Global Warming

At the simplest level, global warming may be viewed as the greenhouse effect gone awry (that in turn leads to climate change). The greenhouse effect is the dyadic process by which, on one hand, the sun’s energy warms the planet by heating the earth as it passes through the atmosphere, while on the other, the atmosphere acts like a heat blanket (thermal radiation) preventing catastrophic heat loss into space from the heated earth. The best example of the greenhouse effect at work is when you leave a vehicle outside on a hot sunny day to find later that the interior of the car has become hotter than the exterior because the heat that entered through the windshield and closed windows is now trapped inside. Question: if the windshield can let in the heat, why can't it let it out? The answer is that it has to do with the different wavelengths of energy where the windshield can allow in one wavelength to go through, namely solar radiation (experienced as sunshine), but not another, namely infrared radiation (experienced as heat). When gases, such as carbon dioxide, are poured into the atmosphere at rates faster than the ability of natural processes to handle it then it increases the capacity of the atmosphere to magnify the greenhouse effect producing an increase in planetary temperatures with disastrous long term climatic consequences (melting glaciers leading to rising sea levels; increasing oceanic temperatures leading to the death of ocean life, as well as rising incidence of hurricanes, droughts, floods and similar weather changes; and so on). Three of the biggest processes involved in the transformation of carbon dioxide—ordinarily a life-sustaininggas (necessary for photosynthesis) in a balanced environment—into an atmospheric pollutant are all human-engineered: the massive and relentless burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal), the destruction of forests, and cattle-raising (methane).

Guys, no matter what you hear in the media or what conservative politicians (especially in this country) say, there is now near unanimous conclusion on the part of scientists, across the world,[1] that unless we embark on a serious program of controlling carbon dioxide emissions (usually referred to as reducing the carbon footprint), the resultant acceleration of global warming and its corollary, climate change, will seriously jeopardize the lives of millions of people around the planet. Yet, most tragically, an issue that is a matter of science has now become a political issue: the chief culprit being corporate capital in the fossil fuel sector. Echoing the nefarious strategies of the tobacco companies of yesteryear (regarding the issue of smoking and health), in a coordinated perniciously stealthy campaign, mounted through the media via the agency of right-wing think-tanks it helps to sponsor, it has succeeded, in the name of profits, in creating sufficient doubt among the masses in this country as to the veracity of the conclusions of scientific research on this matter. Remember, that to corporate capital, any forest—to take another example—is nothing more than a stand of commercial timber (instead of recognizing it as a necessary life-sustaining ecosystem); it only has significance when it is reduced to a pile of silver. At the same time, nurtured on the milk of essentialist arrogance ever since the inception of the Columbian Project,[2] the masses among Western countries—to the degree they have any interest in this area—working through their representatives at various UN-sponsored world conferences on global warming and climate change, insist that unless the PQD nations, most especially countries like China and India, agree to accept the same targets in reducing carbon dioxide emissions as those being required of Western countries, nothing much can be done, to the delight of corporate capital.

Yes, it is true that today China has the largest carbon footprint on the planet; however, China is also a poor country. How can anyone in good conscience demand that millions of Chinese toiling in poverty, where many cannot even afford more than a single barely adequate

(sourced from http://carbonfootprintofnations.com) Note that the figures represent averages; which means that millions upon millions of people in China and India have access to a standard of living that does not even include something that, like air and water, we in the West take for granted: electricity and all the benefits that come from it. (If you are living in the West as you read this, imagine a life without lights or even a refrigerator!) Considering this unconscionable disparity in the standards of living of most in the West, compared to most in the rest of the world, brings up another related matter. Given the inability of corporate capitalism to permit a drastic policy change in the West to curb greenhouse gases (and we are not even going to mention other forms of pollution that are destroying the planet)---one that would inevitably require a massive alteration in patterns of consumption---in time to halt climate change, the world should perhaps adopt a fatalistic view and carry on as usual: human beings have failed to be good stewards of the planet earth, and, therefore, they deserve whatever climate change has in store for them. If there was a genuine desire among the Western nations, who, one must be reminded, are largely responsible for bringing us to this point over the centuries ever since the launch of the Industrial Revolution, t o honestly tackle the problem of global warming then they would have to embark on implementing a whole range of measures that would include:

• Reducing the carbon footprint by radically redefining what the attainment of the good life means (e.g. the American Dream), by moving away from the super-consumerist super-wasteful lifestyle where ownership, for example, of the latest car, the latest