[Suggestion on video, start at 10 minutes in and go to 60 minutes.]
The most important question in human history will be answered in this generation. Will organized human life survive?
After Aug 6, 1945, and the destruction of Hiroshima with a single bomb, Noam Chomsky (NC) was horrified by the announcement, and equally so by the people's casual reaction, as they went about their business. NC went to woods to ponder the horror that we'd achieved, with the obvious conclusion that not long in the future we'd soon have the capacity to literally destroy civilization.
William Perry is now travelling and talking around the country, doubly terrified by the threat of nuclear war and the overwhelming lack of concern. Smedley Butler calls this "omnicide," as opposed to genocide, as it will take out all higher life forms on earth.
We've so far somehow survived, by skill, luck, and divine intervention--with NC putting his bet on divine intervention, or whatever you might call a miracle. We've come close to total disaster, from leaders and accidents. NC is aware of well over 100 near incidents of total destruction, via nuclear war, and he gives a small handful of examples, that you likely never heard of.
The Doomsday Clock is explained. It was set at seven minutes to midnight in 1947. On Jan. 17, 2016, after Trump's election, it was set at 2.5 minutes to midnight, then to 2 minutes not long after. The danger has moved yet further with Trump, though the clock not adjusted.
We have survived miraculously on that score.
Now we are in the Anthropocene era, where humans are rapidly destroying the environment that life on earth depends on. This carries it with it the 6th extinction of animal life, and we are well advanced in this process.
Global warming could increase many degrees this century, and will if present trends continue, as we do nothing about it. [Check what I consider to be the world's leading climatologist, Dr. Guy McPherson, who based on serious evidence, claims we will be gone by 2026. Try as I might and do to disbelieve him, whilst contemplating unthought of ways to do this, the facts are on his side, barring some miracle not yet conceived of. dg]
C02 is now at the highest level, in 2016, in 800,000 years. The situation is now without precedent. We are rapidly increasing the final destruction, leading to severe habitat demolition, literally day by day.
Sea level was 30 to 60 feet higher 3 million years ago, and we are exceeding that now in terms of greenhouse gases. [There is a time delay of over ten years for the greenhouse gasses we've already released, and no known way to remove them].
Permafrost melting will further release both C02 and methane, a gas is 50x more "effective" than CO2, though shorter lived [i.e., about 50 years rather than tens of thousands. This is a self-accelerating process].
The prospects are extremely serious. And what are we doing? The world has taken some steps, however inadequate. Of prime importance is the federal government--it is committed to using the most destructive practices toward global destruction. This should be screaming headlines every day, but take a look to find the most major news confronting us, or that ever has.
This situation is most imminent, yet we race toward it and do absolutely nothing serious about it [save crank out more humans, aimed for 10 billion by 2050]. Even Saudi Arabia, a major dictatorship, just committed $7B to wind and solar, highlighting just how isolated we are from the rest of the world.
We are uniquely insane. Every Republican candidate denied global warming, save one or two such as Jeb Bush and Governor Kasich--neither one of them willing do anything about this. The media ignored this.
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