Just what you want to read on a Monday morning:
An unexplained and unprecedented rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere two years running has raised fears that the world may be on the brink of runaway global warming.
Scientists are baffled why the quantity of the main greenhouse gas has leapt in a two-year period and are concerned that the Earth’s natural systems are no longer able to absorb as much as in the past.
It could be the carbon cycle failing, or it could just be that the world really is going to Hell… where, predictably, CO2 levels are higher.
We raze forests, spew smoke and then scratch our heads as to why all the animals are scurrying north to find “drunken” trees leaning in their no-longer-permanent permafrost.
Here’s a theory: perhaps the Bush administration really does believe in global warming. That this whole “jury still out” stance is a way of buying them time — time to rake in as much money as humanly possible (through war profiteering, slashing their own tax brackets, blowing corporate loopholes open, etc.) in order to build an escape pod that will rocket them and theirs off this boiling rock. I mean, why else would they so blatantly rob the election in 2000 and then fight so greedily to retain it — stooping to unprecendented levels of insanity?
There has to be a catalyst for this intense Gollum-like behavior that’s more insidious than political gluttony. Or, maybe it is just good ole unchecked, runaway greed.
We can only hope.
It is amazing what can happen across a planet where the top industrial nations all ignore an international treaty designed to help our environment and instead aid each other and their worst polluters to continue with their criminal policies.
Throw some blown oil rigs and pipelines burning for days into the mix and suddenly it’s not so surprising, is it?