LITMIR.BIZ

      FOREWORD

      BY NOAM CHOMSKY

       This essay is based on interviews with Chomsky conducted by C.J. Polychroniou, Amy Goodman, and Harrison Samphir.

      History is all too rich in records of horrendous wars, indescribable torture, massacres, and every imaginable abuse of fundamental rights. But the threat of destruction of organized human life in any recognizable or tolerable form—that is entirely new. The environmental crisis under way is indeed unique in human history, and is a true existential crisis. Those alive today will decide the fate of humanity—and the fate of the other species that we are now destroying at a rate not seen for 65 million years, when a huge asteroid hit Earth, ending the age of the dinosaurs and opening the way for some small mammals to evolve to pose a similar threat to life as that earlier asteroid, though differing from it in that we can make a choice.

      Meanwhile, the world watches as we proceed toward a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. We are approaching perilously close to the global temperatures of 120,000 years ago, when sea levels were six to nine meters higher than today. Glaciers are sliding into the sea five times faster than in the 1990s, with over 100 meters of ice thickness lost in some areas due to ocean warming, and current losses doubling every decade. Complete loss of the ice sheets would raise sea levels by about five meters, drowning coastal cities, and with utterly devastating effects elsewhere—the low-lying plains of Bangladesh, for example. This is only one of the many concerns of those who are paying attention to what is happening before our eyes.

      Climate scientists are certainly paying close attention, and issuing dire warnings. “Things are getting worse,” says Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, which in December 2019 issued its annual global climate report. “It’s more urgent than ever to proceed with mitigation. The only solution is to get rid of fossil fuels in power production, industry and transportation,” he said.¹ Israeli climatologist Baruch Rinkevich captures the general mood succinctly:

      After us, the deluge, as the saying goes. People don’t fully understand what we’re talking about here. . . . They think about melting icebergs and polar bears who won’t have a home. They don’t understand that everything is expected

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