Next Tuesday, October 9th, at 7pm Mountain time, we will be featuring Guy McPherson, author of the blog “Nature Bats Last,” on our free webinar series.   Space is limited, so reserve your spot here.

Guy McPherson is professor emeritus of natural resources and the environment at the University of Arizona, where he taught and conducted research for 20 years. He’s written well over 100 articles, ten books, the most recent of which is Walking Away From Empire, and has focused for many years on conservation of biological diversity. He lives in an off-grid, straw-bale house where he practices durable living via organic gardening, raising small animals for eggs and milk, and working with members of his rural community.

I’m personally very excited about hosting Guy next week, and I’ve enjoyed e-mailing back and forth with him.  He’s a true expert, and as evidenced in the article below, possesses a unique and strong voice for some very difficult information.  Guy, thanks for telling it straight.

“Not Even A Spoonful of Sugar Could Help”

By Guy McPherson

Television anchor Edward R. Murrow is credited with this expression: “Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”

Murrow understood the power of television to misinform the masses. This strategy has worked brilliantly on every front, but none more pronounced than the all-important issue of global climate change. Seeking “balance” on the idiot box has meant presenting two sides to a one-sided issue until it’s become too late to address the crisis.

It’s now too late.

Feel the burn

By the end of June 2012, the U.S. had witnessed its hottest 12 months and hottest half year on record. And July 2012 was the hottest month in U.S. history, with records dating to 1895. Extreme events have arrived:

“The kind of blistering heat we used to experience once every 20 years, will now occur every two.”

Even as the sun cools, record high temperatures exceeded record low temperatures by a ratio of 2:1 in the last decade, relative to an expected ratio of 1:1. The ratio hit 9:1 in 2012.

As was pointed out in this space last year, I concluded a decade ago that we’d set into motion climate-change processes likely to cause our own extinction by 2030.

I mourned for months, to the bewilderment of the three people who noticed. And then, shortly thereafter, I was elated to learn about a hail-Mary pass that just might allow our persistence for a few more generations: Peak oil and its economic consequences might bring the industrial economy to an overdue close, just in time.

Like Pandora with her vessel, I retained hope.

No more.

Stick a fork in us. We’re done. Broiled beyond hope wishful thinking.

Continued here…

This article originally appeared on August 10th, at Transition Voice.