The Earth's life-support system is in peril

[Mr. McD]

http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=125605

[opihimoimoi]

1. Should be required reading and comprehension by the ruling class

and its minions, the Pubs.

However, they will reject this as another fraud by the Left and should not be taken seriously.

We have such a small window of time and resources but we are led by a nutcase fucking around with egos and money. Pity

[peachy]

2. Alarmist?

DU underground says I'm too new to open a new thread. :( I hope you don't mind my hijacking yours... I'm working on the text of a speech or a letter to the editor or opinion piece something like that - your feedback is appreciated. Here's the piece:

Is it time to be alarmist yet? Peak production of oil, that sticky
black substance responsible for our economy, our lifestyle, our food
production system, is upon us. Conservative reports put the peak
production date after 2010 but oil production has been in decline for the past four years and many of the expected consequences of hitting
the peak are already occuring. The nature of peak oil is such
that we cannot prove it has happened until several years after the
fact - by which time any hope of taking some action that will avoid the
inevitable global chaos to follow is gone. Global warming threatens to
inundate coastal cities, melt all of the permanent ice in the
northern hemisphere, increase the occurrences of severe weather of all
types from hurricanes and tornadoes to droughts and heat waves.
Meanwhile the earths human population continues to grow at an
exponential rate as we improve the technology that will allow us, that
is those of us with the privilege of access, to live longer, to
overcome the disease and defects that act as a natural counter-effect
to population growth. Technology meanwhile is giving us new ways to
manipulate nature to produce the things we think we want. Things like
food crops with build in pesticides that we already know will only be
effective against the pests for a few years before the targeted pest
mutates into something that can handle the new challenge. Nature has
had a lot more practice at doing this kind of thing than we have and we
can only begin to guess at the kinds of side effects we might
introduce.

Is it okay to be alarmist now? Dr. Stuart Newman is seeking a US
patent on the technique to combine human genes with those of other
animals. Not because he wants to do it but because he wants to stall
the industry which is already well on the way to doing it. One
company wants to grow human ready organs like hearts and lungs in
pigs, you might see that as very noble and useful but when you
consider that if we go in that direction we won't stop there.

Is it okay to raise the alarm? The US administration is currently
marking its territory by pissing on trees in every corner of the
world. Creating resentment and distrust wherever they go. Crushing
whatever hope we might have to work together and face the future -
dealing with the real challenges before us. Opposition political
candidates are, for the most part, unwilling to raise these issues
because they don't want to disturb the illusion that most people live
under. The illusion that everything is going to be all right, that at
just the right moment some new technology will be developed which will
save us from ourselves.

Is there any point in raising alarm? The consequences of these crises
will be many and varied. Many of them will serve as negative
feedbacks - war and starvation will mitigate the population problem, a
lower population will extend the oil supply and possible reduce the
pollutants we dump into the atmosphere thus slowing the global warming
trend. Or maybe atmospheric dust from nuclear war will reverse the
global warming trend for a few years. In any of these cases the food
supply is likely to be disrupted for millions, perhaps billions of
people. We may burn off whats left of our forests and exacerbate the
global warming problems burring dirty fuels to cook and stay warm.

Studies of animal populations from bacteria in a petri dish to deer
introduced to a lichen covered island indicate that populations tend
to overshoot the capacity of their environment, then rather than
falling back to a sustainable level they crash. Are humans, is
humanity, really above all that? Extinction is a very real
possibility.