Climate Sunday: I've Seen the Future and It's Murder

I'm back with another Pessimist's Club update about the planet and what we're doing to it--and this one is going out to the EPA, who couldn't very well dump bunches of heavy metal-laden mining waste into the Animas River unless it was there to be dumped, not that I'm letting them off the hook. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper drank that weird yellow water, but then he has guzzled fracking water, too. He might be a little weird. But basically, mining is dirty business for water, and the risk of contamination can continue long after mines have gone defunct.

But anyway, did you know we hit Earth Overshoot Day just recently? We're taking more from the planet then it can afford to give. When we get the bill for the overdraft fees, it's gonna be a headache.

Air pollution in China is determined to be the cause of over 4,000 deaths a day.  That's 1.6 million people a year. That's worse than a war. A lot of that problem is coal--there is no tech that makes burning that stuff 100% clean.

Rolling Stone has a pretty good article on the abundant evidence that global warming is totally a thing, which is a lot of what I've been talking about on this humble surfactant container. The title has the scariest words: The Point of No Return.

If you were wondering, was this July hot enough for ya? Goddamn it was hot enough. The hottest on record. The global heat wave is good for germs. But if you aren't a bacillus, it kind of sucks to be you. Especially if that "you" is in one of those canary in a coal mine countries that is especially hard-hit by climate change.

What do we have to do about this? Change everything. When do we have to do this? Yesterday. But I'll settle for more coalmines going bankrupt, more solar power everywhere, and a drive to treat conservation sort of how people dealt with sweetless, wheatless and meatless days during WWI and the recycling drives of WWII.  We can lick climate change! Win the global war on US with Us-Power! And let's get it done with the help of the Sun!