begun to cut them; in the US, though, Keystone is still a frackin' issue...