It was James Lovelock who first suggested that there would be a very few countries which would escape the worst vagaries of the oncoming Climate Change…
Much of our media remains silent about the problem and there hangs an eerie silence in the air around centres of political machinations.
Our extractive mentality and the demand for higher profits combine to destroy our very own habitat..this is the truth of what’s happening worldwide…we cannot escape our acquisitive nature! 
We appear to be caught in a vicious circle of greed versus need…and we know which one of those two is winning!
This is another Bank Holiday weekend here in Ireland and the pubs, takeaway food shops and restaurants are doing a roaring trade!
Over 56 billion farmed animals are killed every year by humans.
These shocking figures do not even include fish and other sea creatures whose deaths are so great they are only measured in tonnes…has anyone else noticed the scarcity of fish like Cod and Haddock in our supermarket deep freeze and the sly introduction of Pollack?
Yes, fish stocks are in decline, as evidenced in the supermarket offerings!
We are gobbling up our habitat at an alarming rate!
Throughout the world, about 900 million trees are cut down annually, as of 2014.
That equates to about 2.47 million trees cut down every day.
But, hold on, I hear you say…what was that you said about James Lovelock and…?
According to The Irish Times report in 2009: James Lovelock is perhaps the world’s leading thinker on environmental issues – and his prognosis for the future of humanity is grim. In Ireland to speak at University College Dublin this week, he tells RONAN McGREEVY why he thinks climate change is irreversible and why Ireland may become ‘a lifeboat for humanity’
Yes, that’s right, ” a lifeboat for humanity!”
According to scientist James Lovelock, we are on the cusp of a global catastrophe that will make the present recession look trivial.
Within 30 years, he believes, the Arctic’s floating summer sea ice will all be melted. The polar caps will no longer reflect sunlight back into space and, instead, the ocean will absorb sunlight, heating up. The permafrosts in northern Canada and Siberia will thaw out, releasing carbon dioxide (CO2). At the same time, the tropical forests, which play a critical role in taking CO2 from the atmosphere, will die out. Global temperatures will rise by between five and six degrees in a short period of time, rendering most of the world uninhabitable for the vast majority of mankind.
What sets Lovelock apart from other climate scientists, most notably the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the swift timetable he envisages and his belief that such change is irreversible and will take most of the human race with it. (Irish Times 2009)
Lovelock is a former NASA chief scientist.
James Lovelock invented the electron capture device (ECD) whch alerted the world to the depletion of the ozone layer…remember the aerosol crisis?
However, he is most famous for the Gaia hypothesis, now a theory, that the world is itself a living organism…and one I know to be true!
Though his predictions for the world are dire, his predictions for Ireland are of some small comfort. Because of our proximity to the sea, our relatively high latitude and our low population density, we may be spared the worst excesses of global warming.
He says Ireland, along with New Zealand, will be the “most fortunate countries on earth”. We will be a “lifeboat for humanity”, but a lifeboat can only take so many passengers.
~ Irish Times 2009
Personally I think there will be many places that will make the transition successfully, but the criteria for these places will be different according to geographical regions.
How do any of the generation that will meet this head on prepare for the crisis?
Well we can begin by practicing living with less, using less, consuming less and growing more…and build a new way of living with Mother Earth from there!
It continues to be developed at Bealtaine Cottage…
Bealtaine Cottage Good Life membership is 12 euros per year and allows me a small income to continue to grow the Bealtaine Project both here in Ireland and in the hearts and minds of good people all over the world.
Please join…
Hi Colleen,
Apologies, I’ve tried to do this through WordPress, but haven’t had any success.. I’ve got a new email address..
I am subscribed to both your blog and your subscription one.. can you please update my email for them?
It is: littlemartianbj@gmail.com
Hope this finds you in a beautifully grateful day.. ☺
Thanks!!
E.
I cannot access files to update this. I think a simpler way is to subscribe using your new email address. Use the button on the website.
Blessings
Colette
What beautiful, poignant comments here. In speaking with climate scientists, there is much hovering on the horizon. My mantra: care, but do not carry.
As a seeming lifelong student, I hesitate to inform my fellows… there is but a short while to bask in youthful, carefree times, confident of limitless possibilities. What an amazing feeling. However fleeting, it’s joy unrestrained, like a gamboling foal or calf in a sunlit meadow. Yes it will end, but for a brief, fleeting, shining moment, life glistened in the sun. That every child, furred or not, have such an opportunity.
Colette, in discovering your resonating voice, I seek to support a solution. Meanwhile, I take comfort in just communicating with such a sovereign sister as you, reveling in things so natural and beautiful. At this time, you are rather a guiding light to me. We were given a garden of Eden… by chance, by heavenly proclamation, by design, whatever; love remains as the most harmonizing, sustaining force in my Universe. Blessings to you and all, here.
Sentiments in prose…I love it…Blessings X
I’ve just been re-reading the part of Eleanor O’Hanlon’s book “Eyes of the Wild” which discusses Polar Bear and the problems they face (and indeed are already facing) with the depletion of the Arctic Ice. I feel a real affinity with Bear and Bear’s wisdom and was crying by the end of the chapter for all the losses humans are causing to Mother Earth and her children. And then I read your piece and James Lovelock’s words about the loss of the ice and the inevitability of it all. I am desolate.
My own sense of desolation drove me to set up the Bealtaine Project, which has proven the unthinkable to be true…that Mother Earth, if helped, can not just recover, but once more become abundant beyond our dreams!
It’s curious to think that young people today have never known a time when the climate was stable. I guess with the U.S. Republican Party in full blown denial of climate change we have to hope that Hillary Clinton becomes President. Yet taking steps to begin to counter climate change would almost certainly cost her a second term. Developed countries have outsourced many of their polluting activities to countries like China which, ironically, is one of the few countries taking climate change seriously, spending vast amounts on developing “greener” industrial solutions, but it has its own deep political problems and just as acute a need to provide jobs for its people while managing an ageing population. The real problems will arise when climate volatility and all its associated problems start to affect food supply to developed countries, with their deeply ingrained sense of entitlement. Control of land that is able to produce food reliably and on an intensive basis will suddenly be perceived as critical to national security. China saw this years ago, with its policy of buying up agricultural land around the world, but other countries have been slower to catch on. It’s not really climate change that is the threat. It’s our response to it. On the other hand, maybe it is through this kind of upheaval that we will develop a greater appreciation of the earth and a willingness to work with her rather than regardless of her. You don’t truly value something until you are on the brink of losing it.
Your final sentence is repeating in my head, for that is the truth for sure! As for politicians of any persuasion…I lost complete and utter faith in them shortly before I began the Bealtaine Project…when Bliar took Britain to war on lies, I left England, determined to not have one penny of my taxes kill children! He has made millions on the backs of dead children, as have many others. We must find solutions in our own way to deal with the oncoming crisis.
Very dire predictions indeed. Wow! Living with less, consuming less and growing more seems to me to be definitely a way i can feel useful in the face of such prospects. So horrific to think of so many animals dying for human consumption.Aristotle said if a man can be cruel to animals there is nothing to stop him being cruel to another human – we are definitely living in that time now. Not so strange to think of Ireland as an ark for humanity – Rudolph Steiner suggested that Ireland was the receptacle of esoteric knowledge as it was the only land that did not sink with Atlantis. Atlantean wisdom is hidden somewhere on this island. The only trouble with this, for me, is that Steiner is so difficult to make sense of in a lot of his writings. Peace and blessings to you.x
Because everything appears to be speeding up, we are really playing catch-up with trying to understand…take the bits we “get” and keep going until the next part of the awakening happens to us!