How can we possibly address and overcome the global challenges before us if so-called leaders and self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us refuse to acknowledge them? How are willful blindness, hysterical deafness and elective mutism by this “politically correct” and “socially agreeable” leadership, with regard to certain human-driven global threats to humanity, helpful?

Can you think of issues more essential to the future of our children than the ones we are discussing now? Among the ideas presented in this thread, are there more vital issues than the ones derived directly from the patently unsustainable global overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species that are rampantly overwhelming the finite resources and frangible ecology of Earth in our time?

With all data to prove AGW, there is little tolerance for any scrutiny or debate over this potentially expensive resolve. Why is there no serious discussion and open debate in a public forum? Is the data not strong? Are the proponents and detractors incapable of stating their cases for all to hear?

Please assist me. Our species has given itself the name Homo sapiens sapiens.

In light of the deplorable, human-induced state of our planetary home as well as all of the unfinished work we have immediately ahead of us in order to begin accomplishing the many things that some of our brightest and best say “matter most” for the future of life, are we justified by reason or common sense in naming ourselves as we have or is this way of identifying ourselves a misleading moniker of a sort that reveals more about human hubris than it says about human intelligence, much less our possessed wisdom?

Would the name “Homo hubris hubris” be more accurate?

As ever,

Steve

Ice core studies make it difficult for me to pooh-pooh CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas, as graphs show an apparent connection between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature. In modern geological history, atmospheric CO2 has bounced from roughly 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm) for the last several hundred thousand years. In our day, we have reached uncharted territory, with atmospheric CO2 close to 390 ppm and going upward.

Bruce

“When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.”

Let us imagine (in full agreement with Joseph Campbell) that “our job is to straighten out our own lives” and that it is precisely the unsustainable ways we are living out our lives in this wondrous planetary home we inhabit which is inducing the formidable global challenges now looming so ominously before all of us on the horizon. Consider that human beings are the primary cause of certain converging ecological threats the children could confront in the future.

In all the discussions I can recall about “the human predicament” never have I heard the idea presented that human beings cannot resolve problems which we are responsible for creating. We are not asked to change a world which is perfect, but to make changes in unsustainable patterns of behavior that are within our control. The mastery that gave rise to the global challenges to human wellbeing and environmental health is the same mastery that can be deployed in responding ably to those challenges. If conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and extravagant hoarding of limited resources; rampant overproduction of virtual mountains of unnecessary stuff; and unbridled overpopulation activities by the human species, when taken together, are “producing” threats to humanity, Earth and its environs, then sensibly changing these ways of behaving will mitigate and eventually resolve our plight. Is there any reason to doubt that human beings can alleviate any plight human beings can produce? Our task is to adequately deploy gifts God has given humankind to acknowledge, accept, address and overcome the human-induced challenges before us.

By choosing necessary changes in our behavioral repertoire (in the sense of willing the inevitable), the family of humanity will find its way through the human-driven mess we have made in this world (not of this world) which is the perfect creation of God, I suppose.