Sue Moon’s Blog

From TruthOut.org an extremely important article, “The World at 350: A Last Chance for Civilization” by Bill McKibben originally posted at TomDispatch.com that outlines what confronts us all. The coming crises will definitely unify many as the selfish deluded polluters grab all they can and governments continue to bloviate about trivialities while coastlines flood, superstorms sweep our Earth (checked the news lately?), and major upheaval transforms our physical, emotional, and mental reality.

If you think that sounds dramatic or exaggerated, consider a few pieces from the article:

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points – massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them – that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us…. Instead of slowing down, we’re pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year – two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast….

And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we’ve managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.

Here’s the thing. Hansen didn’t just say that, if we didn’t act, there was trouble coming; or, if we didn’t yet know what was best for us, we’d certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His phrase was: “… if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada’s efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta’s tar sands.)

Here’s one of several punch lines to this article:

“And we have, at best, a few years… to reverse course. Here’s the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” – from The Aquarius Papers website.

After I read the above I picked up a book I’ve started reading by Eckhart Tolle called “A New Earth”. Reading this book gets me out of the fear the above info can inspire.

“Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to it the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection? Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures and become like crystals or precious stones, so to speak, transparent to the light of consciousness?

The possibility of such a transformation has been the central message of the great wisdom teachings of humankind.”

He goes on to say a little further in the book, “But the ego is destined to dissolve, and all its ossified structures, whether they be religious or other institutions, corporations, or governments, will disintegrate from within, no matter how deeply entrenched they appear to be. The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first.” (remember communism?)

“When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life form or a species will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.

Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival-this is humanity’s challenge now.”

So folks, better start walking, growing a garden, find out where your water supply is. The great thing about the human spirit I think is that old phrase, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”!