http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=majora_carter

Here are neat pointers to things that could go more wrong with the weather but that won’t for now so you should be thankful.

http://www.snowballearth.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

In short compared to ice ages and periods of non ice, this one is minor, piece of cake, nothing to worry about. Hotter climate, more rains, less water captive on the poles, YEAH! Ok fine, some of us will have to deal with cannibalism and survival techniques but I’d rather see London and Paris sunk than glaciers advancing, I hate cold.

Now I’m glad that you have all at last admited your guilt for this global warming because at sometime in history someone will be looking for culprits, and it better not be me since I have been a complete wanker for the last 6 years, which I have mostly spend in bed. With you lot confessing for it I feel much safer. I hope a jury will show clemency when treating your case, because I’m planning to tell them you did it.

But its Christmas and I don’t want to ’spoil’ my holidays with — wait for it — the inconvenient truth (which, it so happens, I would learn by watching The Inconvenient Truth).

As some of the other comments here point out, this attitude — the “I want to make a difference but just don’t want to have to sacrifice any of my creature comforts to do so” is probably the single largest hurdle we as a society have to face in order to address global warming.

Maybe if we all watched this movie while looking at our pathetic grey and brown yards this Green Christmas it will snap us out of our comfort zones. I’m adding it to my ‘must watch’ list for the holidays.

I believe that we’re not fighting to save the planet. We’re fighting to save the world as we know it now and the comforts we feel we can’t live without.

If things continue on the way they seem to be going, the planet will adapt and that reaction, and consequential change, may simply have no place for us. That’s what we should be talking about. Not what we’re doing to the planet, because she’s pulled through far worse than us. We should be talking about protecting our comfort zone because that’s ultimately the only language that society is prepared to listen to.

Global Warming means no more lattes, no more ass warming leather seats, no more 4 bedroom house, plasma flat screen, night out drinkin’ with the gang … allllll gone. That’s what we’re doing to the planet. Pissing her off until she’ll take it all away and if we’re lucky, we’ll still have a place to play when punishment time is over. If we’re not lucky, a million years from now an advanced race of bugs will be digging up our civilization and trying to figure out if we were done in by SUVs or some meteor strike.

I guess the important thing is just to start…

As the climate crisis comes to a head around the same time as the peak oil tipping point, things are going to be…interesting. A lot of things we take for granted today simply won’t exist anymore, and other things will spring up to supplant / replace them.

That said, civilization will pull through. A lot of people make noises about going all Ted Kaczynski, cabin-in-the-woods survivalist nonsense, when all evidence of human history shows that we live best together in tribes, villages, towns and cities. If they become greener and more compact as a result of these pressures (like Amsterdam, say) that’s a good thing.