Dahr Jamail's latest on climate disruption

Climate Disruption Could Pose "Existential Threat" by 2050

Dahr Jamail

Truth-Out,

2 October, 2017

It is often painful to write these monthly dispatches, chronicling what has happened to the Earth over the previous several weeks. Every month I'm taken aback by how rapidly the changes are unfolding. Take my word for this: These pieces are as emotionally challenging for me to write as they are for you to read.

Over the several years I've been producing these climate disruption dispatches, I've mostly received messages of gratitude from readers, because as hard as these are to read, most people are keen to have the information.

Sometimes there is the reader, however, who asks why I only focus on the negative. "Why don't you write about something positive, like renewable energy or lawsuits being filed against members of the Trump administration who are actively attacking the environment?" one person asked. This past June someone (clearly not a journalist) asked me why I didn't write about solutions, because, "What you write about is just so depressing!"

I spend time in the mountains near where I live nearly every week. It centers me, reminds me of what is important, and keeps me sane during these increasingly dystopian days. When I go, I bring a compass and the most updated, accurate map available.

While in the mountains, I am grappling with this reality: The Earth is unraveling due to human-forced warming. We've changed the composition of the atmosphere, and are acidifying the oceans. The cryosphere is melting before our very eyes, and the seas are rising. Global wildlife populations have decreased nearly 60 percent since just the 1970s, and the current extinction rate of species is 1,000 times the normal background rate. Functional coral reefs could be completely gone by 2050, and oceans could be completely free of fish by 2048 due to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), overfishing, pollution and habitat loss.

And there is nothing to indicate that governments around the globe are doing anything remotely serious enough to mitigate ACD impacts, in order to prevent the worst-case scenarios from unfolding.

That there will be a massive die-off of humans seems inevitable, and the extinction of our species is very much a possibility.

This is terrifying, heartbreaking, enraging information to take in.

Thus, dear reader, I ask: Do you want an accurate map in order to make the best decisions possible about what to do with your time, and how to use your life? Is it worth the emotional turmoil -- worth working through the five stages of grief -- in order to live an awakened life, to live in the real, to situate yourself to decide how to serve the planet and other living beings while the storms rage?...

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