A very belated thanks for your comment. You’re right, for sure, that we need knowledge and not artificial conflicts of interest on these issues. The answer is not always black and white. Getting the emphases right, though, in the realm of public policy, is surely not easy. I think Glen would agree on your basic point as some of his recent writing shows his ambivalence on such issues as nuclear energy and “clean coal.”

http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/2007/10/deep-ambivalence-re-nuclear-energy-and.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7133619.stm

Some of our leaders appear to be running away from real global challenges looming before humanity, as if they had seen a calamity in the making. Other leaders are promising pie-in-the-sky solutions for threats to human wellbeing and environmental health. Still others have apparently adopted the posture of an ostrich by placing their heads in the sand. Last but not least, we have a group of commanders of others who pose as hysterically deaf or blind and have become electively mute.

These various means of denying what could be called “more of the stark reality of the world we inhabit” are of not helpful to anyone, I suppose, except themselves and their minions. They keep their wealth, power and privileges by maintaining the status quo, regardless of the potential for catastrophic circumstances, ones already dimly visible on the far horizon. Many too many soon to be erstwhile leaders of the human community have allowed unbridled self-interests to literally separate themselves from a meaningful regard for humanity, for life as we know it, for a future of children and coming generations, and for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth and its ecosphere.

Thankfully, the human community is bountifully blessed with still other leaders, brave and courageous leaders, like UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, Al Gore, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Professor Al Bartlett, IPCC Vice Chair Mohan Munasinghe, Dr. Ernst von Weizsaecker, John Guillebaud, US Senator Bernie Sanders, Paul Chefurka, David Wasdell, Jean Krasno, Joseph Baker, Magne Karlsen, “Trinifar”, Dame Jane Goodall, Jeffrey McNeely, Seti Sastrapradja, Vivian Ponniah, Peter Salonius, Hazel Henderson, Peter Nobel, Mickey Glantz, Scott Walker, Margaret Swedish, Emily Spence, Susan B. Adamo, John C. Feeney, Lester Brown, Gretchen Daily, Bill Rees, Richard Duncan, Pentti Malaska, Deborah Byrd, Jean Gilbertson, Alex de Sherbinin, Anne Ehrlich, Ashok Khosla, Paul Hawken, Werner Fornos, Jane Roberts, Jean Francois Rischard, Jan Janssens, Raoul Weiler, Mathis Wackernagel, David Blockstein, Andy Revkin, Dave Roberts, Joe Romm and no less than 2000 IPCC scientists. Who knows, perhaps these and emerging leaders among our youth are ready to “square up” to the global challenges soon be confronted by humankind in these early years of Century XXI.

The human factor, both in size (almost all people ever lived on this planet did so the last 200 hundred years) and in behavior, is the responsible and the key.

I am a strong believer in making educated decisions and therefore support science and understanding the Earth System. No matter what we do, it should be based on sound knowledge about the Earth System.

Even the US – who perhaps rightfully can be blamed not to take global warming seriously – have taken measures to improve our understanding of the Earth.

In 2003 the US took the lead in organizing a global effort to improve Earth Observation – now called GEO (Group on Earth Observation). Today there are more than 70 countries and close to 50 Participation Organizations including several UN bodies, teaming up to implement a global earth observing system of systems.

http://www.earthobservations.org

I am also put off by the discussions on topics like global warming where you are either a believer or you’re not. Way too often does people create fake conflict of interest say between changing human behavior and developing new technology.

In my opinion we need both – and we need a sound basis of facts to support our decisions.

It sounded like a bad idea as soon as I heard it, but couldn’t put my finger on what I disliked about it — but there you are saying it: Gaia is a finely balanced system — an organism actually. There is only so much tinkering that this ‘macro-organism’ will take from mechanistic-minded humans!

I think civil resistance is needed to stop these corporates from running amok in an already devasted biosphere. People in large numbers need to resort to peaceful civil-resistance movements to stay the hands of rogue companies!

Please do contact me. Let us join hands, reinforce each other, think globally and act locally on our own governments and our own people.

As an alternative, let me suggest other proposals. These are adequately represented by Al Gore, who appears to be an exemplar of the kind of great political leader the human community requires in Century XXI.

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and the 2000 scientists of the IPCC are also heroic because they are following in the footsteps of Galileo.

Now, if only other political leaders like Al will speak out loudly and clearly in support of the splendid work of Rajendra and the IPCC scientists.

All we need are several thousand brave political leaders and valiant scientists among us to join humanity’s newest Nobel Peace Prize Laureates.

Then the world will surely change.

Then the environment will not be irreversibly degraded; limited resources not recklessly dissipated; and the integrity of Earth will be preserved for generations to come.

Then a good enough future for the children can be assured.

Sincerely,

Steve
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

- George Monbiot

http://tinyurl.com/2jttce

1. Six billion six hundred million+/- people inhabit the planet now and this gross number is expected to increase by three-quarters of a million people per annum in coming years.

2. Of that number, a great majority of people worldwide live in nations in which population numbers are exceeding the replacement level.

3. Despite differing demographic trends among the nations of the world, it appears that the anticipated growth of human population numbers in undeveloped nations far and away surpasses the expected decline of human numbers in developed nations.

4. Because one-half of the global human population is under the age of 30 today, and a vast majority of these young people live in the undeveloped world, global population numbers can be expected to grow robustly despite an anticipated decline in fertility rates in the developed world.

Somewhere, somehow, at some time, hopefully sooner rather than later, we are going to begin to talk openly about how to effectively and humanely slow the rate of human population growth.

In coming weeks, I hope to contribute ideas for discussion; however these ideas will focus on plans for new and necessary action.

If we just keep doing what we are doing now, we will likely keep going as we are going now.

On the other hand, if we are going to provide a good enough future for our children, at some point we are going to have do something else……something that is DIFFERENT from what we are doing now.

http://blaskarm.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/a-conjunction-of-factors/

Magne, that’s a blog from a Norwegian graduate student. Very good topics and essays so far.

Now, for perhaps the most ignorant and just plain stupid editorial I’ve seen in a long time:

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=278290879759157

(Thanks to Dave Gardner for that link.)

If the author’s name and email had been included, I’d have sent a couple of links to straighten him out. Maybe including this one:

http://www.mnforsustain.org/catton_malthus_more_relevant.htm

Steve, our leaders seem simply not to “get” it. I know some observers believe they do get it and have concluded it’s too late to prevent collapse, and so merely act to guard some wealth for themselves and their heirs. But I lean slightly toward the former possibility. As I’m sure you know, Catton’s book, _Overshoot_ is a fantastic read, including his assessment of how Jimmy Carter came close to “getting” it, but fell just a bit short. I wonder what he thinks today. I’m no expert on political history, but from a few things I’ve read, I sense he may have been the last honest president with some ability to face our ecological situation as it is.

“It was all very simple. If I had first summoned the man and interrogated him, the result would have been confusion. He would have lied, and if I had been successful in refuting his lies, he would have replaced them with new lies, and so forth. But now I have him, and I won’t release him again. Now, does that clarify everything?”

- Franz Kafka: In The Penal Colony

Where have all our leaders gone?

What can they be thinking and doing?

I suppose our leaders are so focused upon growing the global economy that they have forgotten how there cannot much longer be such a thing as successful economic globalization, once our planetary home has been ravaged and desecrated.

Unbridled economic growth, unrestrained per capita consumption and skyrocketing population numbers of the human species in our planetary home can be plainly seen as activities that are dissipating natural resources, degrading the environment and destroying the foundation upon which all life depends upon for its very existence.

Perhaps the heirs of Ozymandias are only ones among us who are capable of perpetrating such colossal destruction.

Sincerely,

Steve

“Now, the NY Times article, entitled UN warns of rapid decay of environment, is an appropriately scary and concise summary. But hardly anyone is going to read it. Why isn’t news of this report blazing from headlines all across the country, since this is arguably the greatest and most challenging crisis of our age? Every other issue that matters to us in the future fits within the question of whether or not this world will remain habitable — and that question is screaming at us from the oceans, the lakes and rivers, the soils, the very air we breathe.”

- Margaret Swedish