The Problem Is Simple: Too Many People, Too Much Stuff | Environment | AlterNet

"Our species' negative impact on our own life-support systems can be approximated by the equation I=PAT. In that equation, the size of the population (P) is multiplied by the average affluence or consumption per individual (A), and that in turn is multiplied by some measure of the technology (T) that services and drives the consumption. Thus commuting in automobiles powered by subsidized fossil fuels on proliferating freeways creates a much greater T factor than commuting on bikes using simple paths or working at home on a computer network. The product of P, A, and T is Impact (I), a rough estimate of how much humanity is degrading the ecosystem services it depends upon."

There is no technological change we can make that will permit growth in either human numbers or material affluence to continue to expand. In the face of this, the neglect of the intertwined issues of population and consumption is stunning.

Read the article The Problem Is Simple: Too Many People, Too Much Stuff | Environment | AlterNet:

Devil in the Details: Three Profoundly Disturbing Carbon Scenarios

• The general outlook of the scenarios has been termed “profoundly disturbing” by one participant, climate researcher and author Mark Lynas.

• All three of the report’s scenarios define “success” as a greater than 90% chance of less than 2ºC (3.6ºF) warming above pre-industrial levels, which is the most commonly accepted scientific threshold for successful mitigation of adverse effects of climate change,

• In the words of the authors, “the horse has bolted, but there is still scope to contain the greatest extent of damage [from climate change] through innovative and efficient policy.”

excerpts from Green Car Congress: Devil in the Details: Three Profoundly Disturbing Carbon Scenarios

What is wrong with overconsumption?

Think Progress � Kmart promotes abstinence pants.

It looks like a good way to promote the purchase of another unneeded piece of clothing so that misguided parents can feel good about themselves when their teenagers beg for one more new pair of sweatpants.

This is just another example of how ludicrous the overconsumption economic model the contemporary world is hooked on really is. The use of young women's bodies to sell products is ever present, this example just happens to be a case where the pornographers are caught with their pants up. At least when mommy and daddy are looking.

If we are lucky, maybe it will inform some young people of the hypocrisy although any product with a product name or a slogan falls in the same category in my opinion, the difference only lies in what offends the beholder.

On the other hand, maybe the "outraged" should have been looking on the other side of the street to see this announcement Carbon neutral underpants | Cleantech.com if they really understood how stupid this whole thing is and wanted to make constructive comments on the whole fashion industry.

One more disturbing piece of evidence from AlterNet, Too Much Stuff! America's New Love Affair With Self-Storage: Overconsumption is overconsumption pure and simple and it is part of an economic model that spells doom for the planet. I don't know whether to laugh or cry wolf.

Well maybe it would be better to go here and watch the video from "Worker of world, RELAX" explaining the danger of a work ethic that fill garages with junk and why efficiency never works.

Siemens to open Colo. wind turbine R&D center | Planetary Gear: a CNET blog on mechanical engineering technology - CNET News.com

The energy sector of the German company made the announcement on Tuesday in Houston, Texas, at Windpower 2008, the American Wind Energy Association's annual conference.

Siemens to open Colo. wind turbine R&D center | Planetary Gear: a CNET blog on mechanical engineering technology - CNET News.com

As part of the plan, Siemens Energy will collaborate with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) to install a Siemens 2.3-megawatt (MW) wind turbine at the National Wind Technology Center located just outside of Boulder.

With the announcement timed for just before the last of the presidential primaries, this marks a significant development for wind energy in the US. Germany is the global leader in wind energy development, in my opinion, the location at NREL signals a new era of international cooperation in alternative technologies and a pull back in mindless dedication to industrial era energy production technologies that has been the norm for the current administration.

Under the "you never know" or is is "wishful thinking" department, because of the misguided policies that have lead to a deterioration of USD value against the Euro it will be more profitable to build the wind turbines in the US to meet the demand in Europe. The added market thus enhancing the pace of change in the US.

Provocations as Pretexts for Imperial War: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11

AxisofLogic/ Featured: Provocations as Pretexts for Imperial War: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11

"Behind every imperial war there is a Great Lie’

One of the most important political implications of our discussion of the US government’s resort to provocations and deception to launch imperial wars is that the vast majority of the American people are opposed to overseas wars. Government lies at the service of military interventions are necessary to undermine the American public’s preference for a foreign policy based on respect for self-determination of nations."

CLIMATE CHANGE: A Game With Too Many Free Riders

By Stephen Leahy*

BROOKLIN, Canada, Apr 4 (IPS) - The evidence is piling up that climate change threatens to bring a chaotic future unlike anything ever known. Taking collective action in time to avert the worst means rewarding climate-safe behaviour, punishing climate transgressors and publicly praising those who are trying to protect the environment, a new study suggests.

The nations of the world will come together to set a target and timeframe for reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Scientists have repeatedly stated the 2020 target must be 25 to 40 percent emission reductions from the 1990 emission baseline. Can the global community reach this collective target through individual efforts when everyone suffers individually if the target is missed?

The short answer: No.

CLIMATE CHANGE: A Game With Too Many Free Riders

This is the last in a four part series:

Part One - CLIMATE CHANGE: The Future Is Now
Part Two - CLIMATE CHANGE: The Fault Lies Not in Our Cars but in Ourselves
Part Three - CLIMATE CHANGE: A Vision Worth Fighting For

climate catastrophe has already begun to reshape human civilisation.

Annual emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) are three times higher today than in the 1990s. Even if the impossible could be done -- cease all CO2 emissions today -- the average global temperature will continue to increase from the present 0.8 degrees C above normal to 1.6 - 1.8C, data shows. And that new global average temperature would remain higher than normal for the next 500 years because of the time it will take for the warming oceans to cool.

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Future Is Now

The God of Consumption = Irrevesible Climate Change

The question is often asked these days if humanity will be able to get its act together to formulate an effective response to climate change.

The transition must be one not only from a fossil-fuel based economy but also from an overconsumption-driven economy.

The end-goal must be adoption of a low-consumption, low-growth, high-equity development model that results in an improvement in people's welfare, a better quality of life for all, and greater democratic control of production.

more from Radical Left :: Capitalist Fundamentalism; The God of Consumption

Peter Schwartz - The Threat of "Abrupt Climate Change"

Rotten to the Core

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets - Times Online: "The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said."

High school cancels talk on climate, dividing town - International Herald Tribune

Paranoia? You do the math! Maybe he should talk about GMOs ;-> Read the International Herald article

Action of Climate Change is cheap Insurance

Bloomberg.com: News:

"Policy makers, Weitzman argued, should view spending now to slow climate change ``as an issue about how much insurance to buy to offset the small chance of a ruinous catastrophe that is difficult to compensate by ordinary saving.''

How high a probability, after all, must one have that global warming might lead to major environmental, refugee, and water and food-supply crises to see some value in taking preventative measures now?

From this perspective, even congressional skeptics who don't believe that global warming is caused by humans might be persuaded to support a carbon cap-and-trade system just on the chance that the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are right and the skeptics are wrong. They could see it as simply taking out a little Earth insurance."

A New Economic Engine: Energy in the 21st Century

Excellent overview that outlines the approach that American needs to address future energy needs and be part of the global warming solution not the problem. Pricing CO2 emissions to account for the risk of not changing is absolutely vital to the success.

Cap and Trade is really a band aid way to do it according to leading economists. Replacing income taxes with carbon emissions tax ultimately will have to be done one way or another as income taxes provide the wrong kind of incentives and modifying the code to provide incentives only tends to reward the status quo high carbon emission economy instead of building a new low carbon economy.

Read more about progressive growth at the

Center for American Progress

Saving the Planet, Saving the Economy | OurFuture.org

Discussion is going to heat up this year over what is ailing the economy and how we should change the past seven years of failed conservative policies. That economic discussion should not happen separately from discussion of global warming. Because how we tackle global warming directly affects, and potentially fortifies, our national and global economy. Read more

NDTV.com: Worldwide call to stop climate change

NDTV.com: Worldwide call to stop climate change: "Environmental campaigners called for demonstrations worldwide on Saturday from costume parades in Manila to bicycle protests in London to draw attention to climate change and push leaders to take robust action.

"Hundreds of people rallied in the Philippines' capital wearing miniature windmills atop hats, or framing their faces in cardboard cutouts of the sun. ''We are trying to send a message that we are going to have to use renewable energy sometime, because the environment, we need to really preserve it,'' high school student Samantha Gonzales said in Manila. ''We have to act now.''

"In all, marches were planned in more than 50 cities across the world Saturday, to coincide with the two-week UN Climate Change Conference, which runs through Friday in Bali, Indonesia."

Climate Scientist James Hansen won't be quiet

Independent Weekly: News: Feature: James Hansen won't be quiet:

"Under the Reagan administration in 1981, the U.S. Department of Energy pulled the plug on his funding after he and several colleagues wrote a paper for the journal Science predicting the world would get warmer throughout the 1980s and sea ice would be melting by the 21st century."

Not only ahead of his time but correct. Now that is a tough one to explain.

The world and climate change: all together now | openDemocracy

The world and climate change: all together now | openDemocracy:

"A planetary crisis calls for clear thinking and shared action towards a global deal, says Tom Burke. "

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- China said Friday it will not consider mandatory cuts on greenhouse gases, saying the United States and other industrialized c

Wired News - AP News

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- Wired News- AP

China said Friday it will not consider mandatory cuts on greenhouse gases, saying the United States and other industrialized countries should take the lead in fighting climate change by embracing a less-extravagant lifestyle.

This a start of discussion that must lead to a zero CO2 emission human culture. It is not us/them anymore but "how do we get it done?" Lifestyle changes we have not dreamed of but need to make none-the-less!

Climate campaigner's road from 'raving idiot' to Australian of the year - Yahoo! News UK

Climate campaigner's road from 'raving idiot' to Australian of the year - Yahoo! News UK:

"By Neil Sands AFP - Monday, December 3 03:40 am SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian scientist Tim Flannery grew used to receiving quizzical looks in the 1990s as he pounded the corridors of power in Canberra urging politicians to do something about climate change. 'You'd go and see a federal minister and they'd stare at you like you were a raving idiot,' Flannery says of his early lobbying efforts. 'You could see them thinking 'what's this guy spouting on about?'. 'That only changed recently.'"

Climate change: "Carbon footprint" enters everyday vocabulary - Yahoo! News

Climate change: "Carbon footprint" enters everyday vocabulary - Yahoo! News: "Individuals keen on reducing their 'carbon footprint' -- the dangerous greenhouse gas that each of us emit through our purchases and activities -- can now turn to a multiplying panoply of tools to calculate their pollution, reduce it or compensate for it. 'Our daily habits are responsible for 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions,' says France's Agency for the Environment and Control of Energy (ADEME)."