Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

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26 politics and governance
changing rainfall brought on by climate change. The loss of soils
and species diversity and the impairment of ecological functions
will in various places reduce the capacity of Earth to support life
and sequester carbon. And there are thresholds beyond which the
capacity of the Earth to support life will be irretrievably mutilated.
While the warnings described in the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Report (2005) are no less real than those of impending
climate change, the amplifying and interactive effects of ecological
decay are harder to describe and dramatize and therefore harder
for policy makers and the public to comprehend. Each strand of
the long emergency will create conditions in which desperate
people may well do desperate things, thereby diverting attention
and resources to the headlines of the moment and to relieving
symptoms rather than solving underlying causes.
Beyond those mentioned above, other events, trends, and processes
will affect the human prospect, notably continued population
growth from the present 6.8 billion to upwards of 9 billion,
emerging diseases amplifi ed by warming temperatures, and the
complexities of global economic and fi nancial interdependence,
which are said to be beyond mortal comprehension. The human
future, in other words, will be something like a quadratic equation
that requires simultaneously solving a series of problems correctly
in order to arrive at the overall right answer. The stakes for
humankind have never been higher. The challenge is global and
beyond the capacity of any one nation to resolve on its own. Our
situation does not have to end in catastrophe, but it certainly will
unless we act soon to recalibrate economies, political systems, and
personal expectations to the realities of the biosphere.
Our capacity to respond to the challenges of the long emergency
will be further complicated by a growing backlog of domestic
problems. Using data from the Congressional Budget Offi ce,
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, for example, forecasts
a national debt by midcentury of $40–$45 trillion, larger than
the present world economy (Kogan et al., 2007). That number