Just call me Suzie Sunshine

One of the things I love about reading The Oil Drum is that it keeps me constantly mindful of the things we face and our determined march toward the edge of the cliff. One of the frequent posters over there uses the tagline -- Are humans smarter than yeast? It's kind of become the standing joke and the best of black humor as the earth's systems disintegrate around us while its inhabitants consume their way over the edge of the cliff.

Well, they do try to keep us from jumping off the nearest roof with some glimmers of hope, of course.

Once again, California comes up with an interesting idea. On October 20, San Francisco will go dark for an hour, between 8:00 and 9:00 PM. The Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz, City Hall, and other parts of the city will go dark to push (and illustrate) their campaign to conserve energy. It is clearly a public relations moment, but it's also an everyone-is-in-this-together moment. It's actions over words. They're also handing out free CFL bulbs and urging everyone to shut off everything except a necessary light or two during that hour. It's a teaching moment and, I'm sure, there will be a substantial energy savings during that one hour. But it's a brilliant idea.

This is one of the first incidences I've run into where the word conserving is used unapologetically. The underlying message is that we use too much and we need to shut stuff off. But they're creating a campaign that's fresh and cheerful and even...well...fun. Bravo!

But, lest we forget....

Climate change is worse than we feared. Time is running out. The fallout from climate change is much more complex and interconnected than most of us realize. When I start reading about the chain of events that result from global warming, it makes me gulp. The time line keeps moving up as scientists learn more. We're talking about things going sour within my lifetime now. Somebody -- lots of somebodies - had better start doing something about it. But it's a herculean task to get people and governments motivated.

And for more just absolutely cheerful (not!) news on the subject, we have this grim outlook.

The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realised and the world must learn to live with the effects, experts said today.

Professor Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought.

He said vulnerable people such as the old and poor would be the worst affected, and that world leaders had not yet accepted their countries would have to adapt to the likely consequences.

They're no longer talking about if global warming will take place. They're talking about it as a matter-of-fact occurrence now and also talking about how we're going to have to adapt and what we're going to adapt to. Not to mention that there are a few billion of us who won't make it. No water, no life. No crops, no food. Some places will be far worse than others. The choices we have now are whether we're going to mitigate the damages and contain them or continue on our merry way until we consume our way into extinction. They're now talking about 2020 for effects to become really dire for a good portion of the planet.

So. Are we smarter than yeast?

Told you, I'm Suzie Sunshine today.