Notes from the Editors, December 2010

buy this issueOn October 16, MR editor John Bellamy Foster attended a lecture in Eugene, Oregon given by James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen is the leading U.S. climatologist and the world's foremost voice for carbon emissions reductions. According...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Monthly Review
Main Author: The Editors, -
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Monthly Review Foundation 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:https://monthlyreviewarchives.org/mr/article/view/MR-062-07-2010-11_0
https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-062-07-2010-11_0
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Summary:buy this issueOn October 16, MR editor John Bellamy Foster attended a lecture in Eugene, Oregon given by James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen is the leading U.S. climatologist and the world's foremost voice for carbon emissions reductions. According to Hansen, we are facing two major tipping points associated with climate change: (1) ice sheet disintegration in Antarctica and Greenland, leading to a massive global sea level rise; and (2) a sudden acceleration in species extinction rates (already 100 to 1,000 times the preindustrial "background rate"), as climate zones begin to move much faster than species can move in response.… Hansen's message was clear: the future of the planet will be in many ways determined by what we do "in the next several years." This, he insists, is not a problem to be left to the next generation, since we "could create a situation out of the control of young people by the time they become adults."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.