Climate Shock

Climate shock comes from the realization that climate change is not only real, but huge; it is not only huge, but it is now; and it will affect your life very shortly - if it hasn't already. Gulf Coast residents got their climate shock this past hurricane season as warming oceans spawned the strongest storms on record. Alaska natives are getting their climate shock as retreating sea ice ruins their hunting, and melting permafrost topples their homes. Pacific Islanders are getting it too as their atolls flood and they flee to higher ground. And this is just the very beginning.

A funny thing happened 2 million years ago on the way to the ice ages. An arboreal ape came down from the trees and began to make tools and lose its hair. When its descendants multiplied and started to burn fossil fuels, they became a fever-inducing planetary infection. They (we) are the cause of climate shock.

An international commission predicts that there is a high likelihood that all of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035. The Himalaya will turn black, and the Ganges and other rivers that flow from it will dry to seasonal streams. The 500 million people in India who depend on water from these rivers will have no other source. China, the Andes and California will face the same climate shock - no water.

Meanwhile, the melting ice will raise the seas. If all of the Earth's mountain glaciers were to melt, it would raise the sea level by a foot and a half and that would be the end of places like Bangladesh and Louisiana's bayou country. But the polar ice caps are showing the same tendency for rapid melting, and a mere two degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperature could be enough to cause a complete disintegration. Sea levels could start rising by 3 feet every 20 years. We will have to act quickly and drastically to avert this inundation.

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