Riding Out The Storm

By James Donahue

By now there should be no debate about the warming of our planet and its effect on the climate. In spite of warnings by some of the world’s leading scientists, including Stephen Hawking, that we were going to be in big trouble if we didn’t stop the reckless burning of fossil fuels, we chose to ignore the warnings. After all, the issue was in debate.

There were always those voices, claiming to be authoritative about the subject, who were awarded lots of time on our television screens to assure us that all was well. Nothing to worry about. The planet is just going through a normal reciprocal change. Nothing bad is going to happen. Life is good. Go on driving those gas guzzling cars, flying those jet aircraft, fighting senseless wars and using coal fired electric generating plants to give us the juice.

Well the chickens are coming home to roost, so to speak. Extreme climate change is here and we are all about to pay the price for listening to those fools. Does anybody think that they might have been well paid by some special interest groups to keep the global warming issue in constant debate? Notice how former Vice President Al Gore was ridiculed after he stuck his neck out and produced that controversial documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that attempted to sound the alarm bells. That was in 2006. We still had six years to do something. Now it appears to be too late.

The effects on Planet Earth are dramatic. The summer heat this year has been extreme. Expect the looming winter to be more severe than anything anybody can remember. Notice how much of the nation is suffering from not only the heat, but an ongoing drought that is destroying farm crops. When rain falls it comes in the form of severe, harsh storms with hail, high wind, lightning and flooding rains. When do we remember straight-line hurricane-force wind storms that marched across entire states, tearing down trees, destroying buildings and leaving thousands of people without electric power?

This phenomenon isn’t just happening in the United States. It appears to be world-wide in its scope. The usual Atlantic hurricane season has been slow in getting started because of massive dust storms blowing off the coast of Africa and over the Atlantic. There have been great floods reported in China, Japan and Europe. Crops are failing everywhere. We probably cannot rely on buying excess grain, corn and fruit from elsewhere in the world because our harvest is failing.

Is anybody frightened enough yet to take action? Notice that the television news anchors are nearly all ignoring this world-changing event. They are busy filling the heads of the millions of people watching those screens with such things as the Summer Olympics going on in the UK, the weddings of royalty and Hollywood stars, the constant coverage of the aftermath of the Batman shootings in Aurora, the endless two-year-old presidential race and the many other "sensational" events they can milk so that we perhaps are not noticing what is going on just outside our windows.

They could not ignore the great forest fires that have been sweeping the parched west, or the drought that has all but destroyed the corn crop and forced ranchers to send their livestock to slaughter for lack of feed. Some of the weather events are getting too big and too terrible for the news anchors to ignore.

Yet notice that the coal, oil and gas industries are spending a lot of money on television advertising, trying to assure us that there is such a thing as "clean coal" and that these old energy systems are working hard to assure us that America will have all the energy it needs for the future.

This appears to be blending into the presidential campaign debates as well. The political agenda seems to be to protect the existing industries at all cost, even going so far as to permit more off-shore oil and gas well drilling, the building of costly pipelines to move crude oil across the country, and allowing the continued "fracking" for natural gas at the expense of our dwindling underground fresh water supplies. The bottom line here is big money for the old and existing energy companies. The once solid call by President Barack Obama for investments in new green energy technology seems to be fading so that we can hardly hear it anymore.

If we don’t wake up and stop this nonsense we may soon be fighting to just stay alive in a climate so severe that it threatens the extinction of all living things. These are the issues that should be addressed by political candidates seeking election to office all over the world. These are the issues already sparking public demonstrations in many areas. Thousands of people in China have been demonstrating against the construction of a pipeline that threatens to pour waste directly into the Pacific Ocean. The natives of the Amazon in Brazil are rising up against the construction of a dam that threatens their homes and way of life.

It is vital this year that American voters make the right choices when they go to the polls. But to do this, they need to understand the gravity of their situation, stop listening to the barrage of paid political ads flooding their brains, and start doing their homework. There are candidates for office running on alternative party tickets that are addressing the environmental issues and who, if elected, would work to do something about it.

In the meantime, we all need to get prepared to ride out the coming storms. The extreme weather we are experiencing is not a fluke. The storms, the heat, the extreme cold, the blizzards, and destructive winds and floods will intensify. Few of us will escape this onslaught. A lot of us will not survive the next few years unless we are really prepared for the Mad Max scenario that is about to fall on our heads.

Build weather-proof shelters on high ground if possible, try to grow your own food and learn the old system of canning. Don’t rely on electric power to keep your frozen food fresh. Learn the old ways of salting fish and meat for storage. Build root cellars for food storage and places to hide when the winds come. It might be a good idea to have a few guns and ammunition handy to keep the marauders away. Learn to trade things you have or your talents for the things you need. The money system is collapsing. Do not expect help from government or any of the established social systems that have been in place. It is all going to collapse.

This appears to be our immediate future if we don’t collectively do something soon. And this form of survival may only last a short time. Scientists like Hawking warn that the planet may soon be subject to a run-away warming once the ice caps are gone and the balance between the heat and cold is destroyed. Then, he warns, the Earth could build up so much trapped heat temperatures could reach as high as 800 degrees. All life will then be extinct.