The reality is that we’re already seeing the victims of climate change. (Photo: Erik de Haan / Flickr)
Corporate mainstream media outlets are missing something very important as the general election draws closer and both Democrats and Republicans start freaking out that it’ll be the end of the world if the other party gets into the White House. Media are completely ignoring the fact that unless we do something right now to fundamentally change what fuels our economy, it actually will be the end of the world as know it.
For the fourth time this year, NASA announced that last month was the warmest such month on record, with sea and land temperatures at 1.11 degrees Celsius warmer in 2016 than the average April temperature between 1951 and 1980. It was also the seventh month in a row to be at least 1 degree warmer than the monthly average from 1951 to 1980.
In other words, the planet is getting warmer and warmer, and we’re setting more and more planetary records with every passing month. And now we’re starting to see the front end of runaway climate change and getting a glimpse at the disasters that lay ahead unless we immediately stop burning fossil fuels.
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In Alberta, Canada, on Monday, 8,000 workers were evacuated from oil camps near Fort McMurray, where wildfires have already forced more than 80,000 people to flee. That fire has destroyed more than 2,000 structures, and Fort McMurray still hasn’t been repopulated because the air quality there is so bad that it registers a 38 on a scale that normally only runs from 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst. The wildfire has been fueled by unusually dry and hot air that has sat over the region because of atmospheric blocking patterns that are connected to the rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice over the last few decades. And that’s just what we’ve seen in terms of climate in the last week, just for starters.
But what’s really alarming, why each and every report about monthly…