Be afraid...

"Climate Wars" Author Gwynne Dyer

While some humans choose to deny the existence of climate change, many have responded by changing the way they live. However, as freelance journalist and specialist on international affairs and geopolitics Gwynne Dyer warns, it's gonna take a lot more than recycled toilet paper to deal with the mess we've created. "We are heading for the brink very fast," he warns, and that's why his new book is required reading. "Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats" has been called "a truly important and timely book," but I'd go much further than that. In fact, I'll declare that this may be the most important book you'll read this year...
There's another three or four years lost, at least and meanwhile we get closer each year to the point of no return. Once we have passed it, there is no obvious stopping point short of +5 or +6 degrees C (9 to 11 degrees F) and remember that that is a rise in average global temperature. Temperatures over land are typically a good deal higher than they are over the oceans, so increase those numbers by fifty percent or more for the interiors of the continents. At those temperatures things dry out and it becomes impossible to grow food in large parts of the world. There will be global food shortages, not just local ones, because the rising temperatures will be killing the crops in many places at once - and so there will be famines and waves of refugees and regional wars over what little water is left. That is the real problem we face and it can only be dealt with by switching from fossil fuels to other sources of energy. Changing the light-bulbs is not enough; you have to close down the coal-fired power plant and build something else in its place. Driving less is not enough; we have to find alternatives to oil for fueling our vehicles. We need deep cuts in fossil-fuel use right away and we must virtually eliminate fossil fuels in the next fifty years. That is technically and financially possible, but it is probably not politically possible. In which case we will pay a very high price for our failure...
I know a great deal more about the problem than I did three years ago, when I started the research and interview for this book and so I know that there are probably ways of getting through this without suffering massive losses in human lives. Even if we don't cut our emissions fast enough and deeply enough to stop short of the +2-degree limit, there may be ways of holding the actual temperature rise down (they're called geo-engineering) that would let us avoid runaway temperature rises and give us more time to work on the problem. We need to start doing research on these techniques now, because we may need them quite soon. We are in very deep trouble, because the fuels we built our civilization on are destroying the climate in which that civilization has flourished. But human beings are smart and tough and we are capable of cooperation on a global scale, which is what is needed to get us through this crisis. Success is not guaranteed, but we do have a chance.

Smart and tough...but willing to really change lifestyles and sacrifice?