Must admit I have been a skeptic regarding the need or likely effectiveness of the Live Earth concerts. Awareness of global warming is not lacking, rigorous policy actions now in response are. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the Live Earth's 7-point pledge (sign):

* To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy Earth;

* To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

* To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

* To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

* To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

* To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

* To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

Wow! Ecologically rigorous and perfectly doable. I would have liked to see: "Have fewer babies and consume less"; but hey, they are not my concerts! We need to keep the heat on Al Gore to use his podium for sufficient climate solutions -- and to work more closely with the rest of the movement (no need to reinvent everything).

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A new study by United Nations University suggests climate change is making desertification [more] "the greatest environmental challenge of our times". They report that some 50 million people may be displaced within the next 10 years as a result of desertification [search], and that ultimately some one-third of the Planet's population is threatened by expanding deserts. The process of desertification is the ultimate end result of most poor environmental stewardship, a synthesis of climate change and land clearing, that quite literally makes the Earth a burning hell. They are not making much new land, so just exactly where will the natural resources, food and water come from to care for an increasingly urban world. Hello?! Is anyone home? Is there anybody in there? How many more reports on looming environmental catastrophe can be ignored without major loss of life and a severe decline in the complexity and habitability of the Earth? Are we so into our ipods and Paris Hilton that we can not see the Earth is dying? Climate change, water scarcity, over-fished oceans and desertification; to say nothing of AIDs, terrorism, militarism and poverty; threaten our very being. Yours. Your childrens. It is essential that policy and strategy to fight global threats are integrative, and willing to propose and implement actions that are up to the task of reversing monumental adverse trends. Fifty million people, driven from their land, because we refuse to stop wantonly procreating and consuming. I am stunned, shocked, dismayed (and yes deeply hurt) to read dispassionate accounts of the ecological foundation of being dismantled tree by tree, SUV by SUV. We shall learn to live differently with the Earth or we shall not live at all. Please forgive the emotions as I mourn the looming end of being, Eden turned to dust, by igorance and vanity.

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Climate change impacts both ecologically and socially appear to be going from 0 to 60 mph in 2 seconds. Dramatic news regarding ice melt in Greenland [more | search] as this huge ball of ice is starting to become lubricated from intra-ice melt water flows. There exist very large differences in estimates for how fast Greenland will melt and thus how quickly sea level will rise. Recent IPCC figure is 79 cm by end of century, but other recent studies have suggested that if the whole Greenland icecap was to melt that it would be more like a 7 meter (23 feet) surge! All my ecological observation and intuition indicates in my own life that the climate is changing perilously fast and chaotically, and reading of melting polar ice just strengthens conclusions based upon what I see around me. This week also saw talk of the "military aspects" of climate change [more], as the UK army was called to be ready to deal with challenges posed by failed states. While there have been frequent discussions of national security impacts, and we know the U.S. military has reported upon their concerns, this was the first news item that really addresses climate change as a military matter. So UK troops are going to take resources at the end of a gun? Hmm... not so new afterall. Are we really approaching a point where climate change induced scarcity will heighten military tensions and lead to various types of armed conflict? As a last note, Tony Blair moved on this week -- he has tried to get out from under Bush's dead-no willingness to negotiate on climate, to no avail; yet hope he stays involved in the issue. But on the up side, his friend Arnie of CA came to say good-bye!

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Per-capita an individual American still far out-emits all

According to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, China's emissions of carbon dioxide have exceeded those of the United States. The report released this week said that China's emissions for the year surpassed those of the U.S. by 8% [more]. Congratulations China on becoming the world's greatest national greenhouse gas emitter! In total as a nation, you are now doing the most to kill the Earth through short-sited economic gain at the expense of the biosphere, something to be proud of indeed! Important honorable mentions however must go to all the world's citizens, particularly in the over-developed world, that buy all the consumer "crap", much of which we do not really need, being made in China causing the pollution in the first place. We are witnessing the logical consequences of moving the world's industrial base where labor is cheapest and environmental regulation lax. And it does not take a math genius to figure out that per person, with a much smaller population of people at ~ 300 million versus China's one billion plus, that Americans as individuals are still the champions in the category of carbon released per individual person. "700 million Chinese people live on less than $3 a day and on average their greenhouse gas impact last year was only a quarter that of an American, or half that of someone in Britain."

Neither the United States nor China must follow limits on greenhouse gas emissions set in the the 1997 Kyoto Protocol - the Americans out of obstruction, the Chinese out of feigned developing status. Both along with India, Brazil, Mexico and other emergent nations that though not rich, are causing a large enough proportion of the global problem, simply must take part in mandatory carbon cut targets. It is if global nececessity to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. A successor agreement to Kyoto -- perhaps called Kyoto 2 -- must swiftly be negotiated. Any agreement must include a much larger grouping of the world's leading emitting countries as a nation, while still holding for much greater cuts by rich nation's as a matter of equity and justice.

Emissions must contract, even as there is a convergence in over-developed and not yet over-developed countries per capita emissions -- an approach commonly called contract and converge [search]. Global emissions can not be distributed without regard to past, present and future equity issues between the rich nations with long history of massive emissions, and nations at various rates of material production that are now becoming major emitters. There must be a grand deal between North/South on issues of climate, debt, technological transfer and a host of other issues. Negotiations for Kyoto 2 must commence now.

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In yet another indication of the abrupt and serious warming occurring in the Arctic, researchers have found that Arctic spring has moved a month earlier in only a decade [more]. "Rising temperatures are causing snow to melt sooner than before, extending the summer period and dramatically disrupting the fragile ecosystem... They recorded a clear shift in the time of year plants came into flower, birds laid their first eggs and insects and other creatures emerged to forage for food." Such patterns in the timing of annual biological and ecological events are called phenology [search], and these dramatic changes in phenology in an extremely short period of time reinforces the fact that something dramatic, awry and scary is happening with the Arctic's climate [search]. Changing phenology consistent with global heating is evident to a lesser extent around the world, as spring has generally advanced by 5.1 days a decade for animals and plants around the world, and 2.5 days a decade for European plants. In a geological or evolutionary time frame, these are amazinging dramatic and fast rates of change. And herewithin lies the greatest potential harm from human-induced climate change -- that ecosystems will simply be unable to respond fast or well enough to essentially completely different climate regimes. Clearly the Arctic region's dramatic changing seasonality and loss of sea ice is the canary in the heatwave as far as indicating humanity and the Earth have a serious global warming problem that must be addressed strongly now.

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While trumpeting yet more rhetoric on climate change absent action goals and timetables as a victory, the G8 leaders have failed to reach agreement on immediate emission targets to keep global mean temperature rise below 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. The G8 meeting [news search] failed to gain concensus on a mandatory 50 percent reduction in global emissions. The US and Russia remained isolated in their refusal to accept binding emission cuts; as Europe and Japan embraced goals of cutting greenhouse gases by 50% by 2050. The Bush administration has evaded mandatory emission cuts saying they will "seriously consider" setting reduction targets with the rest of the world at a later date. About the only immediate good news of any substance to come out of the G8 climate change meetings is a pledge for talks on a Kyoto successor. There appears at least rhetorically to be a renewed political mandate to start negotiating a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol during climate meetings in Bali in December. This is something that Ecological Internet's network campaigned for in recent weeks, as 2709 people sent 637,868 protest emails to UNFCCC government focal points. I would very much love to be proven wrong, but Bush's recent pronouncements do not make him a friend of global climate. When climate science indicates 80-90% cuts in carbon dioxide and other GHG are required by 2050 to avert abrupt climate disaster, it is terrible that Bush's reengagement in international climate policy making seems limited to floating proposals to delay and further obstruct active measures with goals and timetables. World leaders are failing their citizens, countries and Earth by constantly dragging their feet on getting going with mandatory emission reduction targets.

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A user pointed out this popular media account of a recent Science journal article that finds "the world is now on track to experience more catastrophic damages from climate change than in the worst-case scenario forecast by international experts". The research found that between 2000 and 2004 global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels increased by three times greater than in the 1990s. The person that forwarded this to me pointed out that "we are beyond A1F1 which with carbon feedbacks [search] means we on track for over +8 degrees C in warming... Over 5.5 degrees C, at this rate of global change, would by best guess be limit of survival for humanity... Coupled with the recent news on the Antarctic Ocean means that IPCC 4 is hopelessly out dated now." The accumulation of recent science beyond the pondering, politicalized IPCC process would seem to indicate that we have entered a period of abrupt, perhaps run-away climate change that will have severe consequences for the Earth's future habitability. Most scientists are too cautious to make such predictions -- indeed the traditional scientific method seems ill-prepared to counter a once off planetary emergency that threatens the survival of existence. It is well past time for drastic measures if we are to have any chance of fighting global heating and winning. I am dismayed by the helter-skelter of schemes and projects that seek to profit from the situation without offering a vision of what must be done to survive. UPDATE: Here is more information [more2] on the finding that CO2 has been found to be rising three times faster than expected -- this is an indicator that climate change is on track to be abrupt [search] and perhaps runaway [search].

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