Ignorance, Hubris And Denial Only Responses To Rapid Climate Breakdown

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WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- We need leadership on climate change, and we’re not getting it. Leaders would understand the issue and help educate us. Leaders would realize the magnitude of the problem and shape a commensurate response. Where we need focus, we get distractions. Where we need courageous and decisive action, we get ignorance, arrogance and denial. And time is not on our side. Human-induced climate change should be beyond fundamental debate. The science is clear. The trends are alarming. The implications are profoundly threatening to the status quo. We are looking at a world that by mid-century will be significantly warmer and different in ways we can only guess.

John Holdren, incoming president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Harvard energy expert who directs the Woods Hole Research Center, has said that the 3- to 8-degree Fahrenheit increase in global average surface temperature predicted to result from a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide may be a best-case scenario! With "business as usual," the world is headed for a quadrupling of carbon dioxide from pre-industrial levels -- which will lead to a global average temperature increase of 5 to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, and mid-continent increases two to three times higher. He calls this a "roasted world."

James Hansen, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has said that if we are not operating very differently within 10 years, this change will be irreversible. Other scientists do not give us that much time.

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How many Katrinas will it take to bankrupt the country? To finish off the insurance industry? To cause massive human dislocation? To overwhelm health and shelter providers? Two? Three? Four? Why do we think this can’t happen to us? Right now, we humans are showing -- and our leaders exemplify -- characteristics that, in combination, are toxic. We have believed since Genesis that we are apart from nature, and that our job is to achieve dominion over the earth. We believe we are in control of the earth. What hubris! We are largely ignorant of science, and we hope that what we don’t know can’t hurt us. And we live in denial.

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http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=124797