“Man lives from nature, i.e., nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”

The general idea is that disruptions, or interruptions, in natural cycles and processes creates an metabolic rift between nature and social systems which leads to a buildup of waste and in the end to the degradation of our environment.

As people moved into cities they lost the contact with nature, and as a result they became less likely to consider how their actions and decisions affected the environment. Marx also noted that as the income for the workers in the cities increased, capitalists searched for a cheaper workforce outside of the city. Today when half of the world’s population lives in cities this is happening on a larger and more global scale. More people than ever have lost the direct contact with nature. And instead of companies and corporations looking for cheaper workers from the countryside they now look outside the nation’s borders, mainly in developing nations. The developed world is performing a “brain drain” where they are literally stealing the higher educated students and people from poorer and undeveloped nations. This is turn is fueling “a vicious downward cycle of underdevelopment” in the countries affected.

An example of a global metabolic rift and its consequences can be seen in the 19th century trade in guano (bird droppings) and nitrates from Peru and Chile to Europe. In the late 1800s several agronomists and agriculture chemists, such as Justus von Liebig, warned that the transfer of food from the early industrialized agriculture farms on the countryside to the cities had resulted in a severe loss of soil nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. This threat to the food production was the result of the division between town and country. The food was now being transported to cities far away from its source. And its waste products, which before used to help replenish the soil, now ended up polluting the cities instead. So this metabolic rift between town and country resulted in the loss of soil fertility in Great Britain and other nations which in turn led to the global trade of guano and nitrates from Peru and Chile. This trade also involved transfer of labor from China to work on the guano islands in Peru under slave-like or even worse conditions. It resulted in national economies strained by a huge burden of debt, the degradation of the Chilean and Peruvian environment and even led to a war between Chile and Peru over the guano resources. Liebig has said that this hunt for guano and nitrates “deprives all countries of the conditions of their fertility” and even likened Great Britain to a vampire which is “sucking its lifeblood without any real necessity or permanent gain for itself”.

Today guano is still widely sold around the world especially to countries such as France, Israel and the United States. Lately guano has also gained the status as an organic fertilizer which has helped increase the demands for it. But due to commercial overfishing as well as habitat loss and degradation the Guanay Cormorant bird has declined from its former population peak at around 60 million individuals to a slowly increasing population level at around 4 million birds today.

When it comes to anthropogenic global climate change Marx metabolic rift theory can help us to better understand and solve the biggest environmental crisis ever.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the observed 0.6 °C temperature increases in global temperatures since the middle of the 20th century is a result of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities such as fossil fuels. So we humans have with our overdependence on fossil fuels disrupted the natural carbon cycle and earth’s climate system. We are now accumulating more and more waste emissions into our atmosphere, 23 billion metric tons of CO2 every year, with no end in sight. With devastating effects this accelerating buildup of greenhouse gas waste emissions is warming up our planet and changing our climate.

Because capitalism promotes the accumulation of capital on a never-ending and always expanding scale it cannot be sustainable. So the manmade climate change we are seeing now is, according to Brett Clark and Richard York, a result of a metabolic rift created by the capitalistic world system. To be able to address and solve this carbon rift and stop the worst effects of climate change Marx metabolic rift theory shows us that a complete transformation, or revolution, of our society is needed. If we don’t the carbon rift will continue to expand and we will race faster and faster towards the burning cliff.

References:

• Hornborg, A., J.R. McNeill & J. Martinez-Alier, red. (2007).”Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental Change”
• Clark, Brett & York, Richard (2005). “Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism, climate change, and the biospheric rift”
• Moore, Jason (2000). “Marx and the Historical Ecology of Capital Accumulation on a World Scale: A Comment on Alf Hornborg’s “Ecosystems and World Systems: Accumulation as an Ecological Process.””
• Foster, Bellamy, John (1999). “The Vulnerable Planet”
• McMichael, Philip (2008). “Contemporary Contradictions of the Global Development Project: Geopolitics, Global Ecology and the ‘Development Climate,” Third World Quarterly.

“U.S. President Barack Obama will go to Copenhagen for a U.N. climate change meeting on December 9, hoping to add momentum to an international process despite slow progress on a domestic bill to cut carbon emissions”, Reuters reports.

“Obama planned to make a visit at the beginning of the climate negotiations in Denmark, an administration official told Reuters on Wednesday, before picking up the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in neighboring Oslo.”

With him to the climate summit Obama has a pledge to cut emissions in the USA with 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, 30% by 2025, 42% by 2030 and 83% by 2050. But these numbers are much lower than those proposed by the EU and other industrialised countries such as Norway.

The numbers are also much lower than what the science says is needed to avert catastrophic man-made climate change. According to the IPCC report in 2007 industrialised countries such as the USA needs to cut their emissions by 25-40% by 2020. The global environmental alliance TckTckTck calls for developed countries to cut emissions with 40% by 2020. And according to paleoclimate scientist Dr Andrew Glikson we need to cut carbon emissions with up to 80% by 2020 to avoid catastrophe.

In response to Obama’s announcement the UN climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said that “the world is very much looking to the United States to come forward with an emission reduction target and contribute to financial support to help developing countries.”

But Obama does not plan to join around 65 other world leaders during the final days of the UN climate meeting. Despite this the Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen praised Obama’s decision and said that “the visit underlines the president’s desire to contribute to an ambitious, global agreement in Copenhagen”.

World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Program Director, Keya Chatterjee, said that the environmental organization is “pleased” that President Obama will attend the climate summit. But also noted that:

“If his presence during the latter days of the COP becomes necessary to secure the right commitments, we hope the President will be willing to return to Copenhagen with the rest of the world’s leaders during the final stages of the negotiations.”

Greenpeace USA Global Warming Campaign Director, Damon Moglen, response was a bit harsher. In a statement Moglen said Obama’s short visit “amounts to nothing more than President Obama taking a photo opportunity on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize.” Moglen also said that the international community cannot take Obama’s emission pledge seriously:

“The proposed emissions reductions target – 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 – is less than one seventh of what the European Union leaders have said they are prepared to commit. The proposed reduction refers to 2005 emissions and not the standard 1990 baseline used by scientists and policymakers around the world. Arranging the numbers this way may be more politically palatable, but it misleads the public on information key to its welfare.

Science calls for the United States and the developed world to cut pollution by at least 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 to 95 percent by 2050. Using this accepted standard, the announced target that the U.S. plans to bring to the table shoots for only a 4 percent cut in pollution.”

You can learn more about the Copenhagen meeting here.

Lovelock has earlier said that he believes that climate change is now irreversible. He predicts that the major part of the humans, more than six billion people, will get wiped out of the face of the earth due to wars, starvation, epidemics and chaos during the rest of the century due to the effects of a changing climate. Lovelock estimates that by year 2100 there will only be around 500 millions people left who struggles to survive on the few remaining liveable places on earth: Scandinavia, Canada and Iceland.

In the IPS interview Lovelock says he hopes that once climate disaster strikes “we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees”:

“TIERRAMÉRICA: What will this new climate be like?

JL: The tropical and subtropical zones of the Earth will be too hot and dry to grow food or support human life. People will be forced to migrate towards the poles to places like Canada. There will be less than one billion people by the end of the century. My hope is that we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees.”

“[…]TIERRAMÉRICA: How did we end up in such a difficult position, in which the human species is at risk?

JL: It’s like the pre-World War II calm in Britain when I was a young man. No one did anything until bombs began to fall. We really don’t notice climate change; it seems theoretical to most of us. When the first great climate disaster strikes, I hope we will all pull together just as if our nation was being invaded.”

Although I don’t agree with many of the viewpoints Lovelock holds, his nuclear stance being one, I always find his ideas and opinions interesting (and scary!). Lovelock’s latest book “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning” was released in April earlier this year, which is said to be “Lovelock’s final word on the terrifying environmental problems we will confront in the twenty-first century.” I haven’t read it yet, the book is laying here on the table next to me, but I am sure it will be just as interesting as his former books.

via Stephen Leahy

“Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than 2C of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with 4C. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.”

Read this important piece on the Guardian!

Photo credit: suburbanbloke

Man-made climate change will render half of the world’s inhabited areas unliveable. And we humans will not be able to adapt to a warmer climate as good as previously thought, a US climate expert warned during a climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Steven Sherwood, a climate expert at Yale University, warned that parts of China, India and eastern USA will become so warm during the summers that people will not be able to lose heat by sweating, and thus making those parts unliveable.

The physiological limits of the human body will begin to render places impossible to support human life if the average global temperature rises by 7C on pre-industrial levels, he said.

“There will be some places on Earth where it would simply be impossible to lose heat,” Sherwood said. “This is quite imaginable if we continue burning fossil fuels. I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t end up there.”

During the climate conference scientists said that global temperature could rise by 6 degrees this century and warned that the IPCC reports have underestimated the climate crisis. And they are not alone in criticizing the conservative IPCC estimates. During the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently scientists warned that the pace of climate change ”have largely outpaced” the models and estimates from the IPCC 2007 report.

Also read:
- The rise in global sea levels is up to three times worse than previously predicted by the conservative estimates from IPCC
- Carbon cuts will only give us a 50/50 chance of saving the planet

Photo credit: 8zil

During a climate change summit in Copenhagen last week, with more than 2,000 researchers from 80 countries attending, scientists warned that global sea levels could rise with more than a metre, or more, by 2100. The rising sea levels, they warn, will displace 10% of the world’s population, around 600 million people who live in low-lying countries.

Just last week I told you that scientists are warning that the pace of climate change “have largely outpaced” the models and estimates from the IPCC 2007 report. And now this report shows that the rise in global sea levels is up to three times worse than previously predicted by the conservative estimates from IPCC .

“I would predict sea level rise by 2100 in the order of 1m,” Prof Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, said. “It could be 1.2m or 0.9m, but it is 1m or more seeing the current change, which is up to three times more than the average predicted by the IPCC. It is a major change and it actually calls for action.”

Dr John Church, of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Tasmania, said: “The most recent satellite and ground based observations show that sea-level rise is continuing to rise at 3mm per year or more since 1993, a rate well above the 20th-century average. The oceans are continuing to warm and expand, the melting of mountain glaciers has increased and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are also contributing to sea level rise.”

Katherine Richardson, head of the Danish government’s commission on climate change policy, said that the IPCC report from 2007 was an “invaluable document”. But she also noted that the report would be “years out of date” when the next big UN climate negotiations start in Copenhagen this year.

Also read: Climate expert says sea levels could rise 4 meters this century

Photo credit: jonasclemens

During the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently scientists warned that the pace of climate change ”have largely outpaced” the models and estimates from the IPCC 2007 report. They warned that the pace of man-made climate change is much faster than previously expected due to increased emissions from the industrial sector and that the higher temperatures have started to trigger self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms.

“We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,” Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University and member of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said.

If you have been following this blog for a while you know I’ve warned on numerous occasions that the climate predictions from the IPCC have been way too conservative. And now we see scientists, like Field, from the IPCC coming out and warning us that climate change is accelerating much faster than their conservative climate models have predicted.

Field said “the actual trajectory of climate change is more serious” than any of the climate predictions in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report called “Climate Change 2007.”

The greenhouse gas emissions from the increased burning of coal in developing countries, such as China and India, have according to Field “largely outpaced the estimates used in the U.N. panel’s 2007 reports”. But what is even more worrying is Field is warning that the planets feedback loops have started to kick in:

“Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of “feedback loops” that are speeding up natural processes. Prominent among these, evidence indicates, is a cycle in which higher temperatures are beginning to melt the arctic permafrost, which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere, said several scientists on a panel at the meeting.

The permafrost holds 1 trillion tons of carbon, and as much as 10 percent of that could be released this century, Field said. Melting permafrost also releases methane, which is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

“It’s a vicious cycle of feedback where warming causes the release of carbon from permafrost, which causes more warming, which causes more release from permafrost,” Field said.”

And this is the real killer. Because if these natural feedback loops starts pumping out massive amounts of CO2 on “autopilot” it doesn’t really matter how much greenhouse gas emissions we reduce. Because then we would have passed the threshold of no return and head towards a catastrophically 6 degrees increase in global temperatures.

The next climate report from the IPCC, the Fifth Assessment Report, may actually be based on up-to-date predictions and findings and will also contain policy proposals:

The 2007 fourth assessment presented at a “very conservative range of climate outcomes” but the next report will “include futures with a lot more warming,” Field said.

“We now know that, without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought.”

Photo credit: pfala

A new scientific study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in USA shows that “there’s no going back” from climate change caused by carbon dioxide. The study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, has reached the shocking conclusion that the effects of man-made climate change are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped.

“Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” said Solomon, who is based at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

“It has long been known that some of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years,” Solomon said. “But the new study advances the understanding of how this affects the climate system.”

“If CO2 is allowed to peak at 450-600 parts per million, the results would include persistent decreases in dry-season rainfall that are comparable to the 1930s North American Dust Bowl in zones including southern Europe, northern Africa, southwestern North America, southern Africa and western Australia.

The study notes that decreases in rainfall that last not just for a few decades but over centuries are expected to have a range of impacts that differ by region. Such regional impacts include decreasing human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change and expanded deserts. Dry-season wheat and maize agriculture in regions of rain-fed farming, such as Africa, would also be affected.”

According to the IPCC we will head towards 1000 ppm by the end of the century that if we continue on the current emission path. Joseph Romm over at Climate Progress says “that would put essentially every at risk region into conditions worse than the Dust Bowl for a long, long, long time. Clearly we must peak no higher than 450 ppm”. The bottom line is that “a few decades of prevention is worth 1,000 years of misery,” Romm said.

Solomon doesn’t put much faith in geo-engineering and the possibilities of it to help stop the rising levels of carbon dioxide:

“Asked whether current efforts by some scientists and engineers to invent ways to suck excess CO2 straight out of the air would mean global warming could in fact be reversed after all, she agreed it would, “if by some miracle” such engineering feats could ever be realized.

Otherwise, she said, her study was only further proof of the urgency of the need for humanity to drastically reduce its greenhouse emissions worldwide.”

Sure, geo-engineering with our climate might work. Or it might not, and we end up wasting precious time and resources on it. We should not put our hopes into geo-engineering. Instead, as Solomon said, we need to reduce our emissions now. There is no other easy fix or solution to this man-made problem.

Also read:
- Obama warns of “irreversible catastrophe” on climate, says he will not deny facts
- Al Gore: “We’ve Arrived at a Moment of Decision”

“The “Climate Safety” report gives a simple summary of the latest science, delivering a clear message that to have any chance of maintaining a safe climate, we must rapidly decarbonise our society, preserve global sinks, and address the problem with an unprecedented degree of seriousness.”

The new report is said to show that we can’t afford to follow Brown’s or Obama’s climate plans, which both calls for an 80% reduction in global emissions. Instead global emissions must decline by between 6-8% per year from 2020 to 2040, and lead up to a complete 100% decarbonisation by 2050, according to a paper by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

“Even with a commitment to 80% carbon cuts by 2050, “Climate Safety” warns that our current policy response does not match up to the scale of the challenge. Join us to discuss finding a way to get beyond “politics-as-usual” and achieve a full, emergency response.”

And if we are to keep global temperatures from reaching a 2 degree increase we need to cut global emissions by even more than 8% a year. So there is no point anymore in arguing about any percentage as everything has to go, and the sooner the better.

Some people have already read the new Climate Safety report. George Monbiot is one of them, and he says that “you cannot overstate the importance of this report: it has opened my eyes to levels of climate risk far beyond those of which I was aware. Crisp, clear-headed and profoundly shocking, this report should be read immediately by everyone who cares.”

And Mark Lynas, author of “Six Degrees”, says that “Climate Safety plainly shows us that we need to inject a sense of urgency into the debate about how we respond to climate change. It’s not about gradually reducing emissions any more, it’s about recognising the risks we face and cutting our emissions to zero as quickly as possible.”

Climate Safety is “a report to keep every policy maker awake at night,” Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party in the UK, have said. Let’s hope she is right.

According to the organizers: “Australia’s Climate Action Summit will be two days of facilitated meetings and workshops. There will be an open public program for anyone to join, and a restricted program for people from climate change groups, who will create a strategic national climate campaign and form a national grassroots network. The weekend will be followed on the Monday by one day of dynamic training in climate campaigning skills for taking action, facilitating climate action groups, effective lobbying and more.”

On Tuesday 3rd February, the first day of the 2009 Federal Parliament, there will be a demonstration at Parliament House and the grassroots climate network created at Australia’s Climate Action Summit will launch its national campaign at Parliament House.

According to the organizers “One year into the Rudd Government we still haven’t seen strong action for a safe climate. Current policies doom the Great Barrier Reef to extinction. Time is running out. 2009 is a critical year for an international agreement on climate change, so join with thousands of other Australians in demanding urgent action from our Government! Come to the two-day Summit or join the human circle around Parliament House”.

CRUCIAL to effective action on the Climate Emergency is clearly INFORMING the public, politicians and climate activists about (a) Climate Emergency FACTS and (b) required Climate Emergency ACTIONS.

The following suggested SUMMARY of key Climate Emergency Facts and Actions for the Australian Climate Action Summit is a distillation of key concerns raised within the Australian Climate Emergency Network (CEN) since its inception in Melbourne, Australia in 2008. Authoritative documentation of the following assertions can be found in many detailed documents placed on the Web for public information by the Melbourne-based Yarra Valley Climate Action Group.

Climate Emergency Facts

1. Expert opinion on Climate Emergency. We must take very seriously the views of top climate scientists and top scientists in relation to the Climate Emergency – just as we would the views of top medical specialists in relation to a serious medical problem – and many are stating that the World is facing a Climate Emergency and Sustainability Emergency e.g. Dr James Hansen (Head, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies): “we face a climate emergency” ; Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty “we are in real danger” ; Professor David de Kretser AC: “There is no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest problem confronting mankind at this time and that it has reached the level of a state of emergency”.

2. Expert opinion on climate position. According to Dr Hansen and 8 UK, French and US climate change scientist co-authors (2008):

“Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3 deg-C for doubled CO2 [carbon dioxide; atmospheric CO2 280 ppm pre-industrial], including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6 deg-C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 450 +/- 100 ppm [parts per million], a level that will be exceeded within decades, barring prompt policy changes. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm”.

3. Expert opinion on where climate is going. Dr Andrew Glikson (an Earth and paleo-climate research scientist at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia):

“For some time now, climate scientists warned that melting of subpolar permafrost and warming of the Arctic Sea (up to 4 degrees C during 2005–2008 relative to the 1951–1980) are likely to result in the dissociation of methane hydrates and the release of this powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere (methane: 62 times the infrared warming effect of CO2 over 20 years and 21 times over 100 years) … The amount of carbon stored in Arctic sediments and permafrost is estimated as 500–2500 Gigaton Carbon (GtC), as compared with the world’s total fossil fuel reserves estimated as 5000 GtC. Compare with the 700 GtC of the atmosphere, which regulate CO2 levels in the range of 180–300 parts per million and land temperatures in a range of about – 50 to + 50 degrees C, which allowed the evolution of warm blooded mammals. The continuing use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for industrial pollution has already added some 305 GtC to the atmosphere together with land clearing and animal-emitted methane. This raised CO2 levels to 387 ppm CO2 to date, leading toward conditions which existed on Earth about 3 million years (Ma) ago (mid-Pliocene), when CO2 levels rose to about 400 ppm, temperatures to about 2–3 degrees C and sea levels by about 25 +/- 12 metres. There is little evidence for an extinction at 3 Ma. However, by crossing above a CO2 level of 400 ppm the atmosphere is moving into uncharted territory. At this stage, enhanced methane leaks threaten climate events, such as the massive methane release and fauna extinction of 55 million years ago, which was marked by rise of CO2 to near-1000 ppm”.

4. Expert opinion about current and future biological consequences. With atmospheric CO2 at 387 ppm (versus 280 ppm pre-industrial and presently increasing at 2.5 ppm per year) and global average temperature 0.8 degree C above pre-industrial, the World is already seeing mass species extinction at rates 100-1,000 times that in the fossil record (see: nature.com and nationalgeographic.com); major ecosystems are being destroyed due to drought, deforestation, Arctic ice melting, tundra melting, glacier melting, and ocean warming and acidification (see IPCC); world coral reefs have already been severely damaged and will die above 450 ppm CO2 from ocean warming and acidification (see: sciencemag.org ; abc.net.au); ocean phytoplankton and the Greenland ice sheet go above 500 ppm CO2; (see Dr James Lovelock’s book “The Revenge of Gaia”); already 16 million people die avoidably each year due to increasingly climate-impacted deprivation (see my books “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”); and according to top UK climate scientist Dr James Lovelock FRS over 6 billion people will perish this century due to unaddressed anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

Climate Emergency Actions

1. Our core values must be that we have no right to bargain away the lives of others – there must be a safe climate future for all people, all species, and all generations, NOW e.g. the survival of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is simply NOT negotiable.

2. Our core goals must be concurrent halt to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, removal of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to less than 350 ppm, and active cooling of the Earth (by re-afforestation, biochar addition to depleted soils).

3. Core scientific risk management methodology must be generally adopted – this successively involving (a) accurate data (with zero tolerance for lying), (b) scientific analysis (this involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses), and (c) systemic change and INFORMING (to rationally minimize risk with requisite urgency).

4. Cessation of fossil fuel burning must occur ASAP with concurrent rapid uptake of non-carbon renewable (solar, wind, wave) and geothermal energy systems, the best of which are now roughly equivalent in cost to the “market cost” of coal burning.

5. To accelerate cessation of fossil fuel burning, society must insist that the “true cost” of fossil fuel burning (4-5 times that of the “market cost”; huge environmental cost and human avoidable morbidity and avoidable mortality) be identified, sourced and fully met by the perpetrators (the World may apply Sanctions against the worst climate criminal nations).

6. There must be immediate cessation of huge direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuel burning (currently $10 billion per annum in Australia, population 21 million).

7. Livestock contribute 18% of annual man-made greenhouse gas pollution globally. Methanogenic livestock must be rapidly phased out (e.g. by high conversion efficiency fish aquaculture, soy milk, plant-derived protein and fat).

8. Deforestation contributes about 20% of annual man-made greenhouse gas pollution globally but can be halved for a mere $20 billion per annum disincentive paid to the Third World (cheap solar cooking can also make a massive contribution).

9. Non-carbon public transport must rapidly replace carbon-based private transport, freeway-based systems and the genocidal Western “food for fuel” biofuel perversion.

10. Urgent population control is required coupled with major resource use efficiency and global equity (e.g. Australia’s annual per capita carbon pollution is about 10 times the global average) – all achievable with truth, reason and cultural change.

Australia is the World’s biggest coal exporter and is among the World’s worst greenhouse gas polluters (Australia’s annual per capita Domestic and Exported fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution is about 10 times that of the World and of China, about 40 times that of India and about 160 times that of Bangladesh; see ““Coal is King” Australia CO2 pollution Fact Sheet”) .

Paradoxically, while Australia is a world-leading carbon polluter, Australia is itself seriously threatened by climate change – the Great Barrier Reef is acutely threatened by ocean warming and acidification; the warming of the Indian Ocean is forcing water-bearing weather southwards, causing severe, sustained drought in the southern Australian states; the Northern Territory Kakadu wetlands and the huge and agriculturally vital Murray-Darling River system are severely threatened.

For a cogent analysis of this kind of greed-driven, denial-enabled, slow, collective suicide see Professor Jared Diamond’s seminal book “Collapse” about the collapse of civilizations (it includes a chapter on Australia).

The global Climate Emergency means that ALL countries need to act urgently on man-made greenhouse gas pollution to reduce atmospheric CO2 to below 350 ppm. Please use the above key Climate Emergency Facts and Actions Summary in YOUR advocacy in YOUR country.