Deluge Times

It seems that just in the past three days the environment has been in the news more often than in the past three years. What has happened to cause such a turn around of the media? For one thing, floods, droughts, plenty of smog and health problems have made it to the headline news. From Canada, to Germany to China and beyond the environment is making the news. Perhaps this year the effects of climate change are now being felt in much more dramatic ways than ever before by people in the sop-called rich countries. The very places where lifestyles and modes of production impact upon the global environment harder than anywhere else in the world of globalised capitalism. It is next to impossible to deny, down-pay or ignore environmental disasters and stress when it hits home. A flood in Bangla Desh can kill very many people: but it won't stir up much concern among the growing legions of North American urban SUV owners. Not even if they choke on their own exhaust fumes and the rates of asthma among not only their children soar will they respond with any meaningful lifestyle changes. Most will still queue with idling V8s at the fast-food drive-throughs.

Few people are ever concerned about climate change in the Artic or Antartic, although the effects there are turely dramatic. It has recently been reported that "Researchers have been worrying about both the north and south polar icecaps for almost a decade. The Arctic ocean ice shelf has thinned dramatically in the past 40 years and could disappear almost entirely by 2050. There is less evidence of any widescale warming on the Antarctic continent itself.

But the ice shelves of the Antarctic peninsula have proved far more fragile. Meteorologists have measured an average 2.5C warming there in the past 50 years. Since 1950, 13,500 sq kilometres (5,212 sq miles) of sea ice - enough to cover the island of Jamaica - have disintegrated. A further 3,400sq kilometres could disappear in the next decade. ..... Sensitive Antarctic species ... could perish as Southern ocean waters warm by 2-3C (3.6-5.4F) in the next century, scientists warn... sea bottom-dwelling creatures would be unable to function as temperatures warmed and would be threatened by competition from invaders from warmer waters. (1)

The UN has just released an alarming report on the accelerated deterioration of the global environment. In the face of environmental disruptions around the world so far this year, there is no more denying the trouble we are all in. From 28 August to 4 September during the UN sustainable development summit in Johannesburg South Africa

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