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The present topic is climate change caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, CFCs, HFCs and others, as well as outright environmental destruction as a result of human "development".
Why is this page important? Because you have reached the environment office of the Easter Planet, named after what humans did to Easter Island. Why wait until this information appears in other places, read it first here, presented by Robert McCroskey. Tired of censorship of environment news in USA and Canada? This is a non-censored Canadian environmental web page.
There are many serious problems which very likely are not solvable - given that all people have each gone their own way, to arrive at the same demise. The time of climate "crisis" was the period up to the 1980's, the time of climate "calamity" was the 1990's; now we have reached a time of climate catastrophe. In November 2007, reviewing climate data of the IPCC before political censorship, Dr. Tim Flannery found that we had passed the danger threshold of 455 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, already in 2005! But collectively, to date, we have done nothing about the problem of human-caused environmental degradation, during the years when adjustments were possible.
In 1985 I proposed a 40-year phase out of the automobile as the principal means of transportation, by licensing 5% fewer cars each year. As you know, we have made absolutely no progress on this issue, instead of getting people used to a gradual reduction in the number of cars on the road, we have every year put MORE vehicles on the roadways. This is disgusting and portrays the "collective insanity" of humans as suggested by Mr. Robert Watson, Greenpeace founder.
In 1974, I proposed two simple rules for the general population to follow to live in harmony with this planet-
Because of the urgency of the situation now, I have to add two items which are actually implied in the two above:
1) No cutting of trees and 2) no new roads (anywhere, for any reason). Such constraints imply the end of urbanisation, which is not a viable land use for this plant, as demonstrated in Dr. Bill McGuire's book Raging Planet. Urbanisation is a failed experiment!
Now we are faced with a genuine catastrophe in climate change, since no progress has been made in either reducing car numbers or airplane flights. We still need to have cars completely phased out by 2025, so it is going to be hard on people and that hardship is increased manifold times every year that no start is made on the project. Meanwhile we go about gleefully building more car-dependent urban sprawl!
You may ask - "What can I do to stop climate change and global warming?"
"But even though these chemicals deplete less ozone, they are extremely potent greenhouse gases - 1,000 to 10,000 times worse than carbon dioxide, contributing to global climate change. As it stands, the global warming impact of world HCFC's and HFC's emmisions will rival the total greenhouse gas emmisions of the entire European Union within ten years.
An EIA report estimates that by 2015 the HCFC's and HFC's will add the equivalent of 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere - two to three times more than all the reductions of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change."
The above points sound very similar to the outlook for life after Peak Oil, since the outcome is the same - use less oil and coal, which reduces CO2 output. The silly contest by the Virgin Airlines owner, given apparent credibility by the presence of Al Gore, will amount to nothing, it is a safe bet that there will be no payout, since there is no solution except to stop producing CO2! All of oil and a large part of coal are NOT fossil fuels; oil comes from polymerized methane generated deep within the planet, which is fortunately trapped in the earth's crust. Otherwise, most of the planet would be a sticky mess of tar sands. People falsely call oil and coal "fossil fuels", which implies that their carbon atoms were once part of the atmosphere, but they are mainly not fossils and that carbon was never in the atmosphere.
"Growth" in the economy is purported to be the driving engine in our society. However, what people actually need is peace, shelter, food and culture. Culture in real societies often centers around the production, preparation and enjoyment of food. In such cases, a society works to produce their own food, wine, etc., instead of purchasing it from a commoditized economy. In the business-greed system which feeds on an ever expanding growth of the economy, the economy ITSELF creates the demand for more population. Thus we have ever expanding urban sprawl, with most of this increasing population simply serving lunch to each other and other such needless work. Just where exactly is the original production, which takes raw materials and energy from sunlight (as in growing a crop) and initiates the economic cycle? Besides, with most manufacturing moving to China and other low-wage centres, all we will have left here in North America is people selling pizzas, flowers and insurance to each other - oh, and servicing cars of course. People "get a job", take home a paycheque and become happy (human fertility ritual) and then reproduce, even though there is no rationalisation of the actual need for the job that they are doing. The "system" deems that their job is of value to the "economy" so they are rewarded with a paycheque. We need another system that directs monetary value to people who are working to live within the constraints of a functioning ecosystem. We absolutely don't have that at present. The society's capital (total value) is finite and we are continually rewarding the wrong people who are directing the flow of capital into projects which do not help us into a future on this planet - the projects are all directed toward rewarding business greed.
What will the end of the world be like? I can tell you this - we have seen the end of the world already. Let's use this analogy, since you love driving so much - Suppose you are driving at night, and take a wrong turn, and get onto a wrong road that you don't know, you should recognize that it is wrong before you go too far. If you continue, you may pass a sign "End of Pavement" and if you continue you are on gravel road. Then farther on you may pass another sign "End of Road" and if you keep going, you are driving across a corn field if you are lucky, or into a ditch, or whatever. But you have been advised, that you have taken a wrong turn, and that you have passed the end of the known road, and could be going off into destruction. All humans have taken a wrong turn and have watched as the known world has ended, the world that we were told was "normal" (finish school, get a job, have a family, etc.) and you drove right past all the signs. Now it really is too late to begin to revise the workings of the human world, we have painted ourselves into a corner. People talk about "decarbonizing" the economy - carbon IS the economy!! There isn't time for the technofixes that could have been developed, that time is past; these all take years to implement. That CO2 level in the atmosphere creeps up higher every day, unrelentingly. It is in the air that you are breathing right now, not far off in some other place. What you put into the atmosphere in yesterday's shopping trip or stupid commute, will be in the atmosphere FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS! I hope that trip was worth it! You know how you can stand at the seashore, or on flat prairie, and see the horizon? Looking up, most of the atmosphere is gone within that same distance. The blue part is in the upper half of that distance, not very far away. It can't keep absorbing our pollution, neither is it an infinite supply of oxygen!
If the global village concept is going to work, if we are "all in this together", then all of the old religions are now dead. These old religions got us through the Dark Ages and into these "modern" times. Was this a good thing? Obviously not. Religion is "that which binds" or restrains us, from doing harmful things. We need, immediately, a new system of behavioural restraints, that punishes the ruiners of the earth and rewards those who take care of the environment. This new system has to apply to all people in all countries; to every part of the global village. Without this change, we are all lost. Imagine a visitor to the International Space Station, bringing a cordless drill onboard, then deciding it is his right to begin drilling holes in things. The other astronauts would have to bring compelling force to bear immediately on this situation, and get the drilling stopped, and that person punished. In the same way, it is everyone's responsibility to get those ruining the earth to stop, and punish them, thereby enforcing new acceptable rules to live in harmony with this planet. Unfortunately, many of the world's religions, especially those with the greatest number of young people, are also those in which meaningful change is truly impossible. On one hand, you have people who think there should be no restrictions to their obtaining whatever that they can imagine - however, self restriction, or self-regulation, is the true nature of religion and/or the rule of law. On the other hand, you have religious fundamentalist types, who are so bound to an obsolete set of behavioural codes, that it will be impossible to shift them into learning how to exist in harmony with this planet. It is up to every person to implement the limitations that are required to live on this planet, limitations of numbers and behaviour. Yes, you can dream the of a life in a penthouse condo, and a fancy car and all that goes with that style, but if you act on those desires, YOU are taking the drill to this spaceship Earth and causing its ruin.
When (not if) the sea level rises, it will not rise evenly, it will rise most nearest the equator. This bulge of water will try to follow the tidal pull of the moon. This extra band of mass will slow the earth's rotation so that might again have a 25 hour day. However, high rises of sea level presuppose that the earth's reaction to warming is a linear progression, when in fact, there are tipping points in climate processes that can be catastrophic over relatively short periods of time, followed by a duration in that new state of at least a thousand years!
We are actually living in an Ice Age right now, an interglacial period (Holocene) in the present ongoing ice age. Apparently we didn't like the nice climate of this interglacial period, which has been going on for about 11,000 years, and are trying to speed things up to reach the end of this period sooner than it would have ended on its own, by heating up the earth. This is such a truly stupid thing to do, we have begun the tipping of an equilibrium, and this planet will soon wipe this human mess off of its surface. At present, we are using glacial tills and moraines from the last period of glaciation, as rich soils for farming. What will the moraines from the next period of glaciation be good for - just huge ridges of piled up human trash - concrete, steel, plastic and broken glass. Such a mess to leave for future life on this planet. It's time for humanity to clean up its yard and put away its toys!
We passed the point-of-no-return for the climate change some time early in 2006, and did nothing to stop air travel and other wasteful use of planetary resources. The early 1990's were a time of "crisis" (danger/opportunity according to Al Gore), the late 1990's a time of calamity, now we are in a state of catastrophe. Positive feedback systems are kicking in, accelerating global warming. The Greenland ice sheet will melt within the next five years. If life on this planet is lucky, the Easter Planet will reach a "tipping point" and move toward a new climatic equilibrium, with the beginning of a new period of glaciation. That could occur if the melting of Greenland drops too much fresh water into the sea which could stop the thermo-haline circulation of the Gulf Stream. The other possibility is continued heating with increasing water vapour, a hot and humid atmosphere which traps even more heat, ending with a desert planet like Mars with an atmosphere like Venus. This is the "tipping point", the pressure of our finger pushing on a climate "switch" - which way will it tip - towards Life (bringing back the ice floes) or towards Death for all living things - heat and drought?
Technofixes were a possibility back in the "crisis" days of the early 1990's; at this point in time, we are way beyond that option. Reducing greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels was an option during the calamity period, but no progress was made. Over the time period of the point of no return (2006), air travel could have been halted to keep winter 2007 CO2 levels below summer 2006 levels. But again, nothing was done. Now, you are provided with this direct order from Easter Planet Environment Office - stop all burning by July 1st, 2007. No more burning of coal, no more burning of oil (except with the following temporary allowances), no more burning of wood or corn kernels or any other material or gas, no more mining, no more cutting of trees, no more removing any life forms (plants or fish) from the oceans. And, especially, not one more square inch of natural soil may be degraded by any human activity - no road building, no land "clearing", no human development. The preservation of ocean and land life forms is actually far more important that what is going on with human destruction of the atmosphere - it is these living environments which give the planet its resiliency and we go about destroying that capacity day by day. There was no capacity in previously existing biosystems to act as "carbon sinks"; that fact is borne out by the direct corelation between global temperatures and historic CO2 level records - the forests were ALREADY being used to capacity as carbon storage BEFORE mankind began burning coal and oil AND destroying at the same time, the forests and the seas, the lungs of the planet.
Actually, mankind went bad a long time before the Industrial Age; it has been a long downhill slide ever since the evolution in humans of the "business gene". The business gene is a defective part of the Y-chromosome and many manifestations of it are visibly demonstrated by the "suits" who got us into this mess; at all costs, and with no exceptions, the "suits" must be prevented from any further meddling in environmental matters such as token technofixes; they should all be in jail.
As directed above, all burning must stop by July 1st 2007, but for this summer (2007), trains are allowed to run on Mondays, trucks on Wednesdays, automobiles on Thursdays and public transit on Fridays. Ships will proceed to their next port and tie up there, permanently. If people will do these things now, then we can see if the CO2 levels can stabilize, and maybe, just maybe, you will be allowed to heat your homes this winter. Otherwise forget that also, your world has come to a complete end. Complete biosystems are failing, the ocean has absorbed all the CO2 that it can, the ocean is becoming too acidic, a species goes extinct every 20 minutes - do you really think that humans are going to be the last species to go extinct?? Do you say "Oh well, another life form has been destroyed, but I will still get my paycheque from my office, there will be food at the store, and the lights will be on in my condo, right?" - WRONG!
Recent reports from the USA National Human Genome Research Institute indicate that every part of the genome is busy at work, there are not inactive parts as they previously thought. So, they don't really know how it works, but are foolish enough to try to meddle with it, doing "bioengineering". Well, what they will figure out next, is that there is a lot more genome interaction between species than previously thought. These interactions are what allows the biosphere to function in balance. So when humans interfere by causing species extinction, by unnatural manipulation of genetic codes, and by ruining the environment with our chemical waste, we are damaging far more than we can understand.
The human population could reach 10.5 billion by 2050. Four billion more than now, when in fact at present we need four billion LESS. The present population, if laid end-to-end and side-by-side, would form a band around the globe over 300 metres wide, very visible from space. And they all wish to become affluent so that they can defecate into fresh water. If we can't get the population below two billion, then the entire population needs to BEHAVE as if there are only two billion, in terms of reproduction, desires and behaviour.
Please boycott bad investors, unless you wish to spend eternal damnation along with the likes of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Canada's largest institutional investor and a major pension fund manager, and Ivanhoe Cambridge, Canada's largest shopping mall company, 94% owned by the Caisse, and Anear Empreendimentos Comerciais, the land developer who they are funding to build shopping malls in the Amazon! Your pension fund in Québec will be earning you income by tearing strips off the back of the environment. In fact, every dollar spent in Canada on so-called "Carbon Offset" projects in other countries is cancelled by each of these dollars invested in pushing human trash into the tropical rain forest.
As mentioned in several places in the above text, habitat destruction by human encroachment (so-called "development") and death of species, is the major problem facing life on this planet; greenhouse gases are just one aspect of the problem which has received a lot of attention. The destruction must be completely stopped and immediately reversed - the boundary of the human camp drawn and then the area greatly reduced in size. The Pope is correct in getting on board on environment issues; it is a moral issue, the Bible makes it clear what will happen to the ruiners of the earth. Further loss of life forms cannot be tolerated, see the recent article on the Greatest Dying.
There is no hope for life on Earth until all people come to reject the corporatist agenda, and accept a belief system which re-integrates humans into the natural world. With the present greed-based social construct, all life is doomed, and under that construct no group, region, country or international body will be able to recognize the necessary course of action, which has been laid out in detail, above. What is written above is not a matter of my opinion, but rather exactly what this planet needs for life to regain a foothold and repair the human damage. As such, these needs of the planet supersede all human law, whether local, regional, state, country or international law. Therefore the above directives will be deemed to qualify as jus cogens after December 31, 2007, unless formal objection or amendment from communities, regions, nations and the international community is received before that time. All such submissions are posted here:
(none received as of 23 November 2007)
The humans have blown it - The Bali Conference on the environment came and went without even considering the most important agenda for this planet: 1)Immediate cessation of air travel world wide; 2)World-wide criminalisation of road building and human encroachment on living soils and 3)Cessation of mining of coal, oil and methane. That would have been an important first step, and show people around the world that the environmental catastrophe is a serious matter. However, no action was taken, just business as usual.
Effective immediately, all existing world religions are meaningless, including secular rules which attempt to modify behaviour, which includes all local, national and international laws, which do not adjust themselves firstly to put the highest priority on the protection of the natural environment of the planet (as outlined on this page) and secondly to promote rules which enable a peaceful human civilisation (for example, the "Ten Commandments" is a document which provides the basis of a civil society, rather than as some think, to point out each person's failures).
There is not much more to say on this topic until stupid humans bring about the changes presented on this page. Otherwise they go the way of the dinosuars.
All peoples, nations, governments and the United Nations continue to be in criminal contempt of these basic rules for humans to coexist with other life on this planet. These rules constitute jus cogens, they are not a topic for discussion or a premise to be considered for consensus, they are the basics of what this planet needs from humans in order to continue supporting life as you knew it. Must I spell it out more precisely? What you have read here is the New Quran (New Koran), the new law that is above all human laws and religions and replaces them and delegates all of them which do not adapt to these new measures to the dustbin of history.
A great catastrophe awaits those who delay in making these changes. Obviously, human greed far surpasses respect for other forms of life. Day by day, stupid humans continue to destroy native vegetation and soils at an increasing rate and use the oceans and atmosphere as their trash cans. All other greedy people, such as the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan which sells potash to Brazil, are accessories to the fact, by trading with those doing the damage, you are all linked together in this monstrous crime.