it is a crucial time for mother earth.please put the environment first and greed and consumerism second.

Dear World Leader,
You must take climate change and the limits of economic growth for our finite planet to sustain. Ecosystems are collapsing as a result of our exploitation of natural resources. This is all part of the equation of the economic collapse.

How many times in the history of the planet has the global ecosystem collapsed? We know of at least a half-dozen, and there were likely many more. These periods of massive extinctions were caused by some great and sudden shock to the ecosystem-- a comet, massive volcanism, etc.

Now curently, a massive ecological disaster is underway, but this time, it is humans that are the blame. So long as business as usual continues (i.e., consumerism, greed, unbridled growth, etc.) are the modus operadi, than indeed, another period of great extinctions is inevitable.

Who has the power to change this? Global Leaders? Yes, to some extent, but actually, it comes back to each individual and the way they live. The message needs to get out to each and every person, and EACH ONE OF US needs to begin by changing our life style DRAMATICALLY. It is not a real choice between driving your old gas guzzler, in exchange for a new shiny Prius...for the production of that Prius and the infrastructure to support you with parts and maintenance does great damage to the planet. The choice would be to not own a car at all. To work close to where you live, take mass transit, etc. The choice would be to not buy plastic crap made in China that you really don't need anyway; the choice would be to eat only locally produced organic food; the choice would be live simply and most of all-- stop being a consumer!

We can beg and ask the powerful leaders to change policiies...but really, any lasting revolution must start, not at the top, but at the bottom-- the very bottom, inside each and every one of our hearts-- in the very way we think about our lives and our place in the cosmos.

Please, please, please Save the Earth first. It's a beautiful place and besides, what use is money when theres no Earth!?

Have you Children?

Dear Friends,

Somehow, it appears that we have to focus more attention upon the emerging and converging scientific evidence of ominously looming global threats to the family of humanity that are posed by the overpopulation, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species rampantly overspreading Earth in our time.

The ecological challenges presented to the human community in these early years of Century XXI are vital matters for discussion; however, our failure to acknowledge in open discussion “the human population factor” as a primary, driving force, one that is precipitating the ecological challenges visible on the far horizon, is making our best, necessary efforts insufficient.

Always,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001

Hi. Great post. We should demand that our personal investments be to good use! I work with ShoreBank, a bank that, since 1973, has been lending specifically to sustainability-oriented, environmentally-focused projects. For basic banking consumers, you may find their High-Yield Savings Account of interest. It offers a 3.5%APY, FDIC-insurance, online/phone tools, etc, like other banks -- but with a dedication to being right by communities and the planet.. You can read about the account, as well as some great stories about the work they're involved in at: http://shorebankdirect.sbk.com/.

Even worse than the financial meltdown is the “fool’s errand” in Iraq………

“The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people, and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. It is in the nature of things that the progress of reason is slow and no one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies. One can encourage freedom, never create it by an invading force.”
~ Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

A wonderful post R. Gates.

The roles of hierarchical government, and grassroots action are potentially equal in possible progress towards a prosperous and sustainable World for all.

However, it ultimately comes down to the individual. For every individual being a reflection of the World and future they wish to see. For every individual striving to be as aware of the local and World situation around them that exist. For every individual to strive to be as sustainable and peaceful as possible. For every individual to connect and find relation with as many people around them. For every individual to connect with the people and planet around them to form community, regional and larger systems to produce our goods and transport ourselves and allow for the lives we wish to see, to be reality.

Empower yourselves!!!!!!!!!!!

Patrick,

I agree 110% with you Patrick...Each one us must make a change first in our Hearts...Now! and we Must demand nothing less of our leaders, or they need to be removed...there is no other option for a sustainable future...

Leviathan-like, ever-expanding economy crashes into the biophysical limitations imposed by a finite planet with the size and make-up of Earth?

It appears the predominant culture in the world today and its unbridled global economy are precipitating pernicious impacts on biodiversity, the environment and Earth's body. If the leaders of this culture choose to keep relentlessly growing the gigantic world economy as they are doing now, and the family of humanity keeps getting what it is getting now, then life as we know it and the integrity of Earth could eventually become jeopardized.

The current organization of the predominant culture and its worldwide big-business expansion, one that results from the rampant economic globalization we see today, also appears to give rise to something else that is potentially ruinous.

If you will, please consider how conspicuous consumption of resources and hoarding of wealth by millions of people leave billions of people in the family of humanity hungry and in extreme poverty.

For a tiny minority of people with a lion's share of the world's riches to ravenously consume limited resources while millions of less fortunate people go without adequate food to eat, is an economic system in need of modification with all deliberate speed. Perhaps a time will come when such grotesque inequity will not be tolerated.

If the predominant culture modifies the soon to become unsustainable way the global economy grows as well as the careless way that economy distributes resources, then perhaps we will choose more reasonable and sensible ways to distribute wealth and super-abundant food harvests.

I am assuming that we can agree that the endlessly expanding scale of the world's manmade economy in a finite planetary home with the make-up and size of Earth will eventually reach a point in space-time when this artificially designed, colossal economic leviathan becomes patently unsustainable.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001

Our peace of mind increases in spite of suffering; we become braver and more enterprising; we understand more clearly the difference between what is everlasting and what is not; we learn how to distinguish between what is our duty and what is not. Our pride melts away and we become humble. Our worldly attachments diminish and, likewise, the evil within us diminishes from day to day.

-Mahatma Gandhi

I like that quote by Gandhi. That man is amazing in so many ways.

Through these times of hardship are ways of working together and for each other will increase, making life easier. Through these times of violence we will become more peaceful. Through these times of overconsumption, we will become simple. Through these times of trust breakdown, we will meet and greet neighbors and friends we have not met before, with love and care. Through these times of disconnection, we will connect with one another to form great bonds and bridges that will aid all of our efforts to resolve issues and create the future and World we wish to see.

However tough a situation is, be the other side of the pie that is a resolve for that troubled issue, and a creator for the situation you wish to see.

Peace, keep working together all.

Patrick

How could one generation go so wrong? Evidently, the leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, increasing per capita consumption, and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors. We religiously promote our widely shared and consensually-validated fantasies of 'real' endless economic growth and soon to become unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources and frangible ecosystems upon which the survival of life as we know it and the success of any manmade economy depend. My not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves.

Never in the course of human events have so few members of a single generation stolen, consumed and hoarded so much wealth at the expense of so many other people. We have mortgaged the future of our own children. We are the "what's in it for me generation". We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the vital understanding that humans are no more or less than magnificent living beings with "feet of clay".

Perhaps my not-so-great does live in unsustainable ways in our planetary home; but we are proud of it nonetheless. Certainly, we will "have our cake and eat it, too." We own fleets of cars, fly around in thousands of private jets, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. We will live long, large and free. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. Remember, silence is golden. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold the much of the world's wealth and the extraordinary power great wealth purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our 'inalienable rights' to outrageously consume Earth's limited resources; to recklessly expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; and to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire. We never lie but also never tell the truth as we see it. The "thing" that matters most of all to us is "the only game in town". We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. We enjoy freedom and living without limits; of course, we adamantly eschew any talk of the personal responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms and any discussion of the existence of biophysical limitations a finite planet naturally imposes.

We deny the existence of human limits and Earth's limitations. Please understand that we do not want anyone presenting us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making....a manmade world filling up with gigantic enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, and boundless amounts of filthy lucre. Most of our top rank experts appear not to have found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the rapacious dissipation of Earth's limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet's environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world's colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global political economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic 'wall' called "unsustainability" at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth's ecology is collapsed. Who knows, perhaps we can realistically and hopefully hold onto the expectation that behavioral changes in the direction of sustainable production, per human consumption, and propagation are in the offing.....changes that save the global economy, life as we know it and Earth's body.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001

The global economy is saved, now how about turning attention and financial resources to saving the Earth from a meltdown?

It looks as if the Wonder Boys on Wall Street, who caused the current disaster in the world's financial system, are going to rescue the family of humanity from a meltdown of the global economy.

Is it too much to ask some of these multi-billionaires to provide wealth to save the world from the global "meltdown" of Earth's ice pack that is occurring in Greenland, Antarctica, the high mountain ranges from the Arctic Cordillera, to the Andes to the Himalayas?

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

Wherever there's challenge there's also opportunity. My response to climate change ... www.ziptogreen.com ... didn't pick up speed until the energy crisis took hold with consumers. Pain can be a big motivator for beginning the healing process.

The universal lesson that seems to need constant relearning as civilizations get more advanced is this: As goes the ecosystems so goes the the civilization. If you ignore your connection to the world, you will die-- pure and simple.

The short-sighted economic policies, based on profit and greed have the ultimate arbitrator to answer to-- and that's nature itself.

Grotesque greed and widespread corruption dominate the family of humanity's global political economy.

Perhaps powerful people with great wealth and huge human institutions they manipulate are driving the relentless, soon to become patently unsustainable expansion of the global political economy, that in our time appears to be requiring unbridled increases of economic production/distribution capabilities, conspicuously unrestrained per-capita overconsumption of limited resources and the unregulated growth of absolute global human population numbers.

But why?

As we having been observing in recent years, another huge "bubble" has been consciously "manufactured" by economic powerbrokers and allowed to grow ominously and uneconomically within the world economy. Not unexpectedly, this sub prime bubble has done what bubbles eventually do. The subprime bubble burst. We can readily observe how the credit markets of the world banking system are frozen, stocks are tumbling and the value of the dollar is gyrating. Who knows, a meltdown of the human community's financial system as well as damage to the real economy could be in the offing.

How could this be happening?

For a moment, let us consider that the organizers, managers and whiz kids overseeing the global economy (and the unraveling of the worldwide sub prime swindle) are running the artificially designed financial system of the global economy as a pyramid scheme. This is to say that the international financial system is being operated so that most of the wealth rises pyramidally into the hands of a small minority of people at the top of the world economy where this wealth is accumulated and consolidated endlessly. At the same time, the vast majority of people on Earth, near the bottom of the global economic pyramid, are left with very little wealth. In the 1980s, this method of arranging global business activities was called a “trickle down” economy. We have been told over and over again how this economic scheme "raises all ships." And yet, from my limited scope of observation, the billion people living on resources valued at less than one dollar per day and the additional 2.7 billion people being sustained on two dollars per day of resources now appear to be stuck in squalid conditions. The 'ships' carrying these billions of less fortunate people among us do not appear to be lifting them out of poverty.

Could anything be done to beneficially change these unfair, inequitable and, in billions of instances, intolerable circumstances?

Of course, there is plenty to do. The global economy is undeniably a manmade construction. Because the world’s economy is an artificially designed product of human thought and action, our economic system is known to one and all to be imperfect. Afterall, human beings can better themselves and their imperfect products can be improved. Only works of God are perfect, I suppose. With this in mind, if it is so that the manmade economy is not a perfect construction, it is just as obvious that the global economy can be re-designed, modified and otherwise changed, as necessary. The system of economic globalization can be reorganized, "downsized" and "powered down" so that the global economy sustainably meets the primary needs of majority of people. In this way, the economy of the human community could be sensibly conceived, systematically operated and realistically structured for the conduct of sustainable business activities as well as for a more complete realization of the principles of democracy.

Here's an excellent article on the destruction of the earth's ecosystems from a very scientific perspective:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026786.000-special-report-how-our-economy-is-killing-the-earth.html

I was wondering if it was now time to move away from the media catch-phrase (and now in our psyche)of "Climate Change" and perhaps begin to refer instead to these changes in; temperature, rainfall patterns, biodiversity, ocean acidification and so on, to something a bit more meaningful and more personal. It seems to me that global warming (in people's minds - which includes our so-called leaders) is something that may, or could happen gradually, somewhere and at some stage in the distant future, and that it may even be altered or modified by simply 'turning a dial' (surely at that time someone's bound to invent something to help us do that). Unfortunately, I think that the term "Climate Change", or even "Global Warming" may be a concept which is too amorphous, too simplistic and too 'out there' for many people for it to be overly meaningful in the lives of individuals currently living on this small planet.
I wonder if a better term to use might be "Environment Change"?
It might bring all these global environmental problems and issues into sharper and more immediate focus. Individuals might then come to the understanding and realisation that what is happening to the environment now, is really happening to the space that they are occupying, living in and breathing in.
The changing rainfall pattern is going to affect their food and water supplies.
The increased temperature is going to affect the spread of disease - yes, even to them!
Ocean acidification is going to affect seafood supplies - yes, perhaps no more shrimps!
And increased CO2 levels may make breathing more difficult in some lower-lying areas on this planet.
Their environment is changing and "they" - yes, those same individuals that thought that global warming and climate change was "out there", or "over there" somewhere, are really the only ones that can do something about their space, that is, their changing environment - which is happening now and here!

Dr. Barry,

I am writing to you to express a serious concern.

You have created a website that invites the public to forward an email
prepared by you to a list of addressees. I respect your reasons for doing
this. However, it comes with a side effect.

Many of your addressees are people living and working in developing
countries. Many of these people work in ministries that have only limited
Internet access. In Kenya for example, the Ministry of Environment has but
a 512k connection for the entire ministry. You will also see that many
others do not even have this level of service and use their personal
hotmail, yahoo, and gmail accounts to send and receive information. They
do this at their own expense and often with low bandwidth connections that
are disproportionately high in cost.

In flooding these email accounts with your web generated information, you
are effectively cutting these people off from the rest of the world or
causing them to have to pay higher costs. I cannot believe that this is
your intent, and I would ask you to take this factor into account in
shaping your campaign. In doing so, you will ensure that people in
developing countries have access to information. And you will help ensure
that those most severely at risk from climate change are not further
impacted.

Thank you

Kevin Grose

Coordinator, Information Services
Climate Change Secretariat
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
T. +49 228 815 1528
kgrose@unfccc.int
unfccc.int

Dear Mr. Grose,

Global citizens are practicing their human right to contact officials responsible for failed international climate negotiations with their concerns. The volume of emails sent -- a couple thousand over a few weeks -- is not that large. As with all protests, there is a minor inconvenience, but it is difficult to envision this as being a major disruption. And by taking measures like only downloading message headers, the impact could be virtually nil.

There are moments in human history where human advancement, indeed, in this case survival, requires citizens to make demands of their leaders. We hope that this protest will raise government's ecological awareness -- namely that without ecosystems there can be no ecology -- and letting them know there will be consequences for failure. Do we wish it had not come to this and leaders would have lead? Of course. But in sum the amount of inconvenience caused the ministries is minuscule compared to the suffering to come from abrupt and run-away climate change if our message is not heard and acted upon.

We will be happy to stop protesting when world government's craft an ecologically sufficient climate change deal.

Regards,
Dr. Glen Barry

The greedy people in dark, pin striped suits who have pillaged the capitalist system and ruined humanity's political economy by turning it into a gambling casino and stealing its wealth for themselves and their minions are the same people who are now warning honorable people not to dismantle the global economy. What is wrong with this picture?

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176