World-News

AlterNet
by Bill McKibben

05/12/08

It’s not just the economy. We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so inextricably tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the ‘limits to growth’ suddenly seem how best to put it, right. All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth. There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere...

http://www.alternet.org/environment/85080/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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