10 Ways Mother Earth Will Strike Back If We Don't Stop Our Wanton Destruction of the Environment

And if the ground's not cold/Everything is gonna burn/We'll all take turns/I'll get mine too. -- Pixies, "Monkey Gone to Heaven." Bad news. Thanks to perfectly timed, premeditated reality assassinations like so-called ClimateGate, nearly half of Americans may now believe that the various threats of climate change are exaggerated. That's the highest quotient ever since polling on the issue commenced. But there is good news: They're on the wrong side of history and science, and Earth will still get the last laugh on all of them, and us for that matter.

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Environmental Refugees and Global Warming

Climate change and environmental degradation are likely to trigger increased migration in Sub-Saharan Africa with potentially devastating effects on the hundreds of millions of especially poor people, according to a paper in the International Journal of Global Warming.

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Beyond Ecological Imperialism

Published on Monday, December 21, 2009 by The Guardian/UK Climate change isn't just a battle between rich and poor – it shows how an obsession with economic growth is a dead end by Jayati Ghosh So the Copenhagen summit did not deliver any hope of substantive change, or even any indication that the world's leaders are sufficiently aware of the vastness and urgency of the problem. But is that such a surprise? Nothing in the much-hyped runup to the summit suggested that the organisers and participants had genuine ambitions to change course and stop or reverse a process of clearly unsustainable growth.

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Are We Moving from Nanotechnology to Nanotoxicity?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 16, 2009 Food & Water Watch - Europe Food & Water Europe Report questions the unseen hazards of nanotechnology BRUSSELS - December 16 - Industries claim that nanotechnology is both good for business and good for consumers’ quality of life, a seemingly obvious win-win situation. Yet the less advertised risks of nanotechnology applications require close scrutiny. The application of nanotechnology began with semiconductors, but the presence of nanomaterials in your laptop and car is not the same as ingesting it from your chocolate bar. In its new report on the hazards of nanotechnology, released to coincide with the proposal for a Framingnano governance platform at the European Commission, Food & Water Europe believes that basic human needs such as food and water should remain nanotechnology-free, as potential harms may be much greater than the alleged benefits.

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Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes

By Sara Flounders Global Research, December 19, 2009 International Action Center - 2009-12-18 In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions?

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Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes

By Sara Flounders Global Research, December 19, 2009 International Action Center - 2009-12-18 In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions? By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements. The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count.

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Overcoming the Copenhagen Failure

Published on Friday, January 8, 2010 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin) by Joseph E. Stiglitz Pretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate conference, it is clear that the world’s leaders were unable to translate rhetoric about global warming into action. It was, of course, nice that world leaders could agree that it would be bad to risk the devastation that could be wrought by an increase in global temperatures of more than two degrees Celsius. At least they paid some attention to the mounting scientific evidence. And certain principles set out in the 1992 Rio Framework Convention, including “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” were affirmed. So, too, was the developed countries’ agreement to “provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology, and capacity-building” to developing countries.

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