During World War II, millions of women in the United States worked hard to produce many of the materials needed for all types of equipment, all right after the nation turned into a massive war manufacturing facility in 90 days! At that time, the U.S. saw a real threat, and it acted upon it by tightening its ropes and working hard to get the job done, which at that time was beating Germany and Japan. Rosie the Riveter became the cultural icon that represented these millions of hardworking women who took to the factories to literally help save the world.
In Timothy’s previous post about Monbiot’s “Heat”, he emphasizes the fact that solving global warming will seriously change our lifestyles and will take a lot more than what we currently have and know. We have to focus on building the solutions we need to cut emissions 60% by 2030 globally, and we ought to work with that target in mind.
Global warming is something on the scale (or even a greater scale) of World War II, and as such it requires that we do something similar to or greater than what we did to win the second world war. GlobalWarmingSolution.Org, which works to unite grassroots organizations in the fight against global warming, will soon (July 23rd) release its newest report, “Rosie Revisited”, which explains how it is technically and economically feasible to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the US 80% by 2025, a target 25 years earlier than what the movement is currently calling for. Not only that, the report argues that the solutions can be applied globally for a cut in emissions on a similar scale and with the same deadline.
If we want to reduce the risk of passing the climate threshold (due to the significant uncertainty of the positive feedbacks that exists), then a target on this scale is completely necessary and must be doable. In short, we must transform our economy in the same way we did during World War II to address this problem, bringing in solutions that work locally and nationally, and that gives everyone on Earth a chance to contribute to the solutions.
I strongly recommend that we take this report seriously rather than put it aside as something politically impossible to do. If we make global warming look like the kind of threat that the Japanese were during WWII, then setting this target and achieving it are certainly politically possible. We just have to envision what we must achieve and work towards getting there, regardless of what we think is really possible (it’s really our only option of avoiding climate thresholds). I hear Lester R. Brown will soon come out with his Plan B 3.0, where he makes the case for global cuts of 80% by 2020, another proposal we should take seriously. “Rosie Revisited” should help us get ready for framing the debate on the scale that politians would not dare consider, and it’s where we must go.
Subscribe by Email!
Subscribe by RSS!
Share on Facebook
The study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation. I am write a blog which gave complete information about Global Warming.
Looking forward to reading this report. Short term targets that are based on the science are REALLY important - much more important than a long term target. Has anyone read the Retallack paper and/ or the Meinhausen paper? There’s also some good reading at “The 2-degree target: How far should carbon emissions be cut?” (www.carbonequity.info).
The Ratallack paper is: Retallack, S. (2005) “Setting a long-term climate objective: A paper for the International Climate Change Taskforce”, Institute for Public Policy Research, http://www.ippr.org. Retallack concludes that for the UK the emissions scenario must be 90% by 2050. UK per capita emissions are half that of Australia, so the maths quickly tells us that if they need 90%, we need 95% just to not exceed carbon sink capacity by 2050, let alone the issue of driving down GHG levels.
Carlos you must be on every listserv in the free world to know about all this stuff. This report is incredible - 80% by 2025 with less than 20% flat out conservation, no stated increase in nuclear, and only a moderate increase in biofuels. Looks like we have a path, now we’ve just got to walk it (or…march it!).