The State of the World? It Is on the Brink of Disaster

Kyoto looked unfair because China and India still retained their developing nation status and assumably allowed them a blank check to pollute freely. The fact still remains that the US would still be the prime contributor of greenhouse gases.

Beyond the cries of unfairness, gas emissions and usage from vehicles in the US rose because of the popularity of SUVs and the loophole that classified them as light vehicles. Bush passed through tax breaks for those who bought those vehicles and gas guzzlers like Hummers, so I don't know what's up with that. There has been no serious proposal to close that loophole in any of Bush's supposed Geo-Green policy proposals. If Congress imposed stricter enforcement on CAFE deadlines, we'd save at least one ANWR a year.

The intent of the report was to inventory the world's natural resources the best science could. The report lists climate change as one tipping point because it could drastically change the estimated 'resource reserves.'

Most of the damage the West has done on their lands can't be changed, so we're relying on developing countries to preserve whatever's left. I believe the next UN summit on the Environment held in Cape Town will focus primarily on the influence of poverty in ecological decision making.

There's some ghastly stuff the world market is doing right now concerning agriculture and aquaculture. Hopefully, the results of this report will be a start towards global cooperation of regulating overfishing. I'd rather have an NGO like this than none at all. With agriculture, GM foods is the tip of the iceberg. Years of natural manipulation has created a handful of genetic strains of each crop to plant. Humanity relies on about 20 species of plants for their food yet scientists have categoried at least a 100. The reason why genetic diversity is crucial is because we can't anticipate future diseases or disasters that can wipe out entire strains of crops. If malaria became highly deadly and infectious, only people with sickle cell or other mutation would remain. On a personal role, I don't know what to do about this. Most of these pressures is from a world population that can double in our lifetimes and also from a growing segment of the earth that wants a lifestyle similar to our own.

I took a geology class that claimed we're due for another ice age. However, should our icecaps melt, there would be a positive feedback and warm the planet even more. There would be less snow to reflect sunlight back into space.

I think environmental scientists have failed in the respect of getting more accessible information out to the public. Most Americans identify themselves as environmentalists, and polls indicated a majority didn't want to drill into ANWR because it was a national treasure.

It took hard scientific fact to prompt industrialized nations to ban the use of certain CFCs. Before, they were considered cheap wonder-chemicals that modernized the world. It also helped that DuPont already had a safe CFC alternative at hand, which removed industry opposition since DuPont manufactured most of the CFCs. Before learning about them, I didn't know that CFCs take several decades before reaching the ozone layer, so even though it was banned last decade, the ozone is going to get much worse before it gets better. The hole degrading right now comes from products of the 60s. Who knows what's in store when the 70s hits.

I didn't post this article to spread doom. The political consciousness for our environment died in the 80s, and it was a grave mistake to categorize it as party specific. Individually we might not be able to do much, but there aren't any broad bipartisan political movements for the environment outside of the geo-greens wanting to mitigate terrorism. Most of these issues can be corroborated with world poverty and over consumption. The study emphasized local systems failing before a global collapse, so richer nations might not see its effects as much as the poorer developing countries. That might be enough for people to dismiss the signs. Hopefully it won't take another ozone hole for people to realize that results won't always be reversable and immediate.