A 160 square mile chunk of Antarctica’s Wilkens ice shelf is collapsing [ark | more\ark | more2\ark2 | search] in the continent’s fast warming southwest Antarctic Peninsula. “Block after block of ice is just tumbling and crumbling into the ocean.. The shelf is not just cracking off and a piece goes drifting away, but totally shattering.” Given the Connecticut sized collapsing shelf is permanent floating ice, in itself this will not lead to sea level rise [search]. But loss of ice shelves does make it easier for land ice to melt and otherwise move into the ocean.

Along with Arctic sea and glacial ice melt, this is dramatic visual evidence illustrating the advanced state of global heating. The time for the discussions of small thinking in response to climate change and global ecological crises is long since past. Simply, light bulbs and Priuses, biofuels and carbon trading, are not going to do it. Only a comprehensive program of social change — things like ending coal use and ancient forest logging, while reducing human population and consumption — pursued through intense advocacy, awareness building and profound personal and societal revolution, will save us now.