There are 5 countries that are responsible for over half of global fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions. The United States and China alone account for more than a third. Those in the U.S. have been the world’s largest emitters for more than a century, although they have now been overtaken by China, where growth in emissions has been driven by a rapid increase in coal consumption. China is currently opening an average of two coal-fired poweLeave r plants a week. Emissions there have more than doubled since 1990. The burden to act rests on the rest of us, especially those providing the raw materials, and other trading partners.
As Chris Hedges reports from the US in Truthdig, that with more than 600 coal-fired power plants, it is up to the American consumer to shut them down.
No one in the White House will do it. No one in Congress will do it. And no one at the coming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen will do it.
Hedges suggests that US citizens build local movements to carry out acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to halt the burning of coal, or the polar ice caps will continue to dissolve, the Greenland ice sheet will disappear, the glaciers in the Alps, the Himalayas and Tibet will melt, and widespread droughts, rising sea levels and temperatures, acute food shortages, disease and gigantic mass migrations will envelop the globe.
And don’t be deterred by the ‘doomsday’ tone of this intro: Hedges’s argument is worth constructed and evenly articulated. Read the full essay at Truthdig …
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