From CNN’s Fareed Zakaria global briefing Nov. 19th 2018
| California continues to be ravaged by its deadliest wildfires in history, reflecting a monumental shift taking place in the world. “[T]he earth, for humans, has begun to shrink, under our feet,” writes Bill McKibben in The New Yorker.
“Until now, human beings have been spreading, from our beginnings in Africa, out across the globe,” McKibben points out. “But a period of contraction is setting in as we lose parts of the habitable earth.” Some places are being wiped off the map as sea levels rise, while other areas are becoming unbearably hot. “By 2070, tropical regions that now get one day of truly oppressive humid heat a year can expect between 100 and 250 days, if the current levels of greenhouse-gas emissions continue.” And don’t expect global warming to turn “the Arctic into the new Midwest” anytime soon. The soil is poor and the melting permafrost layer “cracks roads, tilts houses, and uproots trees.” |