Climate Memo Mondays, #52, December 6, 2021
Carbon Dioxide Facts and a Prediction: China, US, and Consequences
417B: Number of metric tons of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions released by the US. 236B: Number of metric tons of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions re leased by China, the next highest national emitter. 22: Number of billion-dollar climate-related disasters in the US in 2020, a new record. 110K: Number of annual premature deaths in the US that will be caused by heat exposure by 2100, according to one climate-warning scenario. The Nation, 11-29/12-6, 2021, 15. See Hobson in OMNI COP26 FOLLOWUP #2.
The following book is a decade old but cogently provides the contexts for these statistics.
The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planetby John Bellamy Foster. Published by: Monthly Review Press, 2009. 288 Pages.
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Since the atomic bomb made its first appearance on the world stage in 1945, it has been clear that we possess the power to destroy our own planet. What nuclear weapons made possible, global environmental crisis, marked especially by global warming, has now made inevitable—if business as usual continues.
The roots of the present ecological crisis, John Bellamy Foster argues in The Ecological Revolution, lie in capital’s rapacious expansion, which has now achieved unprecedented heights of irrationality across the globe. Foster compellingly demonstrates that the only possible answer for humanity is an ecological revolution: a struggle to make peace with the planet. Foster details the beginnings of such a revolution in human relations with the environment which can now be found throughout the globe, especially in the periphery of the world system, where the most ambitious experiments are taking place.
This bold work addresses the central issues of the present crisis: global warming, peak oil, species extinction, world water shortages, global hunger, alternative energy sources, sustainable development, and environmental justice. Foster draws on a unique range of thinkers, including Karl Marx, Thomas Malthus, William Morris, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Rachel Carson, Vandana Shiva, and István Mészáros. The result is a startlingly radical synthesis, which offers new hope for grappling with the greatest challenge of our age: what must be done to save the earth for humanity and all living species.