Mr. Vamos,

I share in your opinion on many of the issues that you touched on.

But we part paths concerning your trust in people to bring about change for the better in our world.

Its people who elect the worthless politicians in the first place. Its the politicians who make the rules. They make the rules in their favor of course. All the problems you mentioned are there. Some are more visable and obivious than others. Like world hunger, and people starving to death before our very eyes on TV.

Petty little wars everywar you look. God knows how many terrorists groups that exist, and each one with a bone to pick. All of them demanding attention.

The world is not getting better in my book. Its gotten worse. Compare now to 1970. Its like night and day. If thats any indication of how fast the deterioration and destruction will continue, its not good at all.

All our elected politicains and their supporters can do is agree to disagree while the earth burns.
Its sickening. And to know that we could have all done better by our fellow humans and our planet.

My granddaughter who is now 17 will still ask me, "Why don't they do something? All they do is blame each other for all the problems" She is talking about our so called leaders from both parties. She can't unbderstand why she has seen starving people in africa, and people dying from aids in Africa now since she started to watch the news as a child. My faith, what I have left lies with her and her generation. Maybe they will do as she and her friends talk about. Throw all the politicians out and start over anew. Begining with the political parties. But then the game would just start over with all different players. But the same rules.

Dealing with global warming requires a unique human quality: the expression of concern and compassion for another human being even if such expression diminishes one's own personal gain. In other words, a compassionate person willingly makes personal sacrifices (by, for example, driving a gas-sipping economy car to minimize carbon emissions) in order to help the generations that are yet to be born. The full impact of global warming will be felt by future generations, not the current generation.

Therein lies the reason that the Chinese reject steps to protect the environment. The typical Chinese cares only for himself. Anyone else be damned.

You can see this selfish attitude in how the Chinese treat helpless North-Korean refugees. They hurt no one and are simply trying to escape poverty and growth-stunting hunger by transiting through China to reach sanctuary in the USA, Japan, or another democracy.

What do the Chinese do? They snatch the refugees and send them back to certain torture and death in North Korea. Few societies are as callous and morally bankrupt as Chinese society.

http://theclearsky.blogspot.com/#116274437809631696

Terrorism & AIDS, though having undeniably horrific affects, have to-date impacted only minority of people when you look at cold, hard data. Also, terrorism in particular, has surely myriad of possible solutions and hence different reactions from different peoples.
However, Global Warming is omnipresent and I think indiviudals understand it at a base level. I agree with the author that individuals have to finally take matters in their hands but rather than trying to just cut their own carbon footprint by themselves I believe it will be far more effective to use the ballot box and telling politicians that votes will be affected by this issue. For, it is impossible for an individual to control how a power plant is run, or for that matter ask politicians to encourage local production rather than global supply chain for almost everything(did you know that your average meal travels 1000 miles to get to you?).

Governments have to get serious and rich countries should take leadership since they are in a relative position of comfort today and developing nations should take leadership by investing and adopting in alternate technologies before they go too far down the traditional technology route.

Global warming is more about about centralization of world power, income redisribution and faith that just a few at the top of a world government can be all knowing. The USSR central economic planning paradigm is a good illustration of how elite planners get it wrong when compared to the decentralized decision making of consumers and private producers. We also see how wrong ecologists can be when they concentrate on partial equilibrium decisions where, say,protecting wolves sacrifices other species.

When enviromentalists don't even effectively push for a carbon tax and outright reject nuclear power it is hard to take their nostroms seriously.

By the way, what percentage of the signers of the UN climate report were actual Ph.D. climatologists? What percentage had Ph.D.s of any stripe? How many signers were independent voices rather than politicians? It would be nice to see those percentages.