Killing Me Softly

A tipping point, as one knows, is where a seemingly little thing can make a big difference, i.e. a drop in temperature from 33 degrees Fahrenheit to 32 will cause a pond to freeze over or, if all the CO2 laced oil trapped in the Alberta Tar Sands is extracted,  Earth could become Venus, a frightening scenario deemed imminently possible according to James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in his Game Over analysis in stating just how environmentally devastating the Tar Sands project truly is.

If we continue to approve pipelines bringing in the dirtiest of fuels like tar sands he said, “there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.”

But there's more.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

We are running out of planet in our insane way of trying to sustain the unsustainable and earth is beginning to fight back. As often stated in BRT, we need earth, earth does not need us. At this point in time, Agent Smith is right. We are a virus. We occupy a space, extract everything worthwhile from that space and move on but now there's no other space to go to so something has to give. Tech can either save us or kill us depending on the choice we make. The question to to ask now is, do we have the vision and courage to make the right choice before it's too late?