“The earth mourns and fades, the world languishes and fades; both heaven and earth languish. The earth is polluted because of its inhabitants, who have transgressed laws, violated statues, broken the ancient covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants pay for their guilt; Therefore they who dwell on earth turn pale, and a few men are left.”

Also, Luke 21:25-26: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

And, Revelation 16:20: “Every island fled, and mountains disappeared.”

And Revelation 16:8: “The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun. It was given the power to burn people with fire. People were burned by the scorching heat and blasphemed the name of God who had power over these plagues, but they did not repent or give him glory.”

I think it is certain there will come a time in the not so distant future where we will no longer be questioning whether global warming is a real phenomenon. To repeat the age old admonition: repent, the end is near…very near.

You all strike me as the average intellectually privledged american who care some what about our environment and strongly about the economy that resides on it.

I am fifteen years old and the way I see it is you are not looking at the big picture. What is going to happen to your children and your children’s children? Thirty years from now at Glacier national park it is estimated that there will be no more glaciers. There are only thirty remaining glaciers from the original 150 million some that existed when Taft first opened the reserve. Ask yourself the big questions:

Is having greater technology for the next 100 sum years and gaining access to cure diseases and discover new things really worth the loss of our planet all together? What is cures and new advances if you have no time to enjoy and live with them?

We can only do the best we can while we are on earth and if we “f the future” we are only “f’n ourselves and the human race in general.

JFk once said, “ASk not what your country can do for you, but rather, what you can do for your country.”
—The time is now. You only have time for as long as you can utilize it.

-Steph

Its a good job only rich people like the Kennedys and the Rockerfellers live on the coast isn’t it?

Native Americans didn’t seem to care to much about the endangered Wooly Mammoth as they hunted them into extinction, probably because they were to busy dying of hypothermia every winter.

Subsistence farmers in the congo don’t care too much about the endangered tree-frogs because they are too occupied trying to grow weak, organic potatoes in poor soil with no irrigation, forcing them to tear down more forests for more farmland in order to get a higher yield to feed their villages.

At this point, fossil fuels are too essential to the process of advancing human civilization out of poverty. When a better technology comes out, great!, but we can’t cash out now and leave the poor behind.

So PPPPPPPPPPBBBBBBBBTTTTTT!!!!!!! =P

All those things you mentioned, the trees, lack of soot bellowing smoke stacks, endangered species flying? off the list. Not a single one of those things are a result of initiatives from globalization or corporations. They are from the hard work and efforts of conservationists and tree hugging, mother goddess loving people you despise.

How long is it going to take for industrialization to save third world countries?

I don’t know. How long did it take the communist party to end poverty in Russia or China?

I mean, sure, those countries are almost up to speed with the US and Europe, so it should really be any day now, right??

Of course not. Thats why we should continue the path of globalisation and synchronising market rule-sets there. Look at the progress being made in India & China right now, merely 10-15 years after they opened up their markets and embraced global trade.

those hurricanes and tsunamis and things, while they are actually occurring right now, are only killing millions of people,

Yes. Extreme weather kills millions anyway, even without global warming. Lets try to alleviate poverty so that even if there is some increase in extreme weather, they can adapt and protect themselves, as we can do here (as long as we don’t build anymore coastal cities 30 ft below sealevel!). The benefit to humans outweighs the cost.

The point is cultivating alternative energy sources, reducing our dependency on oil, and trying to destroy less of our planet

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I agree. That is all included in the industrialisztion process. Economies need to grow for people to have enough capital for investments in new technology. With private land-ownership comes political power of the middle class, where they can demand accountability for polluters (no one bothers to wash a rented car). With industrial farming and synthetic building materials, less land is needed for cultivation or logging, so more wildlife and habitat is preserved.

More forest exists today in the United States than anytime in the past 120+ years. Species are flying off the endangered list. The phenomenon of “global dimming” appears to be over now that we have moved on from soot-bellowing smoke stacks at our factories. Its the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!

How long is it going to take for industrialization to save third world countries? I mean, sure, those countries are almost up to speed with the US and Europe, so it should really be any day now, right?

And, in any event, those hurricanes and tsunamis and things, while they are actually occurring right now, are only killing millions of people, so I’m sure that your math is sound.

Even if everything you say is true, I don’t really give a crap about industrialization. The point is cultivating alternative energy sources, reducing our dependency on oil, and trying to destroy less of our planet. We can do all these things AND help third world countries industrialize, no?

As for Mother-Earth Goddesses, you couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t believe in that kind of crap. Hell, I used to be a littering republican, and even my conversion to super liberal has not stopped me from being too lazy to recycle. Even though people irritate the hell out of me - I love people!!! Also, as an Agnostic, I don’t ever subscribe to the idea of any types of gods or goddesses.

Industrialization is a complex process that only seems to work efficiently using free market principles of wealth creation and property rights for the individual; however government infrastructure such as: roads & bridges, electric cable grids, sewerage & water treatment, police & fire protection, national defense ect… are also required as a framework for such growth, and to prevent people from getting ripped off in a transaction.

Now, many will have you believe that global warming is just a sham. But the study I’m mentioning was conducted over 20+ years. It started back in the early 80s.

My question is, why not take this seriously? Isn’t the chance that we’re wrong create costs that are too great to ignore? We saw what happened with Katrina. If the sea level rises 3+ feet (and 3 is supposedly on the very low end…27 on the highest), entire American cities will be swallowed up, not mention some 3rd world countries.

I mean, I read Jimmy’s stuff and all I’m getting from that is, “The free market will save everybody.” But did you ever stop to think that stemming this trend of global warming may actually be THE thing to pull people out of poverty? My guess would be you never have. Because frankly, Jimmy seems to care more about his pre-concieved notion of the integrity of the free-market system and capitalism than the human beings who inhabit it.

f’ em’!

I would argue Meredith, that you care more about your pre-concieved notion of the integrity of the Mother-Earth Godess more than the human beings who inhabit it.

Idustrialization of the third world will eventually end overall poverty there, the way it has done in the USA and Europe. Even if global warming is caused by industrialization, more lives will be saved and their quality of life better than the poor who suffer today due to mud-slides and tsunamis and hurricaines and such. See my bit about the Malasian rice farmer above.

Anyway, who cares about human beings! f’ em’!

You’re right!!!! Really, why should we care what happens in the next 150 years because we’ll all be dead then anyway. And as for future generations . . . f’ em’!

Of course, the entirely natural “Roman warming” as it’s called was not a particularly happy time for low-lying coastal areas in what is now the U.S.

Even if the predictions about the increase in average global temperature are acurate, it will take something like 150 years before we come close to the average temperature that existed during the middle ages. I seem to recall reading somewhere that there was no snow on the Alps during the late roman empire.

The climate changes naturally anyway, and man seems to survive it. Our concern should be not of protecting the Pagan Gaia mother-goddess, rather we should focus on improving the quality of life for human beings, which are infinitely more vauable.

Would we rather live in a world where 3 million people die each year due to extreme weather but have no global warming, or would we rather have 3 thousand people die of extreme weather and have global warming?

If consumerism, industrialisation and technology are the solution to poverty (especially in the 3rd world, see India & China), then it is our moral obligation to continue to pursue these means, even if the consequence is an extra day of summer and one less day of winter each year.

Nothing would help a hut-dwelling Malasian rice farmer survive a typhoon more than a house with a solid foundation away from the flood plains and next to a paved road.

If the sea level rises 20 inches because of the melting glaciers, woe to the Kennedys and the Rockerfellers who might have to move their beach front property inland over the next 400 years.

The scientific question is, how much of this is due to human activity, and how much of it is due to nature’s cycles and erratic courses. We don’t know a whole lot about those, sadly.

The practical question is — well, there is no question. We’ve spread our species over the globe as it exists now, and any radical change in the climate or sea level, in any direction, for any reason, will be catastrophic to human beings. Like it or not, cause it or not, we’re committed to the environmental status quo.