The Emotional Heart of Climate Change

When I first read this, Climate Change More Extensive than thought, in Spiegel online last week, I began writing a post I could only, in my despair, title "Totally Fucked with Global Warming." The Spiegel article was the first place that the news from the second part of four IPCC reports, due to be published from Belgium sometime next month, was announced. The first section of the report was published from the international meeting of world scientists in Paris in January, and was scary enough.

This second part, however, will focus more on the results, the effects, of the fact of global climate change. and is so extremely scary that his morning we have the mainstream media, even unto the front page of AOL, getting down with this sort of headline: Climate Report Warns of Drought, Disease :

This report - considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research - focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposedto the more science-focused report by the same group last month.

"This is the story. This is the whole play. This is how it's going to affect people. The science is one thing. This is how it affects me, you and the person next door," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver

So, even though it's a beautiful early spring morning, and I've spent the last half-hour watching a ladderback woodpecker in the cottonwood outside the kitchen window, by now I would usually be contemplating swallowing ground glass after reading the above-linked news, I'm actually not having any such contemplation. No, I'm not, even despite other headlines I've collected over the past week, like this one: Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study, or this one: Bush Climate Report Shows U.S. Greenhouse Gases Skyrocketing, or my absolute favorite, showing as it does, the blind forces of denial that seem to be governing this debate in this country: US Urges Scientists to block out sun.

And why not, pray tell? The suicidal cynic has not suddenly become a cockeyed optimist, has she? Well, no. Probably not in the cards for this lifetime. What has happened is that for the past three days I've been attending a conference right here in Albuquerque, during which I have met, listened to, eaten lunch and drunk coffee, with like-minded everyday people, as well as big names in their fields. The focus of this conference was water, as it was held by the Xeriscape Council of NM, even more specifically the intersection of water and energy in our current world, and the world of our future. Global climate change entered the picture, or was often the main subject, with almost every speaker, every question from the audience, every article and report in our program book. Despite the enormous amount of doom and gloom in every speech, every report, every conversation among attendees, there was also an amazing spirit of positivity, nay optimism, about what can be done to change this horrible prognosis. . So, I'm deleting "Totally Fucked with Global Warming," and will be writing a series of posts from the information gleaned during the conference. Right now, however, this morning, I'm going to go out and work in my garden, turn over my compost heap, and qvell for a while in the glow of the main benefit gained from this conference: the feeling that I'm not alone, that there are many brave and determined souls out there thinking, working, actually DOING something positive and worthy because theybelieve in and care mightily about the future of this planet.

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