Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue:
In its most detailed portrait of the effects of climate change driven by human activities, the panel predicted widening droughts in southern Europe and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the American Southwest and Mexico, and flooding that could imperil low-lying islands and the crowded river deltas of southern Asia. It stressed that many of the regions facing the greatest risks were among the world’s poorest.And it said that while limits on smokestack and tailpipe emissions could lower the long-term risks, vulnerable regions must adjust promptly to shifting weather patterns, climatic and coastal hazards, and rising seas.
Without such adaptations, it said, a rise of 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century could lead to the inundation of coasts and islands inhabited by hundreds of millions of people. But if steady investments are made in seawalls and other coastal protections, vulnerability could be sharply reduced.
But wait, the truth is really so worse:
The final document was “much less quantified and much vaguer and much less striking than it could have been,” said Stéphane Hallegatte, a participant from France’s International Center for Research on the Environment and Development.
Here’s a scenario: As the sea levels start to rise, further straining an already precarious economy -- the history of economic cycles, so intriguingly coinciding almost perfectly with the historical cyles authors William Strauss and Neil Howe see, suggest we’re in for a rough ride -- governments in cahoots with corporations find a ready workforce in near-bankrupt consumers. Can’t pay off your credit cards? Of course you can’t: there’s no work; your savings, if you even had any, have been decimated by inflation; but those minimum payments are still due every month. Here’s a deal: Citicorp will write off your debt if you’ll come work building the seawalls in lower Manhattan and in Queens that will protect Citibank’s corporate HQs.
I mean, why not? Credit card companies have changed the rules in midgame before, and bankruptcy laws have been altered to the benefit of the credit-card companies just recently.
Science fiction? Sure, I hope so. Still, there’s a reason why I’m so obsessed about paying off my credit cards as soon as possible. There’s more than one kind of debt slavery.
But don’t worry -- I’m just a loon. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
(Technorati tags: global warming, credit cards, debt slavery)
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