The John James Newsletter 212
20 January 2018
DURING THE BREAK I HAVE BECOME AWARE
that over the past four years the small changes I have recorded each week
have been accumulating into a maelstrom.
The speed and scale of change beggars belief.
I have listed a few to press home the point, and the conclusion that
we really do not have much time – not any more.
You ask where is the good news, and there is so little compared to
our collective, seemingly unstoppable, obscene rush to self-extinction.
Yet I believe we do still need to be informed.
As I die I want to know why.
Most people don’t know what’s happening and they don’t even know that they don’t know
Noam Chomsky
We are destroying the life support system of this planet
Andrew Glikson
Many born now will come to live in the terrifying conditions we are creating for them, where it will be impossible to feed everyone, water wars will be ongoing, major coastal cities will have long since flooded, and droughts and wildfires and megastorms will have become year-round events
Dahr Jamail
THE LIST THAT HAS NO END
The Doomsday Clock has just been moved 30 seconds closer to midnight, the closest to the point of global extinction since 1953
Methane levels as high as 2764 ppb were recorded in the Arctic, from a destabilised seafloor.
All over the world, habitats and species are collapsing before our eyes. The world population of wild vertebrates – animals with backbones – has fallen by 60% since 1970.
Animals that until recently seemed safe – ranging from lions to house sparrows – are now in danger.
Insect populations are collapsing, with untold implications for both humanity and the rest of the food chain.
If you’re under 40, you’ve never experienced a single year of below-average temperatures.
This week, the Australian Open has been hit with on-court temperatures rocketing to 69 degrees
AI-piloted drone ships are wiping out most of the last global fish stocks
We have destabilised the jet stream over our heads and the Gulf Stream under the water.
Simultaneous breadbasket failures threaten the sufficiency of global food supply
Despite fewer wars number of dead has trebled in ten years, from the intensification of violence
Soil is being stripped from the land, so that at current rates, the world has just 60 years of harvests left.
Ground water is being drained so rapidly that the world’s most important aquifers could disappear within a generation.
Extreme weather events cost the US $306 billion, which is more than the combined spending on transport, housing and community, international affairs, energy, the environment and science
Three men – Gates, Bezos and Buffet – own as much as half of the entire American people.
Resistance to the strongest antibiotics continues to spread with nothing new in sight
90% of the world’s population lives with polluted air
And here are three of the major causes
Watch population increase minute by minute.
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock/
and this
real-time estimate of the global atmospheric CO2 level.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/carbon-clock/
and
the US Debt Clock
Seeking something happy
This is the best I came up with, and it was filmed thirty years ago when we still had hope that the rich would support change.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/n6mbW-jMtrY?rel=0
2017 Shatters Records With $306 Billion In Damages From Climate-Linked Disasters
Sixteen $1 billion-plus weather- and climate-related events killed some 362 people.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/2017-natural-disasters_us_5a53b1aee4b01e1a4b183b9d
Wealth buys silence
On average, the 38 US Senate deniers have each received $732,788 from fossil fuel interests while science-believing senators each got only $182,902. On average, each House denier has received $272,536 from the fossil corporations while science-believing members each got only $80,095.
The Global Risks Report 2018 prepared for the coming World Economic Forum in Davos
Shows in graphs the increasing risk from global warming, but hardly mentions it in the report itself. The extremely rich who pay $us55,000 to hob nob with each other are as badly starved of information as we are, it seems.
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GRR18_Report.pdf
IF YOU. HAVE READ THIS FAR, GO BACK
AND READ THE LIST AGAIN, CAREFULLY,
AND
PONDER THE CONSEQUENCES OF EACH ONE,
ESPECIALLY FOR YOUR CHILDREN.