More Purpose for Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is an action platform and should direct technology towards our most pressing needs! There's serious, and then there is SERIOUS!

My job here at Profy is to report on significant (and sometimes insignificant) Web 2.0 technology. Our goal – my goal, is to be honest, fair and impartial about the subjects we write about so that you guys will get an honest “heads up” on happenings in our little world. Sometimes we all need to focus our resources and attention on larger, and yet more important issues.

So, we have a need, as caring and informed bloggers, to call everyone's attention to something that affects us all. Some things affect us by causing us momentary or short term joy or aggravation. Then there are things that affect us all dramatically and for a very long time. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings at the Paris conference should, at the very least, cause a ripple in the blog current!

I am not very big into preaching, but I care what happens to everyone, even those that will be here when I am long gone. The simple truth is, that we knew the impact of global warming panel 20 years ago if not more and rationalized them away. We at least suspected how big the problem was. I am 51 years old (yes I know, half dead), and I knew people in academia 35 years ago that predicted most of what is happening in YOUR world today. You don't have to be a “tree hugger” to have a brain.

The world's foremost climate scientists told the world, Mankind is to blame for global warming. Well duh! According to a press release by Reuters yesterday, the panel predicts that temperatures will rise by between 1.8 to 4.0 degrees Celsius (3.2 – 7.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the 21^stcentury. The scientists stated further that: “Faced with this emergency, now is not the time for half measures. It is the time for a revolution, in the true sense of the term,” French President Jacques Chirac said. “We are in truth on the historical doorstep of the irreversible.”

Irreversible! You know people, like “can never go back!” It seems to me that is of an import just slightly ahead of the last “Spam Spitting,” SEO dripping web site that I branded as not worthy to you guys. Many governments have already agreed to cut emissions by 2012 (Kyoto Protocol), but the United States and China are holding out for pretty obvious reasons. The Kyoto Protocol was greatly weakened when the United States pulled out of the agreement in 2001. The Bush administration minimized the U.S.'s part in contributing to greenhouse gases. We have about 1/3 of the automobiles on the planet people (200 million cars on the road), and produce more greenhouse gases than any two other countries.

The 21 page summary submitted by the IPCC projects “wrenching” change (the kind that twists stuff) such as the melting of Arctic sea ice (you saw Waterworld right?) in summers by 2100. Seriously guys, I worked with an environmental geologist in 1995 that had a NASA grant to study things like this. He predicted exactly what has finally been acknowledged by most governments 12 years ago. The evidence was incontrovertible back then and it is even more so today.

Do you live near the beach or in a tidal plain? According to the “conservative” estimates of this panel, low-lying islands and coasts of countries like Bangladesh, China or Brazil (and yes areas of the good old USA) are already threatened by rising seas. President Bush claims that Kyoto style caps on emissions will harm the economy. Heaven forbid that we ever harm the short term economy. What would our grandchildren think if they could not buy more worthless junk at Wal-Mart? I am sure they would rather be awash in seawater and starving coastal residents than to miss the blue light special on cheap TV's! People only react when they are motivated, and some people are afraid. Maybe we all should be a little bit afraid, or can we trust the people who have been telling us everything is okay for decades?

The president of Kiribati, a group of 33 Pacific coral atolls threatened by rising seas, said time was running out.

As a geography teacher for 2 years in South Georgia, I discovered that 80 percent of American students have no idea what an atoll is, much less knowing or caring what happens to the people there. American kids are not cruel or bad, they have just been conditioned to consume, period! We consume ¼ of everything produced on this planet, and now we are exporting consumerism to China and India, because “big business” sees emerging markets. They see 3 billion customers, and if you think about it, you know this is true. Big business is about SEO for the world, their world and yours, but optimization of the web or the world should be for the people.

Look at the following figures and make you own determinations. Please factor in a simple principle of physics that is quite incontrovertible too, “for every action, there is an opposite yet equal reaction.”

1. Number of automobiles on Earth (1997) – 600,000,000
2. Projected automobiles by 2030 – 1,200,000,000 Thats billion with a B
3. Number of automobiles per U.S. household (2003) – 1.9 Bureau of Transportation Statistics (more cars than drivers)
4. Carbon dioxide emissions in China (2003) – Record – 1131 million metric tons (mostly coal) (for every action-opposite reaction)
5. U.S. and China account for 45% of all world greenhouse gases (2003) Wal-mart blue light special in very high demand
6. China coal consumption – China responsible for 90% of the world's recent increase in coal production
7. U.S. trade deficit – Trade deficit with China of nearly $230 billion. Mostly manufacturing jobs - Yeeha! Go East young man, west is done!
8. 17″ sea level rise – Destruction of 1/3 of Africa's coastal infrastructure – world coasts affected – migration, disease and flooding
9. 1990 to 2007 – All ten of the hottest years world wide since the 1880's
10. 2001 to 2007 – 6 of the 7 hottest years on record since the 1880's (oldest records)
11. We may parch before drowning – 98% of the Earth's water is salt. Glaciers, snow, lakes, rivers contain the rest – warming reduces this

I really hate to go on, as there is so much data and bad news that it is staggering. The point is, now that we are so connected by Web 2.0, we are obligated to each other by every convention established by any government or religion ever created. We have to care! In my lifetime I have seen the deforestation of millions of acres of rainforest's, the desertification of much of Africa, a depletion of natural resources of biblical proportions and the rise of consumerism in every corner of the globe. What will you folks see in the next 40 years?

The place where we all live, Earth, is rapidly becoming uninhabitable! People here in the United States still believe that fossil fuels will never run out! This is the intellectual equivalent to believing in a perpetually full glass of water with 10 billion people drinking from it. The power structures in the world have forced the idea of growth on all of us until we accept that as a natural law. Sustainable growth is only a term for geographers, geologists and a few economists. What is worse, we are exporting the idea to countries with infrastructures incapable of supporting anything like what America experienced in the last 100 years. Wake up!

Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Saeed said, “Rising oceans could have devastating effects on low lying countries like his coral island nation”, which is 1 meter above sea level in the Indian Ocean. He went on to say, if the sea level rises permanently, it will submerge the whole country forever,''

Politicians - Responding to calls for the U.S. to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today the administration still opposes such a move. “The imposition of a carbon cap in this country may lead to the transfer of jobs and industries abroad,'' he said. We have statements like this while an industry stampede heads for China, India and other new markets. As their cities become open cesspools and coal mines, developing countries ramble on under the delusion that the “gold rush” days are upon them. Who are these bozos we follow? They insult you by not even caring if you see their arrogance and stupidity.

Us, making a difference - So, what do we do? What is the Web 2.0 thing to do here? I have read so many posts from intelligent, even gifted writers and from young people who really want to make a difference. Isn't that what all of us want, to make a difference, to be counted and make things better? I think it is, so the 50 million bloggers out there need to commit to actually counting. We need to count for more than a few more gadgets or 10,000 new web sites. The rest of the world is churning with concern and questions. I think the technology venues should be churning too, don't you?

Thick dust is choking the air and settling over every living thing in China. Linfen, China is probably the most-polluted city in Earth. Farmer's wheat crops are diminishing due to dark, sooty, and hollow kernels. Crops like cotton too fragile to survive.

Photo courtesy DigitalJournal