Everything's gonna burn, we'll all take turns...

[dberdinka]

These people are freaking me out! Someone please convince me they're crackpots.

 

 

The actual editorial

 

The Rolling Stones Article it was based on

 

****** Editorial in Full **********************

 

The Earth is going down. Way, way down. To the mat, hard and painful and with a sad moaning broken-boned crunch.

We are chewing her up, spitting her out, stomping and gobbling and burning and gouging and drilling and sucking her dry and we are carelessly replicating ourselves so goddamn fast we can't even stop much less even try to slow the hell down, and all we want is more and faster and with less consequence and pretty soon the Earth is gonna go, well, there you are, I'm finished, sorry, and boom zing groan, done.

 

Don't take my world for it. Just read the headlines, the latest major, soul-stabbing report.

 

It's one of those stories that sort of punches you in the karmic gut, about how they just completed this unprecedented, four-year, $24 million, U.N.-backed study involving 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who all pored over thousands of satellite images and countless scientific reports and reams of stats, and they all distilled their findings down to one deadly, heartbreaking summary.

 

And here it is: We, humankind, people, sentient carbon-based biped creatures, only us and no one else but us because it sure as hell ain't the goddamn lions or caribou or meerkats or rhododendrons, we humans have, in our shockingly short time on this wobbly sphere, used up a staggering 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmland, rivers and lakes.

 

That's right, 60 percent. Gone. Burned up. Used up. Much of it irreversibly. These are the basic ecosystem services that, simply put, sustain life on Earth. The glass ain't even half full, people. It's about three-fifths empty and draining fast and we are doing our damnedest to expedite the process because, well, this is just who we are.

 

We reproduce. We consume. We use it up and dry it all up and move on to find more and it reminds me of that line from Agent Smith in the first "Matrix" movie where he stares menacingly at Morpheus and speaks about how every mammal on Earth instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, "but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague," and then Morpheus gets all huffy and righteous and goes on to inspire Neo to prove how we are also full of beauty and fire and life and he makes it all better by saving humankind so we can go buy the mediocre soundtrack.

 

But it doesn't stop there. The study also reveals that our fair and gluttonous species has altered the planet more violently and rapidly in the past 50 years than in any comparable time in human history. Yay accelerated technology. Yay multinational conglomerates. Yay lack of corporate ethics and rabid unchecked capitalist consumer gluttony. Whee.

 

And you read this horrific story about how we are mauling the planet at an unprecedented rate and you ask yourself the obvious question: Our government is doing what about this again? Oh right: nothing. Not one thing. They are, in fact, making it all far, far worse. Worse environmental president in American history, you remind yourself. Whee.

 

And this heartbreaking study, it comes hot on the heels of one of the most distressing and sobering pieces of journalism I've read in ages, an excerpt from a book by James Howard Kunstler called "The Long Emergency," all about the imminent and staggering oil/natural gas crisis now looming large over the U.S. and the world, a crisis of such dire proportions that it will very soon reshape American life like nothing since the Industrial Revolution. Except in reverse.

 

It's about peak oil. It's coming within a year or two. It means we've essentially siphoned off all the easily attainable oil on the planet (about 50 percent of the grand total) and getting to the remaining 50 percent -- the lower-quality stuff that's buried deep in rock or in impossibly difficult locations or that lies underneath countries where the people absolutely hate us -- will be so fraught and expensive and hypercompetitive that it will mean not only, in the immediate future, much more war and strife and pain but also, in the next decade or two, a radical -- and I do mean radical -- reshaping of life as we know it.

 

Petroleum and gas will become incredibly scarce and everything we know about consumer culture, travel, products, Wal-Mart, easy access to all daily goods and services, will essentially vanish, and we will return to a intensely local, viciously competitive agricultural model of raw survival. Read this article, and be amazed.

 

This is the incredible thing about humans. We are capable of such amazing extremes, such breathtaking beauty and such violent ugliness, astounding awareness to utter blindness, transcendental light to staggering dark. Some periods in our history, it feels like we're actually progressing, calming down, evolving, reaching new heights and new levels of psychospiritual awareness, as opposed to merely rearranging the puzzle pieces in a drunken haze of frustrating anxiety.

 

 

And at other times, like now, like the new and violent and fractured Dark Age so savagely exemplified by BushCo, it feels as though we are working toward the other extreme, working our last raw nerve, seeing how far we can go before we implode, how much of the planet we can abuse and pollute and rape before something pops so violently and unexpectedly we can only sit back and go, oh holy hell.

 

Maybe the nutball evangelical born-agains have it right: Maybe it's best to just burn up this whole godforsaken lump of Earth as fast as possible and then watch in giddy flesh-rended glee as Armageddon rains down and only those who've given tens of thousands of dollars to secretly gay televangelists will rise up and be saved and the rest of us will merely drive our Priuses off a collective cliff into the fiery pits of gay-marriage-friendly hell.

 

Ah, but we have bad news there, too, because, according to the cute Rapture Index, that adorable little Web site o' righteousness that charts the various global "signs" leading up to the impending Second Coming, the Rapture should be happening, like, right now. Or maybe last week.

 

In fact, the index now stands at 152, well above the "Oh sweet Jesus take me now" threshold. Which means, of course, that the Second Coming might have already come and gone, and Jesus may have swooped down and taken one look at what we've done to the place and said, you've got to be freakin' kidding me, and said, sorry but no one here deserves much of anything illuminative or enlightened right now. Can't you just hear all those gay-hatin' born-again Christians saying, what the hell?

 

Of course, no one said this was gonna be easy. Not Christ, not Buddha, not Allah and not Lao Tse and not Rumi and not Krishna and not the light beings right now swirling around your head and trying to get the message across that this earthly plane is one of the harshest and more difficult and bloody messy ugly lessons in the universe, which is also why it's so valuable and mandatory and why so many souls want to come here, to learn. Trial by fire, is what it is. This is what they say.

 

But if these scientific studies and stories are to be believed -- and there's little reason to think otherwise -- that fire is about to get one hell of a lot hotter. Stock up on duct tape. And water. And hope.

[Norman_Clyde]

Well, DUH.

Right wingers, please address the issue of our unsustainable consumption of Earth's resources without resorting to the convenient comfort of imminent Armageddon and rapture of the faithful. I'd like to hear a reasoned argument for how the theory of relentless economic growth is not doomed to lead a finite planet into catastrophe.

Edited April 14, 2005 by Norman_Clyde

[selkirk]

Well, the absolutel worst case scenario is that we can make the planet uninhabitable for us, or at least most of us. And since it's pretty well established that 1. Hell is other people, and 2. People suck, would that really be a bad thing? I'm sure the cocroaches and algaes, and the rest of the surviving species wouldn't mind one bit if we collectively buggered off.

 

For all you religious nuts out there. Don't forget humility and forgiveness. As core Christian virtues they seem to be overlooked quite often in favor of Avarice, Pride, and Vengance. It seems people have forgotten both the old and new testament!

 

We may be gods in our own minds but were only a hiccup in geologic time.

[archenemy]

For all you religious nuts out there. Don't forget humility and forgiveness. As core Christian virtues they seem to be overlooked quite often in favor of Avarice, Pride, and Vengance. It seems people have forgotten both the old and new testament!

 

Humility and forgiveness don't take up many lines in the Old T, and fortunately for secular readers, the Bible is full of great stories of catastrophic destruction.

 

Just thought I'd throw that out there....

[bunglehead]

Well surely 1360 scientists from 95 nations can be wrong.

maybe they all have a LIBERAL BIAS

 

Because that's waay more important a topic of discussion than thet fact that we're progressively fucked. Political leanings. That's going to fix everything.

[Dru]

don't be silly

 

all those horrid third world people are the ones who are going to die. the environment in the boston to dallas corridor will remain pristine, because it is god's chosen paradise

[bunglehead]

But what about the PNW??

[Dru]

do you really think bush gives a shit about the liberal PNW?

[Bill_Simpkins]

Imagine if all this happened.....

Look what consequences divorce has. Case in point:

Little girls parents get divorced, little girl visits dad 1-3 times a week. Energy crisis. Little girl is either a)momless or b)dadless. How selfish we are.

If there is such a crisis, I think the family unit will once again become very important. Divorce maybe was a bi-product of prosparity and subsequent independance. What are all you divorced, commuting families going to do with no cars?

 

Disposable cups, disposable rags, disposable cell phones, disposable friends, disposable mates....but children arn't disposable, but everything around them is.

Disposable Earth.

[dberdinka]

But what about the PNW??

 

Read the damn articles! We're saved..kinda...at least compared to the south.

 

I'm not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

 

The Pacific Northwest, New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Die with your boots on

[Dru]

Imagine if all this happened.....

Look what consequences divorce has. Case in point:

Little girls parents get divorced, little girl visits dad 1-3 times a week. Energy crisis. Little girl is either a)momless or b)dadless. How selfish we are.

If there is such a crisis, I think the family unit will once again become very important. Divorce maybe was a bi-product of prosparity and subsequent independance. What are all you divorced, commuting families going to do with no cars?

 

Disposable cups, disposable rags, disposable cell phones, disposable friends, disposable mates....but children arn't disposable, but everything around them is.

Disposable Earth.

 

give it up bill. maintaining a horse will become the green option again. giddy up silver!

[Peter_Puget]

Thank God for freedom..... link

[Bill_Simpkins]

"Another Prophet of Disaster

Who says the ship is lost,

Another Prophet of Disaster

Leaving you to count the cost.

Taunting us with Visions,

Afflicting us with fear,

Predicting War for millions,

In the hope that one appears."

[KaskadskyjKozak]

"Another Prophet of Disaster

Who says the ship is lost,

Another Prophet of Disaster

Leaving you to count the cost.

Taunting us with Visions,

Afflicting us with fear,

Predicting War for millions,

In the hope that one appears."

 

Exactemente

[Dru]

Parched, cracked mouths, empty swollen guts

Sun baked pavement encroaches on us

Haves and have nots together at last

Brutally engaged in mortal combat

 

10 in 2010

10 in 2010

 

What kind of God orchestrates such a thing? 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

Ten billion people all suffering 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

Truth is not an issue just hungry mouths to feed 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

Forget what you want, scrounge the things you need 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

 

10 in 2010

10 in 2010...

 

Happy and content it can't happen to you 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

Fifteen years we'll think of a solution 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

It won't just appear in one day 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

For 10 in 2010 we're well on our way 10 in 2010! 10 in 2010!

 

10 in 2010

10 in 2010

 

Like piercing ear darts, I heard the news today

10 billion people...coming your way

 

10 in 20

10 in 20

10 in 2010...

 

*Under most recent estimates world population will never reach 10 billion

[foraker]

Be fruitful and multiply....no apologies. God wanted to see us crash and burn from the start. It's his sick game, like burning ants with a magnifying glass.

[Squid]

he bought me a soda, he bought me a soda and tried to molest me in the parking lot

[Fairweather]

Dberninka and Norman C,

 

Read this book. Seriuosly. It is not written by a right-winger, in fact, it's written by a Danish professor of statistics. While we humans can always do better, the situation is not nearly as dire as you believe it to be.

 

 

...or, if you prefer, you can rely on a Rolling Stone editorial to stay informed.

[Dru]

The statistics in that book are rather selective and dodgy.

 

It is hypothesized that Bjorn has read this book

 

[foraker]

i've got that book and read the critiques of it as well as discussed some of it with some scientific colleagues. it's good to be skeptical, it's good to question the current paradigm, it's not good to be skeptical when the preponderance of evidence points to you being wrong. not addressing that to anyone, just saying...