Read the whole article by clicking on the headline above. Meanwhile to wet your appetite, here are salient chunks:
The United Nations report on climate change wasn't unfortunate only because it showed, with 90 percent certainty, that the planet is warming up due to human activity. The really unfortunate part is that it gave aid and comfort to right-wing forces who want to keep polluting and ignoring the issue. The authors, scientists from 113 countries, felt obliged to tell the truth, which is that global warming and rises in sea levels will continue for centuries. This despite any foreseeable efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
As the report fears, this news will cause many countries to throw up their hands and do little or nothing. Why try and stop the inevitable?
[huge snip]
The climate report gives us until the year 2100 before warming increases by 2 to 11.5 degrees and sea levels rise by 7 to 50 inches. The margins are wide, the time frame is long in relative terms. [snip]
Is there anything you and I can do as ordinary citizens? As in all matters that run this deep, only a change of consciousness can bring about radical change on the outside. [snip]
Reverence for life is our only hope. Instead of being a spiritual doctrine confined to individuals like Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer, or to a few religions like Hinduism and Jainism, reverence for life now stands between us and catastrophe. Ultimately, the climate report can't be considered definitive. It took only 200 years of industrialism to create climate change; with the right will, a reversal could be engineered over the next two hundred years. One only hopes that reverence wins out over greed and hopelessness.
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