Why This Planet Is Becoming Uninhabitable

By Eric Zuesse.
washingtonsblog.com

And Even Trump Now Acknowledges that Man-Made Global Warming Spells Doom

Eric Zuesse

There are now overt indications that this planet is becoming uninhabitable. Not only are increasing numbers of humans migrating from near the Equator, northward toward nations that have more temperate climates, but also there are stronger and more frequent hurricanes and longer droughts and spreading desertification and larger and more frequent forest fires, all of which are lowering agricultural productivity in the global-overheating areas from which these migrants are coming. This is forcing billions of people to relocate from rural farming southern regions into big cities, and ultimately toward the cooler climates of the more-polar regions, as the large central Equatorial belt of our increasingly hot planet becomes less and less inhabitable for more and more of the people who are so unfortunate as to be still living there. Thus, instead of food being grown in that broad Equatorial belt where the Earth is fat and large, its increasingly being grown near the narrow, tiny, polar region. Agriculture is moving northward, and, as it does so, it will be occupying a band too small to feed the world. Agriculture is thus being severely threatened worldwide by global heating. Starvation will consequently soar, as this planet increasingly burns.

The inhabitable portion of this planet is shrinking, decade-by-decade, and especially century-by-century. A reasonable expectation would be that the grandchildren of todays generation will routinely fight each other for food.

The Trump Administration finally now publicly accepts that all these things will happen, and sooner than scientists had been predicting even as recently as only a decade ago. But this Presidential Administration is determined to do nothing about it.

Here is the summary statement of the Trump Administrations rationale for abolishing the Obama Administrations anti-global-warming fuel-economy standards, as the Trump Administration has stated it, on page 107 of their finalized document. (The original document, which was their Draft Environmental Impact Statement on this matter, had been dated July 2018.) This final document was issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on 16 October 2018. The public-comment period on that document closed ten days later, on 26 October 2018, and the document says:

[page 107:]

NHTSAs Environmental Impact Statement performed for this rulemaking shows that the preferred alternative [abolishing the Obama Administrations fuel-economy standard] would result in 3/1,000ths of a degree Celsius increase in global average temperatures by 2100, relative to the standards finalized in 2012 [which Trump is abolishing]. On a net CO2 basis, the results are similarly minor. The following graph compares the estimated atmospheric CO2 concentration (789.76 ppm) in 2100 under the proposed standards to the estimated level (789.11 ppm) under the standards [being abolished] set forth in 2012 or [only] an 8/100ths of a percentage increase [as compared to the Obama-standards]:

Figure 2-4 – Estimated Atmospheric CO2 Concentration in 2100

Net Benefits from Preferred Alternative

Maintaining the MY 2020 curves for MYs 2021-2026 will save American consumers, the auto industry, and the public in general a considerable amount of money as compared to if EPA retained the previously-set CO2 standards and NHTSA finalized the augural [original] standards. This was identified as the preferred alternative, in part, because it maximizes net benefits compared to the other alternatives analyzed. Comment is sought on whether this is an appropriate basis for selection. [But that comment-period has already ended.]

A 789 ppm (parts per-million) CO2 (carbon dioxide) level compares against todays 407 ppm, and that 382 ppm increase will, according to their Draft Environmental Impact Statement , raise global atmospheric temperatures by an estimated 3.48 C (6.27 F) between now and the end of this century. That documents summary asserts:

Global mean surface temperature is projected to increase by approximately 3.48 C (6.27 F).

Projected sea-level rise in 2100 ranges from a low of 76.28 centimeters (30.03 inches) to a high of 76.34 centimeters (30.06 inches) [depending upon which policy-option they adopt].

With ocean-levels being raised around a yard by this centurys end, and hurricane-intensities being substantially increased, many coastal areas will have to become abandoned. Their plunged property-values havent even begun to be priced in to their inevitable downward spiral toward zero usability and thus economic worthlessness, as the coasts move inland. Since the self-reinforcing effects of higher ppm causing higher temperatures causing even higher ppm, temperatures have become clearly a vicious circle thats beyond control, so that a yard higher by 2010 could become ten yards higher, much faster than the Paris Climate Accord was assuming would be the case if the world makes no policy changes at all which is what Trump wants: no policy-changes. The shoddy Paris Agreement benchmark was to avoid exceeding 1.5 degree Centigrade or around 2.7 degree Fahrenheit temperature-rise by 2100, but that now clearly cannot be achieved, and so Trump and other recent global-warming deniers are vindicating themselves by saying that the failure to do something when something could have been done is confirmation that they were right, after all. They were right to say Dont feed the horse, because now the horse can no longer even be salvaged.

Furthermore:

5.3.4 Tipping Points and Abrupt Climate Change

The term tipping point is most typically used, in the context of climate change, to describe situations in which the climate system (the atmosphere, hydrosphere, land, cryosphere, and biosphere) reaches a point at which a disproportionally large or singular response in a climate affected system occurs as a result of a moderate additional change in the inputs to that system (such as an increase in the CO2 concentration). [It] could result in abrupt changes in the climate or any part of the climate system. Abrupt climate changes could occur so quickly and unexpectedly that human systems would have difficulty adapting to them.

They are asserting what the scientific consensus has been asserting for the past fifty years, and with ever-increasing confidence: that the graph of future temperatures is now like a hockey-stick, and weve reached the suddenly and increasingly upward far-right side of it, where theres runaway global heating and will soon (perhaps within even 200 years) be global burnout an unlivable planet.

Basically, the Trump Administration is saying that by the present centurys end, this planet will be hellish, and that it will become unlivable soon thereafter, and that nothing can be done now to prevent any of this, because its too late to start and runaway global heating has already begun and it cant be stopped.

The Trump Administration is therefore saying to its Republican base, that they had been suckers to believe them when they were asserting that global warming is a hoax (and had even been making fun of the people who were taking seriously the global-warming threat), or that its not Man-made; Trump is now publicly saying that it is Man-made, and that Man has, in fact, done it, and its now too late to stop or even to slow significantly; so, we should just forget about it. Their changed message now is: Buy your gas-guzzlers, because lifes going to be hell for your grandchildren and for virtually everyone anyway, so dont worry about it.

Rex Tillerson, before he became Trumps Secretary of State, was the CEO of ExxonMobil; and on 29 May 2013 he addressed his stockholders likewise that the reason not to worry about global warming is that it cant be stopped. Here is the opening of one news-report about that, at the time:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1475061-exxon-mobil-ceo-were-going-in-cant-pull-up-brace-for-impact

Exxon Mobil CEO: We’re Going In, Can’t Pull Up, Brace For Impact

2 June 2013. Julian Cox

May 29th in what is set to become a defining moment in the history of capitalism; Rex Tillerson, the CEO of the world’s most valuable company, Exxon Mobil (XOM), in an address to shareholders redefined the meaning of rational self interest for the markets everywhere in a short series of astonishing quotes:

“What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” “We do not see a viable pathway with any known technology today to achieve the 350 [ppm] outcome that is not devastating to economies, societies and peoples’ health and well-being around the world,”

“So the real question is, do you want to keep arguing about that and pursuing something that cannot be achieved at costs that will be detrimental? Or do you want to talk about what’s the path we should be on and how do we mitigate and prepare for the consequences as they present themselves?”

The most interesting things about these statements:

1. No more denial of scientific evidence.

2. No more diversion about whether human activity or something else is to blame.

3. No more disingenuous claims that NG or Hydrogen are clean fuels.

Just an honest and straightforward macroeconomic outlook: We are on a collision course with the consequences of rising CO2 levels, we cannot afford to stop it, and so there is nothing Exxon can offer but a warning to prepare for the worst.

Heres one of the numerous studies that have been done showing how the free-market approach has produced this coming hell-on-earth. To summarize its proven-true message: Making suckers of people is extremely profitable, and the richest people are the ones who are the most adept at doing it. Theyve won. Pity our grandchildren.

Some American teens (who definitely arent suckers) are suing the U.S. Government for violating the U.S. Constitutions requirement to promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity by the Governments having refused to do what it must do against climate-change. The Trump Administration (on behalf of investors in Americas coal, oil, and gas corporations) unsuccessfully tried to block the suit.

Tillerson, to his stockholders, and now Trump, to his voters, say: Just have fun. Dont worry about any grandchildren, and not even about your own children. This is the message, both to psychopathic stockholders, and to stupid voters. Its obviously a winning message. It has already won. Its the way any aristocracy wins: by lies, plus their societal system in which no accountability exists for the kingpins at the top of even the biggest crime that has ever been perpetrated, this world-ending crime. It is dictatorship by the aristocracy. Thats what weve had. And thats the reason why this planet is becoming uninhabitable and why the process is now unstoppable runaway global burning, soon to become hell-on-Earth. No religious Apocalypse. Just the result of billionaire psychopaths, and their fools.

Back in 2017, when the Paris Climate Agreement goal was to keep global temperature rise well below 2 Celsius and the realistic expectation was that temperatures will rise between 2C and 4.9C by 2100 , there were no official predictions, anywhere, of a 3.48 C (6.27 F) rise by 2100. In 2017, the fear was that the migrant-crisis might be One Billion by 2050 , and Up To 2 Billion Refugees By 2100 , and clearly the Trump Administration now accepts it. Trumps response to this catastrophe is urgently to send the military and razor-wire to our southern border in order to block those people from getting out of their increasing hell. What these emigrants experience now is what all Americans will be experiencing in coming decades, but todays refugees from the south are already experiencing it, and trying to escape it. They are trying to escape a global problem that the U.S. did more than any other country to cause.

By far, the one nation that (especially on a per-capita basis) has produced the largest percentage of CO2 in the global atmosphere is the U.S. the very same nation that has now abandoned the Paris Climate Agreement because that Agreement doesnt sufficiently place the burden of clean-up from this catastrophic mess upon other nations, such as India and other near-Equatorial lands which are mainly in the near-Equatorial areas that will be suffering the most from the overheating that the U.S. has done more than any other nation to cause. For some reason, these victim-countries are not economically sanctioning and boycotting the products and services from their chief victimizer, their chief bringer-of-doom. Either the victim-countries will retaliate until the victimizer-country is forced to agree to take the exceptional steps that it would now need to take in order to reverse the global process that is unfolding, or else the victim-countries will let the U.S. continue to rape the planet. For the United States, the requirements should be and must be required to be far more stringent than are applied to the developing countries especially. If the U.S. will take that conscientious and intelligent path, then perhaps the U.S. will even lead the world to the technological breakthroughs that will now be needed in order to be able to reverse global warming. The U.S. would also benefit from doing that. Global burnout will otherwise destroy every nation. But if the victim-countries avoid forcing the U.S. to do what it must, the victim-countries will be raped even harder. Clearly, now, the United States wont do what it needs to do, unless its forced to. The U.S. must be forced to become a decent member of the global community of nations. Or else, the world is doomed.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of Theyre Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRISTS VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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