This is what I posted as an update on Facebook this morning:

“A hair past 10. It’s exceedingly hazy today, with vog. Somewhere in the distance there is Mauna Loa. Our canary in the coal mine. We, COLLECTIVELY, are screwing this up big time. Our increasingly panicked scientists, the modern day Cassandras. Are we really this stupid?”

Basically, it’s a reference to the new normal as far as CO2 in the atmosphere is concerned. And it’s a “normal” that has some pretty darn serious implications. Sobering… to say the least. Here’s part of what a blog post today at the Union of Concerned Scientists website declares:

While 400 ppm is a somewhat arbitrary marker, humans did not exist the last time atmospheric CO2 was at that level.

So, as a whole we’re all still blithely going about our business as if nothing dire is on the horizon (or, really, upon us). My sense is that we’ve already reached a tipping point, as far as catastrophic climate change is concerned, and that from here on out, it’s ‘just’ a matter of having to deal with the consequences—more severe and frequent weather events, and the attendant chaos on human societies everywhere. (As for our other fellow planet occupants, well… they’re rather dispensable, aren’t they? We’re just eating them all anyway, with nary a nod to sustaining populations, even if it is for our own selfish good.)

::sigh::

BUT. Beyond just sighing shrugging my cynical shoulders at this sorry state of affairs—for which we are all collectively to blame—I can redouble my own efforts at educating those around me to this unfolding catastrophe, and joining in whatever Bill McKibben et al. are up to. Engaging in something worthwhile and practical is infinitely preferable to just kvetching.