All Ecological Disasters Are Local

The 9/11 event was local yet it sparked what is mythically called a "global war" on "terrorism".

The truth is that the "global war" was local to the U.S. bushie ideology; the only global part being that nations around the globe were threatened and invaded by bushie ideology.

This winter's snowpocalypse in D.C. was seen as a local event.

The record flooding in France, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas recently were seen as local events, because all weather is local?

The Exxon Valdez spill was seen as a local event, way off in Alaska somewhere.

The current "Gulf of Mexico event" is seen as local to the states where oil is washing up, local fishing has been destroyed, and livelihoods of all kinds upended.

The tendency is to see disasters as local events, instead of seeing them for what they really are, global disasters, in the sense that climate is global and the "local" disasters affect the global cycles which impact all of us every day.

Two examples which make it easy to see the true global nature of the "local" events is to consider the methane leaks at Deepwater Horizon and at the East Siberian Arctic Shelf:

The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

"The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans ..."

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

(The Bubbling Up To Rude Awakening). We have found out that some 40% of the leakage into the gulf is methane.

If release of "even a fraction of the methane" in one location could trigger abrupt climate warming, then we have a global problem, and the only thing local about it is the solution.

All politics is local so it is time to harass local legislators and government officials until they get it ... all local areas are on the globe too.

UPDATE: NOAA says this is the warmest year on record so far, so we certainly do not need the extra methane.