Page 50 - ECOlogic Book

the patient/planet's natural ability to return to equilibrium. For human
culture, as for other species, such disequilibrium would be disastrous.

In this metaphor, says Gore, “Global Warming is the fever that accompanies
a victim’s desperate effort to fight the invading virus whose waste products
have begun to contaminate the normal metabolic processes of its host
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organism.”

What are the dimensions of this “planetary fever?” “Although the precise
effects of doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in the next
few decades are uncertain,” says Gore, “It is clear that doubling CO2 will in
fact increase global temperatures and in the process subject us to the risk of
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catastrophic changes in global climate patterns.”

I’m astonished by the response to Global Warming I often hear. “Oh, heck,
it would be nice to have a few more warm days around here, what’s the big
deal?” One writer has suggested that we need a more dire sounding name
for it, like “Periodontal Disease.” The phrases, “Global Warming” and
“Greenhouse Effect”, both have a benign and comforting sound that belies
the magnitude of the ecological devastation such rapid climate changes will
bring in their wake.

“The real danger,” says Gore, “is not that the temperature will go up a few
degrees, it is that the whole global climate system is likely to be thrown out
of whack,” and “Even small changes in global average temperature can have
enormous effects on climate patterns. We are in danger of passing a kind of
point of no return, he says, “after which we will have missed the last good
opportunity to solve the problem before it spirals out of control.”
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Here are some of the effects of the dramatic climate changes we can expect
if we do not deal with this problem: water shortages and severe effects on
agriculture production in Brazil, Peru, and the U. S. Green Belt (where
severe droughts can be expected.); unprecedented inundation of the Pacific
Atoll islands and soil salinization in the Mediterranean and elsewhere;
massive land losses in Egypt, Bangladesh, China, and the U. S. In Florida
alone, a two-foot rise in sea level would flood coastal areas, with financial
losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars, as well as loss of coastal

50 IBID, P. 3.

51 IBID, P. 91

52 IBID, P. 74

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