But don't give up hope. The Kyoto protocol still passed. People are still aware of enviromental problems (despite crappy propaganda like Crichton's State of Fear'.), and there is potential in the religious right: Didn't Genesis say we were put here to tend and care for the Earth?
~Maru
Gary Denton wrote:
A recent speech at the Commonwealth Club asks disturbing questions.and finds disturbing answers.
Excerpt - With fond memories, a heavy heart and a desire for progress, I say to you tonight that... Environmentalism is dead.
Every significant indicator of global environmental health is heading in the wrong direction. Storms and draughts are increasing in frequency and severity.
Anti-environmental conservatives control all three branches of the federal government. And the governorships. And the statehouses. And the school boards.
Conservatives are destroying the very institutions â from the tax system to the United Nations to public schools â that hold the solution to our ecological crisis.
It is at moments like these that we need to take a hard look in the mirror.
pdf - Adam Warbach http://www.makower.com/downloads/werbach.pdf
This might be read in conjunction with Jared Diamond's Collapse - a history of other societies collapse, usually self-inflicted, under environmental changes. Collapse also includes positive examples of societies that changed policies - Japanese Tokugawa shoguns, Tikopia another Pacific Island like Easter, and avoided disaster.
I heard a conservative economist-historian(?) the other week who did even know the Easter Island story. He was trying to give a historical perspective on healthy development and didn't know the best example of unsustained development. (Drat. Discovered a flaw in Thunderbird, I can't search my browser history - believe it was someone on CSPAN..)
Gary Denton
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