Breathe Deeply While You Still Can

It's the time of year when I do edge up that heater just a tad so my hands aren't cold while I input/key this in. I like the tip of my nose to be pink, don't like that blue tinge. I admit this.

It's not a good idea to threaten your health, but it is time for us to develop a little better plan. The idea breaking through about our role in global warming is that we need to reduce, not just maintain, our emissions.

It happened at an academic conclave in San Francisco. A NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's a number that may make what happened in Washington and Bali seem quaint and nearly irrelevant. It's the number that may define our future.
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It means, Hansen says, that we've gone too far. "The evidence indicates we've aimed too high -- that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2is no more than 350 ppm," he said after his presentation. Hansen has reams of paleo-climatic data to support his statements (as do other scientists who presented papers at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco this month). The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius -- which is what 450 parts per million implies -- sea levels rose by tens of meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again.

And we're already past 350. Does that mean we're doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2each year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage.

That "just," of course, hides the biggest political and economic task we've ever faced: weaning ourselves from coal, gas and oil.

Those solar panels aren't farfetched. They exist, and it's time to get serious about them. As I said in earlier post, it's something I've been planning when I remodel, (pending the outcome of the election, to know if my plans are going to be permanent.) Now it's not just an ideal. It's becoming necessity.

Another factor outside our own personal sphere of functioning is gaining importance, also, and not just because of abstract ideals like democracy and freedom. If we really want to keep from threatening the planet's future, we need to get to work on electing responsible leaders, too. The dismal record our country has racked up in the past seven+ years is not just embarrassment, it is more of a threat even than the wars our occupied White House has waged, against other countries and against the American people.

The planet is threatened. Each of us has benefited from our mother Earth, so we owe her our help now. Did you go change into warmer clothes and/or turn down the thermostat yet?