Thanks for killing the planet, boomers! [View all]

[kpete]

Thanks for killing the planet, boomers!
The world as we know it is ending, and the indifference by Americans, politicians and mainstream press is maddening
TIM DONOVAN

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If you’re already in your mid-50s or later, and you’re lucky enough not to reside in any areas that are traditionally prone to hurricanes or flooding, you’ll miss the worst of our imminent destruction. But for those of us who are younger residents of this fragile orb, who hope to live long, healthy, happy lives — well, tough shit.

Unfortunately, the world as we know it is ending, and no one can reasonably hope to avoid the constellation of catastrophic, ecological and social disasters that are all but certain to manifest, exacerbating one another’s horrific, deadly consequences. And yet our politicians can’t be bothered to care, a substantial portion of Americans aren’t convinced that it’s even happening (despite overwhelming, unimpeachable evidence to the contrary), and the enormity of the issue is downplayed basically everywhere outside the bounds of the largely-ghettoized “environmental/green reporting,” uniformly marginalized and dismissed by the mainstream press.

It’s strange, this deep indifference to the greatest threat the industrialized world has ever faced. Imagine the global response if an asteroid half a mile wide were barreling toward Earth, and scientists were confident that it would strike our planet in 30 or 40 years. Imagine the Gene Roddenberry-esque cooperation and global oneness that would form among Earth’s peoples. Unfortunately, an apocalyptic meteor threatening our very existence is a pretty apt analogy for the ecological nightmare we’re confronting, except that in this funhouse-mirror version of reality we like to call “the real world,” our politicians are sitting on their hands as the asteroid hurtles ever closer.

By the middle of the century, the comfortable, wealthy, relatively-peaceful world as we know it simply won’t exist. The consequences of worldwide coastal devastation and the subsequent infrastructure damage from super-storms and storm surges combined with the “death” of the oceans – with ominous consequences beyond our current predictive capabilities — will ravage the world, our politics and our peace, preventing even the most insulated peoples and cultures from continuing their fat and happy early-21st-century lifestyles. And unlike every other time such apocalyptic predictions have been levied, these are based on extraordinarily well-researched, peer-reviewed studies and reports from hundreds of the world’s most well-respected scientists in their field.

MORE:
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/thanks_for_killing_the_planet_boomers/