The Wheel Turns, the Boat Rocks, the Sea Rises: Change in a Time of Climate Change
from TomDispatch:
The Wheel Turns, the Boat Rocks, the Sea Rises
Change in a Time of Climate Change
By Rebecca Solnit
There have undoubtedly been stable periods in human history, but you and your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never lived through one, and neither will any children or grandchildren you may have or come to have. Everything has been changing continuously, profoundly -- from the role of women to the nature of agriculture. For the past couple of hundred years, change has been accelerating in both magnificent and nightmarish ways.
Yet when we argue for change, notably changing our ways in response to climate change, were arguing against people who claim were disrupting a stable system. They insist that were rocking the boat unnecessarily.
I say: rock that boat. Its a lifeboat; maybe the people in it will wake up and start rowing. Those who think theyre hanging onto a stable order are actually clinging to the wreckage of the old order, a ship already sinking, that we need to leave behind.
As you probably know, the actual oceans are rising -- almost eight inches since 1880, and thats only going to accelerate. Theyre also acidifying, because theyre absorbing significant amounts of the carbon we continue to pump into the atmosphere at record levels. The ice that covers the polar seas is shrinking, while the ice shields that cover Antarctica and Greenland are melting. The water locked up in all the polar ice, as its unlocked by heat, is going to raise sea levels staggeringly, possibly by as much as 200 feet at some point in the future, how distant we do not know. In the temperate latitudes, warming seas breed fiercer hurricanes. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175896/tomgram%3A_rebecca_solnit%2C_what_to_do_when_you%27re_running_out_of_time/#more