The Climate Crisis

Links to the Future

"The way we're going now, we're not being responsible," says scientist Wallace Broecker in one of Paul Solman's compelling reports on the Climate Crisis on the PBS Newshour. " We're saying, 'We want energy as cheap as we can get it, damn the future.'"

Bruce Sterling does one of his naughty and incisive interpolative commentaries on an article by New York Times writer and author of a book on the Climate Crisis, Elizabeth Kolbert. Where Kolbert does the usual Times perhaps this, maybe that, Sterling offers his more pungent--and pretty downbeat--views on the likelihood of our current civilization doing anything effective to prevent its destruction by global heating effects.

On the up side, Sustainablog collects more links on the growing Christian movement supporting environmental "creation care," and the moral imperative to do so. One interesting quote he quotes: "Religion is built on story telling. The stories reach people in ways that academics or activists or NGOs cannot," said Victoria Finlay, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, a London-based group founded by Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth.

According to Joel Makower's report from the Aspen Ideas Festival of heavyweights, famed biologist E.O. Wilson also spoke of the need for an alliance of science and religion, as well as the world's poor and their stewardship of the environment:

One of the central problems of the century -- lifting the world's poorest out of poverty -- represents, in many respects, a biodiversity challenge: How do we make it worthwhile for them to be stewards to the vast array of species to which they've become accidental heirs? asks Wilson. Perhaps ironically, the poorest of the poor and the world's richest biodiversity are concentrated in the same parts of the globe.

"The solution," says Wilson, "must flow from the recognition that one depends on the other. The poor have little chance to improve themselves in a devastated environment. Conversely, the natural environment cannot survive the pressure of a land-hungry people who have nowhere else to go." Wilson says his other big challenge is to bring together the scientific and religious communities to "set aside our differences in order to save the creation. The defense of living nature is a universal value. It doesn't promote any religious or ideological dogma, and it serves the interest of all humans."

Newsweek believes environmental awareness and action are becoming priorities with Americans, both in terms of policies (corporate as well as government below federal level) and individual choices in ordinary life. Why? But probably the most common formative experience is one that Wendy Abrams of Highland Park, Ill., underwent six years ago, as she was reading an article about global climate change over the next century; she looked up from her magazine and saw her four children, who will be alive for most of it.

The New York Times editorial board seems to feel that the Supreme Court has a fairly simple job of interpreting the Clean Air Act in the momentous global warming case they accepted for next term, and that the outcome will be to mandate federal regulation of CO2 emissions.

UPDATE: Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw hosts a new Discovery Channel documentary on the Climate Crisis that visits places where global heating and its effects are already evident, and interviews scientists on future possibilities. According to an AOL news story about the docu: More frightening are the scenarios that scientists can see for the future: increased sea levels swallowing cities like New York, more vicious hurricanes like Katrina, more land turning to desert. One expert even envisions half of the planet's species disappearing by the end of this century. .. The same scientists who warn of dire consequences also say that there are things that can be done to greatly slow the rate of global warming.

This documentary, made in partnership with the BBC, will first be shown on Discovery Channel this coming Sunday (July16) at 9 pm.