Mother Nature is trying to tell us that something is terribly wrong with our planet's ecosystem.
As I listen carefully for her messages, I am constantly looking for signals - that provide some indication as to how rapidly our world is deteriorating and what we can do about it.
The temperature chart below is nature's latest message from the Arctic region.
As you can easily see from this 40-year chart (1979 to 2019) the region is warming rapidly. We just had the hottest August on record and the second hottest September. Check out the dark red 2019 column on the far right. With this kind of warming, it's just a matter of time before the Arctic Ocean is ice-free.
As you may know, the Arctic region has been warming about three times more rapidly than the rest of the world. That means we're running out of time to figure out how we're going to adapt to a much warmer planet.
Hearing nature's outcry
also means paying attention to the
birds and the bugs
and then taking the appropriate action to transform our own civilization into one that will enable us to live in harmony with nature.
In the news. Here are the titles of a few recent articles, along with a link to each of them:
- Last year, 40% of honey-bee colonies in the U.S. died (Guardian)
- The Staggering Worldwide Decline of Insects Is a Warning of Ecosystem Collapse (Link)
- Why fewer bug guts may be piling up on your car windshield (2019 Link)
- North America has lost three billion birds, scientists say (NPR Link)
- Declining bee populations pose threat to global food security and nutrition (FAO.org)
In the last piece listed above, the author
is a resident of Nashville, Tennessee - where I graduated from high school. Given the stark evidence of climate change taking place before her eyes, the author closes her article with this statement about those wonderful little birds:
One day they will leave and be gone for good. But no matter how long I stand at the window and watch, I will never know which time will be the very last.
After reading her article and the many others that come across my screen each day, I have decided to focus on this kind of information in a new book, OUTCRY, the title of which tells the story.
The first part of the book is focused on listening to what our planet is trying to tell us. The second part is all about "what we can do about it." James Cameron succinctly describes our dilemma on the front cover:
As for the "what we can do about it" part of the book, I've been blogging weekly on that topic for two years. My goal in the book is to transform all of that information into a compelling call to action.
Climate scientists tell us that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free during the month of September within the next few years. They further expect that the number of days that it remains ice-free each year will continue to rise until it permanently becomes a liquid ocean.
Apparently, we have passed the tipping point, and nothing can be done to prevent an ice-free Arctic in our future. We are just going to have to learn to live with it. What does that mean? It means that we urgently need to promote an intensive global conversation on the most crucial topic in the history of humanity. So far, it's not happening.
In the time we have remaining, perhaps we can design a new human civilization that is even more comfortable and fulfilling than what we have now. Let's face it, life today is no picnic for at least three billion people.
If we do things right, maybe we can make life much better for the billions who are suffering.
For that we need a master plan and, in order to develop such a plan, we need to better understand what "
green enough"
to satisfy Mother Nature really means. I began that process in last week's SOS Memo:
Top-Ten Lists for Avoiding Extinction
The Bottom Line.
With the Arctic Ocean on track to be ice-free within a few years, things are going to get worse before they get better.
In the meantime, I fear that willy-nilly efforts costing trillions of dollars rebuilding the world's infrastructures will distract us from carefully planning the kind of civilization that will be capable of co-existing in harmony with nature - indefinitely. Sadly, there is no global conversation on that most crucial of all topics.
And that is the primary purpose of these weekly SOS Memos and the upcoming book - I am just trying to help start that conversation.
As for eliminating various unsustainable aspects of our current lifestyle, I keep saying, when in doubt, take it out.
You see, we'll likely just get one chance to get this right. That's why we must strive to live even greener than
Mother Nature is demanding - as I describe below in this slide from my public talks.
********************
In the months ahead, I will continue to focus on the urgent need for a totally reinvented greening of our civilization - beginning with a model in the USA that could be applied globally over the next fifty years.
My first blog on the crucial topic of totally reinventing our civilization was
posted 9-21-18 and
heads the list below. It was all about GRATOLA, an acronym that refers to the "green region" corridor running from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
Since then, I have posted more than forty additional pieces on that topic, including this one on 9-4-19 in which I introduced the GBN (Great Big Northern) - one 25-mile wide corridor along the USA's northernmost border that would theoretically be capable of sustainably housing ALL 300+ million Americans in an area the size of Oregon.
