Marching Off the Cliff- by: Noam Chomsky- NEW

[Ichingcarpenter]

A task of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, now under way in Durban, South Africa, is to extend earlier policy decisions that were limited in scope and only partially implemented.

These decisions trace back to the U.N. Convention of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which the U.S. refused to join. The Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period ends in 2012. A fairly general pre-conference mood was captured by a New York Times headline: “Urgent Issues but Low Expectations.”

As the delegates meet in Durban, a report on newly updated digests of polls by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals that “publics around the world and in the United States say their government should give global warming a higher priority and strongly support multilateral action to address it.”

Most U.S. citizens agree, though PIPA clarifies that the percentage “has been declining over the last few years, so that American concern is significantly lower than the global average – 70 percent as compared to 84 percent.”

“Americans do not perceive that there is a scientific consensus on the need for urgent action on climate change â(euro) < A large majority think that they will be personally affected by climate change eventually, but only a minority thinks that they are being affected now, contrary to views in most other countries. Americans tend to underestimate the level of concern among other Americans.”[br />

SNIP.......... MORE


http://www.truth-out.org/marching-cliff/1323195281

[OnyxCollie]

1. K&R. nt

[slay]

2. K&R for the sad state of the planet and what we are doing to it

Chomsky is great as usual though.

[txlibdem]

3. Agreed

Chomsky always gets it.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

4. Chomsky on America's denial: "These attitudes aren’t accidental."

"In 2009 the energy industries, backed by business lobbies, launched major campaigns that cast doubt on the near-unanimous consensus of scientists on the severity of the threat of human-induced global warming."

We knew that. Chomsky lays it out plainly.


I have a class I'm assigned to at work, on Tropical Ecology. I come out of every lecture in tears. I have to do my job and keep a stiff upper lip, but it's hard not to break down and just sob right in class.

Research from the world's foremost ecologists makes it clear that the primary problem driving loss of habitat and biodiversity is human overpopulation, human activity. ('LOTTA people depending on the energy companies, paying millions.....more people, more money to the Energy Corporations and their political machinations)

Overpopulation=The 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one will address.

:(

[raccoon]

7. Overconsumption=The 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one will address.

Overconsumption by a minority of the world's population.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. that's a huge factor, of course...what I'm learning in this class is

that burgeoning 3rd world populations also take a huge toll; destruction of environment during the process of struggle for survival, societal entry into industrial world.....

worldwide overpopulation in developed and developing worlds is the driving factor for all other consequences.

[swilton]

5. Systemic Failure of our elements of governance

[Jefferson23]

6. K&R n/t

[certainot]

9. another trophy for limbaugh's trophy warehouse. while our universities keep him in business

i doubt the RW radio monopoly could survive without university sports. but many of the bigggest limbaugh stations depend on uni sports for community standing and ad revenue, while those stations do climate denial 24/7 to 50 mil a week.

anyone wondering why we have a major party that not only can't acknowledge global warming but actively has obstructed action on it only has to turn on the radio.

and by ignoring talk radio to the point that there is no direct challenge to it by the left and environmentalists will turn out to be the biggest political blunder in history.