THE SKY REALLY IS FALLING

                                                                                .

.

 .

(The music above is good background for the read.)

.

THE SKY REALLY IS FALLING
By Chris Hedges
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter

Originally posted on truthdig.com May 30, 2011

.

The rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming,

 which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even
 the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago,

 has been confronted by the power elite with two kinds of

self-delusion. There are those, many of whom hold elected
 office, who dismiss the science and empirical evidence as false.
 There are others who accept the science surrounding global
 warming but insist that the human species can adapt.

 Our only salvation—the rapid dismantling of the fossil fuel industry—is ignored by both groups. And we will be led, unless we build popular resistance movements and carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience, toward collective self-annihilation by dimwitted pied pipers and fools.
.

Those who concede that the planet is warming but insist

we can learn to live with it are perhaps more dangerous than
 the buffoons who decide to shut their eyes.

It is horrifying enough that the House of Representatives

 voted 240-184 this spring to defeat a resolution that said that
 “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human
 activities, and poses significant risks for public health and
 welfare.” But it is not much of an alternative to trust those who
 insist we can cope with the effects while continuing
 to burn fossil fuels.
.

. 

Horticulturalists are busy planting swamp oaks and sweet gum
 trees all over Chicago to prepare for weather that will soon
 resemble that of Baton Rouge. That would be fine if there was
 a limit to global warming in sight. But without plans to rapidly
 dismantle the fossil fuel industry, something no one in our
 corporate state is contemplating, the heat waves of Baton
 Rouge will be a starting point for a descent that will ultimately
 make cities like Chicago unlivable. The false promise of human
 adaptability to global warming is peddled by the polluters’
 major front group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which
 informed the Environmental Protection Agency that
 “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of
 behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.”
 This bizarre theory of adaptability has been embraced 
by the Obama administration as it prepares to exploit the
 natural resources in the Arctic. Secretary of State Hillary
 Clinton announced recently that melting of sea ice

 “will result in more shipping, fishing and tourism,

 and the possibility to develop newly accessible

 oil and gas reserves.”

 Now that’s something to look forward to.
.

. 

“It is good that at least those guys are taking it seriously,

 far more seriously than the federal government is taking it,”
 said the author and environmental activist Bill McKibben of
 the efforts in cities such as Chicago to begin to adapt to
 warmer temperatures. “At least they understand that they
 have some kind of problem coming at them. But they are
 working off the science of five or six years ago, which is still
 kind of the official science that the International Climate
 Change negotiations are working off of. They haven’t begun to
 internalize the idea that the science has shifted sharply. We are
 no longer talking about a long, slow, gradual, linear warming,
 but something that is coming much more quickly and violently.
 Seven or eight years ago it made sense to talk about putting
 permeable concrete on the streets. Now what we are coming to
 realize is that the most important adaptation we can do is to
 stop putting carbon in the atmosphere. If we don’t, we are
 going to produce temperature rises so high that there is 
no adapting to them.”
.

.

The Earth has already begun to react to our hubris.
 Freak weather unleashed deadly tornados in Joplin, Mo. and
 Tuscaloosa, Ala. It has triggered wildfires that have engulfed
 large tracts in California, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.
 It has brought severe droughts to the Southwest, parts of
 China and the Amazon. It has caused massive flooding along
 the Mississippi as well as in Australia, New Zealand, China
 and Pakistan. It is killing off the fish stocks in the oceans and
 obliterating the polar ice caps. Steadily rising sea levels will
 eventually submerge coastal cities, islands and some countries.
 These disturbing weather patterns presage a world

 where it will be harder and harder to sustain human life.
 Massive human migrations, which have already begun, will
 create chaos and violence. India is building a 4,000-kilometer
 fence along its border with Bangladesh to, in part, hold back
 the refugees who will flee if Bangladesh is submerged. There
 are mounting food shortages and sharp price increases in basic
 staples such as wheat as weather patterns disrupt crop
 production. The failed grain harvests in Russia, China and
 Australia, along with the death of the winter wheat crop in
 Texas, have, as McKibben points out, been exacerbated by the
 inability of Midwestern farmers to plant corn in water-logged
 fields. These portents of an angry Gaia are nothing compared
 to what will follow if we do not swiftly act.
 .

. 

.

“We are going to have to adapt a good deal,” said McKibben,
 with whom I spoke by phone from his home in Vermont.

“It is going to be a century that calls for being resilient and
 durable. Most of that adaptation is going to take the form of
 economies getting smaller and lower to the ground, local food,
 local energy, things like that. But that alone won’t do it,
 because the scale of change we are now talking about is so
 great that no one can adapt to it. Temperatures have gone up
 one degree so far and that has been enough to melt the Arctic.
 If we let it go up three or four degrees, the rule of thumb the
 agronomists go by is every degree Celsius of temperature rise
 represents about a 10 percent reduction in grain yields.
 If we let it go up three or four degrees we are really not talking about a planet that can support a civilization anything like the one we’ve got." 

There's much more....read the entire article here:
.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sky_really_is_falling_20110530/
.

.

THE ECO CRISIS IS A RELIGIOUS CRISIS

.

.

.

.
Here is a simple question for people of faith.

If you love God, then should you love what he made?

In theory the answer to this question should be yes. But in reality, we Christians recite the words of scripture more easily than we live them. The statistics are sobering: 17.3% of Kentuckians live in poverty. Of the 221,000 children among them, 13% are homeless. The United States has approximately 4.5% of the global population, but consumes 43% of the all the gasoline refined in the world, produces 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and consumes a third of all the electricity. In fact, we in the U.S. consume 25% of every single thing made in the world.
*
The heavens declare the glory of God;
 the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

(Psalms 19:1)
*
.Yet we fill these skies with 123 million tons of carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, particular matter and sulfur dioxide every year. Global climate change is upon us, as the temperature has risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880 and is increasing at an unprecedented rate.
*
.You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

(Isaiah 55:10)
*

..Yet we blow up these mountains for cheap coal,impacting a land area the size of Rhode Island. Each year a land base about the size of Panama is deforested.
*
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world,
and all who live in it
(Psalms 24:1)
*
But species are becoming endangered at a rate approximately 1000 times higher than in previous history. Locally, humans activity will cost Kentucky its hemlocks, ashes, walnuts, and a host of other species.
.

.
.It is obvious that God’s creation is sick and dying,

and that human beings are largely responsible. What role does religion or Church have in creating this situation? A reasonable question, since many people who read scripture base their treatment of creation on Genesis 1. They take this scripture to mean that humans are permitted unfettered dominion over all creation.
..
This question is not new.

It was first raised in the late 1960’s at the birth
 of one of the greatest environmental awakenings this country has ever seen. It was Lynn White Jr.’s publication of, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” in Science that started much of the current frenzy. He stated that “We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim … Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance towards nature that no solution can be expected from them alone.”
.
 This was followed in 1969 by an even stronger statement
 by Ian McHarg in his book Design With Nature: ”’have dominion’”
over all living things (Genesis 1:26,28) is one text of compounded horror which will guarantee that the relationship of man to nature can only be destruction, which will atrophy any creative skill … this will explain all of the despoliation accomplished by western man for at least these 2000 years … The Genesis story in its insistence upon dominion and subjugation of nature, encourages the most exploitative and destructive instincts in man, rather than those that are deferential and creative … God’s affirmation about man’s dominion was a declaration of war on nature.”
.

. 
.So, is religion in fact responsible

for our current eco-crisis?

The answer might surprise you.

The first study to really examine this question, although it was not explicitly designed to do so, was performed by Yale biologists Steve Kellert and Joyce Berry. This was one of the largest social science studies ever conducted, with a sample size in the thousands. They found that those with the highest attendance at religious services had the lowest concern for the environment, and those who attend religious services the most frequently had the most dominionistic and utilitarian attitudes about Creation. This was the first pivotal study that provided evidence in support of Lynn White Jr.’s thesis that religion or church is largely responsible for our present eco-crisis.
.
In the past two decades, a number of scholars have begun to examine this question in more detail. They found that religion is in fact a big part of the problem. Papers published in social science, religion, and political science report general support for the thesis. A closer examination of the evidence, however, shows that this tendency of religious people to exploit nature is more nuanced than was originally thought. In fact, when various faith traditions are examined side by side, it appears that those interpreting scripture more literally generally hold a more dominionistic concept of the environment and nature.
Those who interpret scripture as the inspired word of God,
 but less literally, have more moderate views. However, in all the
 reported literature, people of faith always fall far short in their concerns for the environment compared to people who practice or profess no faith.
.

.
James Watt, Interior Secretary under President Ronald Reagan, illustrates the fundamentalist view and its impact on environmental stewardship. Mr. Watt was an avowed fundamentalist Christian, and also a strict free-market capitalist. His record on environmental conservation was absolutely abysmal. What was his thinking? He believed that since earth will pass away shortly, it matters little what destruction we cause in this short time before we are taken up in the rapture. Therefore it made sense to him that environmental regulations should be removed, lest they constrict individual freedom to participate in the market.
*
Dr. Thomas Barnes
Professor of Forestry
University of Kentucky.
. .

.

.

THE OBSCENITY OF GLOBAL WARMING

x

.
I think that the Greenhouse situation is a lot like alcoholism.
 It isn't one moment or one single drink that does you in. Can there be a single "a-ha moment' when you realize that civilization has moved from social drinking (of oil and coal) into a substance-dependent, blackout situation? As an individual, when you're on that slippery slope, there probably is some moment of revolt when your sense of dignity is offended. You wake up in a pool of your own vomit for instance, or find your clothes ripped off by some total stranger. Time to put the cork in the bottle. Find something more life-affirming to do with your time. Unfortunately our society can't rally the way a person can. So instead, we're ending up with these grotesque affronts massive heat waves, dying coral reefs, huge floods and so on, popping out across the face of the planet like an alcoholic's veins. But we're in denial about the Greenhouse thing.
.
Bruce Sterling
American Author
 From an interview, Aug. 9, 2009
.
Mankind's "stewardship" of the planet

is a horrible joke, but the joke will be on us.

It's just a question of time.

.

.