I’m a climate change believer- you don’t have to convince me that what we are doing as human beings to the earth is messing things up. No matter how big the earth and the atmosphere and the oceans are, what we put out there is going to end up having an effect- in essence, dilution is not a long term solution to pollution. 

We could do whatever when there weren’t that many people- now, with populations rising and resources staying the same, we have issues. We are approaching carrying capacity. There are countless historical examples of this happening on island kingdoms and in more drawn out fashions in larger empires. It’s possible that humans have never been sustainable- just that there have never been enough of us to make a big dent in the earth’s overall health.

The UN is saying that droughts, acidic water in the oceans and melting glaciers are all signs that show climate change is speeding up and worse than we thought it was going to be in 2007.

"We are headed to very serious changes in our planet and we need to appreciate how serious it is in order to lend support to the transformational policy measures that need to be taken," said Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director.

Leaders from around the globe were at a one-day climate change conference at the United Nations this week, trying (once again in vain) to figure out how to approach this problem.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that we will not get a meaningful agreement by December. Check out what Max Baucus is doing in the senate finance committee- he lined up support before the negotiations, made sure to hold onto his close circle of people as the negotiations were/ are happening, and he’s making it happen.

Who is the team going into Copenhagen? The G20? Are they really close enough to work a real deal through the UN?

Scientists are saying that a rise of 2.5 – 7.75º F is likely at the rate we are going. That’s well over the rate we need. They say it could end Arctic summer ice and end up melting the Himalayan glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet.

Beyond that, the scientists are finding faster acidification in the oceans could lead to much faster destruction of ocean ecosystems- of course, this will have an effect far beyond the oceans.
And then there is the recovering economy that is predicted to mean higher emissions for everyone.

Emissions have gone down while the economy has been bad- not because anyone is more conscious, but because there hasn’t been as much business. It’s like Russia, who had really low emissions numbers for a while after the Soviet Union fell apart. If you ask me, we are already losing the green economy opportunity- it’s not a gradual thing. We would have to dramatically stop using fossil fuels- across the board. Like, now. Not tomorrow or anything, but right now. Stop the pumps- Figure out how to use the solar panels and wind. We could easily do this, but the economic recovery is far more important politically- Van Jones is out, the economy is recovering and it’s time to ignore the scientists for a while again.