The instability in the Gulf Stream whose pathway directly affects weather and climate patterns over the whole northern hemisphere and indeed the world may well be linked to the erratic behaviour of the polar jet stream, whose blocking appears to be partially responsible for the extreme weather in Russia, Pakistan and elsewhere, including forest fires in Portugal, flooding in China, and a heatwave in the US Midwest.
In summary, the window of opportunity to prevent disaster is closing fast. Conventional discourse on climate change tends to underestimate the gravity of what current trends actually imply not merely an inconvenient and growing disruption to our lives, but at worst, a permanent rupture between humankind and the natural world, which threatens not only the continuity of industrial civilization as we know it, but also the survival of our species.
Climate change is already affecting some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people in a cruel irony those who contributed least to global warming are suffering first and worst. International agency Oxfam estimates that by 2015 the average number of people affected each year by climate-related disasters could increase by over 50 percent to 375 million. The recent floods in Pakistan show the potential for human suffering that lurks behind the statistics.
The scale of the potential catastrophe round the corner not to mention the scale of our seeming systemic inability or unwillingness to respond to it proportionally indicates that the climate crisis cannot be dealt with merely by tweaking the global system here and there to do things in a slightly more "green' fashion. There is something deeply wrong with our global political economy, given its obsessive compulsion to "grow' and accumulate without recognition of natural or social limits; with our values, which privilege money-maximization and consumerism to the degree that we are exhausting the earth's resources beyond repair; and with our understanding of human nature, when the wealthiest societies are simultaneously the most unequal and unhappy.
If we are to overcome this crisis, we will need not only to act preventively and adapt strategically, but to transform the regressive political, economic and social structures that continue to accelerate ecological collapse. This process can only truly begin when a critical mass of people recognize that imminent climate catastrophe is symptomatic of deep-seated problems in the way industrial civilization is currently organized.
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