Capitalism and environmental catastrophe
 

24 mei 2013

Capitalism and environmental catastrophe

2011-11-06 | Bron: Energy Bulletin |

How bad is the environmental crisis?  You have all heard about the dangers of climate change due to the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- trapping more heat on earth.  You are undoubtedly aware that global warming threatens the very future of the humanity, along with the existence of innumerable other species.  Indeed, James Hansen, the leading climatologist in this country, has gone so far as to say this may be "our last chance to save humanity."2

But climate change is only part of the overall environmental problem.  Scientists, led by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, have recently indicated that we have crossed, or are near to crossing, nine "planetary boundaries" (defined in terms of sustaining the environmental conditions of the Holocene epoch in which civilization developed over the last 12,000 years): climate change, species extinction, the disruption of the nitrogen-phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, freshwater usage, land cover change, (less certainly) aerosol loading, and chemical use.  Each of these rifts in planetary boundaries constitutes an actual or potential global ecological catastrophe.
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