It is Getting Hot in Here

Trey Smith

Climate-heating carbon emissions set a record high in 2011, in a 3.2 percent increase over the previous year, the International Energy Agency reported this week. The main reason for this dangerous increase is that governments are failing to implement policies to prevent catastrophic increases of global temperatures.

A new report released on the last days of international climate talks in Bonn, Germany this week reveals that the planet is heading to a temperature rise of at least 3.5 degrees Celsius, and likely more, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), despite an international agreement to keep global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius.

Not only are pledges inadequate, but countries are unable to fulfill even those pledges, a new CAT analysis shows.
~ from Global Temperatures Rising on a Devastating Trajectory by Stephen Leahy ~

The onus of this report is not that unlike a husband who severely beats his wife. Each time it happens -- it happens frequently -- the police get called. They haul his sorry ass before the judge and the reprobate husband promises to do better. The judge believes him and sends him home. Within a few days, the jerk beats his wife again.

If the court doesn't step in to throw him in jail, chances are he will one day beat his wife to death. The authorities will say that they didn't see this coming because he had pledged to change his act and they took him at his word. How on earth could they "know" that he would go back on his word and continue beating her?

In this same vein, the industrialized nations of this world -- particularly the US -- keep promising to clean up their act and yet they go back on their word almost every time. While all the key signs point to a climate in trouble, they keep to business as usual.

If we continue on this same path, we will destroy the very habitat with which we need to sustain our lives.

And what will be our collective excuse? Aah yes, our leaders will cry that they never saw it coming!