Catastrophe - Our Only Hope.

I am no diviner, but I think this year there will be a great catastrophe, and that we need it. The speed with which science of Climate Change advanced over the recent years, together with the speed of the advance of the global warming itself, is astonishing. A major and swift change is needed, globally, action that the politics is unable to force today. So I turn to nature for "help" on this. There's going to be a major disaster. And we must make most use of it.

There is no disagreement amongst scientists. The overall heating and "energising" of the atmosphere is on the rise. This year will be the hottest to some and the wettest/windiest to others of all the previous years on record. Disaster is brewing. I don't know what it will be - a major hurricane, a disastrous flood, a disease pandemic, a military conflict - but in any case if and when it happens we must all clinge onto it as onto our only hope. Let me explain why.

Science, which is in consensus and precise, is adamant: 2 degrees Celcius temperature rise is all we can afford. Above this a "feedback mechanism" is started: we can then shut down all factories and scrap all cars and planes - it would no longer matter. Permafrost starts melting large-scale and releasing methane (23xCO2 greenhouse impact), the rainforests are committed to dying and releasing their stored CO2, the soil reaches a point of releasing its stored CO2, the ocean and oceanic bed releasing more greenhouse gases... Everything falls together, like a cardboard house, like a snowball rolling downhill. Two degrees warming and 400 ppm CO2 concentration that commit us to this are our aim, our limit.

We blew it. Atmospheric concentration of CO2 is over 380ppm, we'll cross 400ppm in less than a decade, and permafrost is already thawing. Best political plans aim at useless reductions by a useless date (mid-century). This is fatal. There is no time to "slow down", to "develop alternatives", to "ensure growing economy". We must now shut down everything, sit quietly in a dark corner hugging our teddy bear, and hope the big monster outside will pass by without noticing we're there.

If the economy is falling already without major climate change, what will happen when the big problems hit? The newspapers talk about a "large GDP loss" and "end of prosperity": nobody understands what climate change really means for us. It is the end of civilization, if not of all humanity, not just the end of "prosperity". Unless we have another glimpse into what climate change really means to us all, nothing will happen. We desperately need a wake-up call.

So whatever disasterous event happens this summer, cling onto it. Connect the dots, link it to climate change explicitly. Push it into people's faces, into companies' faces, into governments' faces. We must be reckless and informed. Local businesses must be scared into shutting off their wasted night lights and heating, the governments must be scared into stopping oil subsidies and tax breaks immediately, and we must be scared of starting our cars that every extra time or leaving those lights on an extra minute, as if this may trigger a bomb in our basement. And this must happen now, this year.

Yes, we must decend back into 18th century life, voluntarily. And immediately. Or we will be forced into bronze age, and our children - into stone age. For this we need a catalytic eye-opener, and only a major disaster can be up to the job.

As for people who will blindly refuse to do anything... Buy them a gun, a real live loaded gun, and ask them to shoot one child every few minutes. In the head. Because that's what they're doing. Because that's how serious it is.