In just a few words, the current plight of mankind:

“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”
— Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe

Despite some scientists saying humanity will take true notice of climate change once sea water flows through their apartment windows, but from my vantage point, then it most-likely be way-way-too late.
(Illustration found here).

As 2010 draws quickly to an end, the most-enormous horror facing the world in maybe all of history has nearly-about been flushed down the drain, especially in the US where midterm elections put coal-burning nit-wits in positions to slow-down or end for the foreseeable future any kind climate-change endeavors.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress had a most-excellent post up on Monday detailing the current situation on the ins-and-mostly-outs of climate change on society, especially on a year’s anniversary of the dumb-ass, infamous “Climategate” fiasco.
The literal bottom line:

I didn’t have space here to report on the many studies that bolstered the case for our understanding that recent warming has been unequivocal and that humans are the primary cause.
But indeed the case is so strong that this year, even the normally staid U.S. National Academy of Sciences labeled as “settled facts” that “the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.”

Global Footprint Network (GFN)  calculated that on August 21, 2010, the world reached Earth Overshoot Day — that is, “the day of the year in which human demand on the biosphere exceeds what it can regenerate.”

In a loose-ends-tying essay, Gilles d’Aymery brings together all the components of what the earth is facing in a piece aptly entitled, The Economy Is Not Coming Back — from energy, fossil fuels, oil and gas, to climate change.
Once again, a literal bottom line (h/t: The OilDrum):

From peak oil to peak fish, from CO2 emissions to the extinction of species, from global warming to climate change, all indicators point in the same direction.
The pursuit of limitless growth as currently designed is nothing less than a suicidal pact that Mother Nature will in the not so distant future trigger.

Read the entire commentary, most-enlightening, though fairly grim.