Not too many! absolutely not!. Only too many in too few places. I.e. population density prevents essential knowledge of self and environment.

When we each grow a little of our food, clothing, and/or shelter we will learn to love our selves as we love our brothers.

Thanks for helping me to better understand "I will to will your will."

We've lost our "harmony with nature" during the last one hundred years of mankind's millions of years. If we must continue to dominate, play the superior, will we relearn willingly, or be forced to respect our co-habitants of this earth? Will we respect those of us who become superior in doing "what comes naturally?"

Man's unceasing greed has caused climate change, and it began with the destruction of forests throughout the world going back hundreds of years. Now the developing world has just begun to notice a few natural disasters, droughts and hurricanes. Bishop Tutu is right -- it won't be long before the devastation becomes more encompassing. Climate change has no respect for the rich. We will all suffer, that is certain, and it seems certain it is too late.

Dear bandido,

It is never too late. Like the animals we will have to adapt (maybe there will be untold lives lost). But unlike the animals we have more than instinct - we have intelligence (if we choose to use it). I, like you, grieve extremely for the loss of beauty that will inevitably occur. But what are we left with but to face this battle with all the human dignity, love, and determination that our best leaders (which excludes the likes of Bush and quite a few Democrats) have been examples of?

I'd like to echo what srelf said.

For many years I've been active in social change efforts - marches and the like - and filled with despair at the lack of awareness among so many. It's been so clear to me that so much life has been needlessly damaged and lost, and will be damaged and lost, through the effects of military-industrialism, capitalist models of infinite economic growth and the like.

Lately, though, I seem to have reached a sort of plateau - almost resigned to the imminent devastation, but also thereby freed to really focus on very, very local efforts: one step above family recycling but one step below the bastards in office who are so slow and so blind to the enormity of the problems. I think the large government bodies will soon be corpses, and we'll be left, as we always were before, with ourselves and our near neighbors, with the plants and animals able to adapt, and with our love for life, and our intelligence, such as it is.

And I'm detecting a change in attitude and a willingness to act among many others - people I know personally and am getting to know bettter, even the ones on the "other" side, politically: maybe the end is nigh, but we're here to do what we can now to slow down, small-ify, re-localize, clean up, and really care for the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees and all the other things we humans everywhere need to survive. And in that methodical, everyday, social-structural work, urgent panic and despair don't help at all. On the one hand, I feel off balance - how can I not be crazed with the need to act fast? But on the other hand, it's the search for quick fixes and quick riches that brought us here, so maybe the plodding, plow-horse way of being is much more part of getting us beyond the mess we're in.

The Truth--The Corporation

Must see video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRWWZVVOxeM&mode=related&search=

"Where water is scarce and populations are growing..." This points to the real problem which is population growth. Poor people are just as willing as wealthy people to ruin the environment around them by using up available resources through never ending population growth. This is a trait common to many other animals besides man. When the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the land there is an adjustment through starvation or disease or war or some combination of things. The number of people on earth is projected to increase to about 9 billion by 2050 but events could lead to a drastic reduction in human population as the carrying capacity of the earth is overshot by the use of non-renewable fossil fuels. As these fuels run out a highly damaged earth may be only capable of carrying a human population of...? Maybe one or two billion people. Maybe less!

To possibly answer your question, kayaker, James Lovelock (the man who came up with the theory of Gaia) believes that 200 million will make it to the poles where they will scratch out a menial existence. He figures the Earth, when the worst of global warming hits, will only be able to support at most 500 million.

It is not that natural disasters are increasing, but that humanity is now living in places previously considered inappropriate places to set up house. Consequently, you get 78,000 dying in Pakistani earthquakes. That can only increase as population continues to grow.

The problem is partly cultural, and largely fueled by poverty. Those in the poorest parts of Africa believe the only way to improve their odds is to have more children. With education and family planning (provided Bush is dumped), the numbers may drop. But in Uganda alone, the population has increased more than four fold since independence.

Hmmm! Terry Jones and Desmond Tutu on the same day. Should I be grateful for this site or go over to the "darkside? Terry Jones or Glenn Beck? Desmond Tutu or Bill O'reilly? Rush Limbaugh or my fellow contributors to this site? Tough choices!

I'm a firm believer of the when it gets personal, then people get personally involved, philosophy. You may not care about famine in other places unless you find youself getting hungry. Then you feel everyone should be doing something about famine. For so long, we have been content to not have to know about global warming, Katrina surprised many. Now people in the USA are beginning to see or soon will, that global warming and enviornmental decline is becoming immediate. Not a century from now, not fifty years but a decade or at most two and everybody will be screaming. However, there are encouraging signs. Look how perceptions about global warming have changed in the last five years. Yes ideologues pretend it is a myth but now they are becoming a fringe minority fast. It's a race and for the first time humanity is now starting to run it. Yes we are reluctant and slow to start the race but once we see the next big storm hit New Orleans or Florida, people will start seriously feeling hungry for something to be done. Even without that dire scenario to prod people out of their complacency, people are seeing the writing on the wall. With each passing year, people feel less safe about the future. Whether it's the disappearing glaciers or disappearing bees, everybody senses that something big is happening and it is happening to them. I think that in ten years that even the most die hard of the global warming doubters will be screaming. The only real worry is that the most greedy and selfish will then switch gears and begin saying that it is too late to do much about global warming. If that occurs...the future will be grim indeed for our grandchildren, for we will be codemning them to it. To give credit to the good bishop, in thirty or so years, as things begin to seem horredous, people will say "How can God allow such misery?" but the truth is, as the good bishop surely knows, that God is not allowing such famines and suffering to happen then..................WE ARE.

the simple truth is: humankind cannot continue to breed uncontrolably. As long as various religious and political groups push their anti-birth control adgenda, human misery due to climate change, which causes a cascade effect, will continue unabated. War, starvation, disease, dispair....all by-products of uncontrolled population growth. We are on the cusp of a massive human die-off due to our own stupidity.

To the 200 million who are feverishly packing up to head to the poles ~

Bye!

The balance of us who don't buy into the eco-pablum will stay put. Some people don't believe the political extreamists who are feverishly trying to wrap their plans for wealth re-distribution around a "crisis" which is factually a solar-system wide temperature fluctuation phenomenon that has ALWAYS happened and will ALWAYS happen.

Two facts: 1 - There is no "normal" planetary temperature, it has ALWAYS changed and always will. 2 - Global Earth temperature is fluctuting at the same rate as Venus and Mars and largely for the same reasons.

Those two facts alone have rendered your politically and socioeconomically based hand-wringing suspect at best, and almost certainly moot.

Should we be kind and gentle to our planet? Yes, my friends. Should we do every reasonable thing to improve and lighten our impact on the environment? Absolutely.

But to use this as a scapegoat to advance your agenda of wealth confiscation is shameful.

Have your harmony with nature! Do your part and breed responsibly! But when you tie your agenda to the plundering of the assets of those awful "rich" people, your true colors are exposed. Carbon credits, my @$$.

P.T. Barnum would be proud!

Re: Heading to the poles: If you choose the north, I hope you're a good swimmer.

PDFee, you are correct. The earth is in a constant cycle, previous to "global warming" the earth was enduring a mini ice age. This article is nonsense. C'mon, the author is quoting stats from the World Bank! Which has more to do with hunger than snow melting on Kilimanjaro. Other stats mentioned in this article also cause suspicion. It fails to mention that communities in Africa may be better equipped to deal with natural "disasters" if the West didn't discourage development because "we don't want to make global warming worse" So, don't use electricity, don't moderize. Here's some solar panels which are three times as expensive and three times less effective.

It's a case where the FEELINGS meet the aims of the AGENDA so of course the faithful will believe whatever is being fed to them by whatever source comes along.

I just can't believe more progressives aren't skeptical of this whole concept.

Can't they see the obvious truth that while our current temperature curve is moving ever-so-slightly upwards at this moment, it's moved DOWN before, and UP before, and on and on. This will continue until the end of our planet, from whatever astronomical force destroys it. It's up to US to evolve around whatever temperature gradient is presented to us. Can't you see that?

The CRISIS is manufactured. Cut wholly from the cloth of political and social extreamists who WANT to demonize capitalism and wealth. It fits the leftist agenda, so they are attempting to wrap their hated of all things democratic and free-market with the kinder & gentler eco-friendly coating of carbon credits and pollution taxes.

Why do you progressives so easily buy into this?

This is a wonderful article that depicts a basic truth about global warming which is:

'You Can Run BUT, You Can Not Hide'

The Planet is round and it has a core. There is no place you can go to get away from 'planet' because it is everywhere. Ahh, so you might be entertaining space flight eh? You had better start packing now then. Don't forget to take enough 'green food' and 'oxygen' with you. Of course the flight isn't free so you'd better take your ATM card with you too. Ok, so you are willing to scrap any 'entertainment' - Good For You!

Better hurry up and get to that Launch Pad before it's too late now. Go on, go!

PDFee, again, I agree. The crisis is manufactured. The scientific discussion of global warming has turned into a political discussion. Unfortunately, people are not given the full spectrum of research on global warming. Instead, it is blasted as a end of the world crisis on the network news. I never agree with science and government mixing, too many agendas are involved for the public to get the correct data.
However, I believe that the political and social extremists you speak of may present the appearance of anti-capitalism, but in fact are making millions of dollars promoting this false information.

What does it matter whether we believe global warming to be caused by humans or not? If your house is burning down, does it cease to be a problem just because you didn't light the match?

While we're on the subject, what does it matter whether global warming itself is real or not?

None of us is going to have any incentive to change the way we live until we see changes in the world around us that terrify. People are driven by emotion, not evidence, so why even pretend that evidence matters? Deniers will deny, believers will at most change light bulbs.

Global climate is a massive system, with large time lags. By the time the consequences, if any, of burning fossil fuels become so obvious that even the die-hards can no longer deny it, there won't be time to do anything. That's the problem with really big systems: you have to think in advance to have timely influence.

Today, all the evidence I see tells me that the human race is going to burn every ounce of petroleum, every liter of natural gas, and every brick of coal it can find, and do it sooner rather than later.

Whatever all that is going to do, we are in for it. If we happen to survive the consequences, great. Otherwise, too bad.

So have a 'discussion' about it. Scientific, political, whatever. Reality won't change, just the contents of your skull.

I don't think there are many who doubt that we are pillaging the earth. Are we over consuming our resources? I would say yes. Non renewable resources are just that, non renewable. But this a different subject, somehow lumped into the discussion of global warming.
The media would agree with the statement that people are mostly ruled by emotion. That is why they report sensationalist stats and erroreous "facts". But evidence DOES matter. Maybe if people were presented the full spectrum of research they would realize that we may not die out by melting ice caps or vicious natural "disasters".
The majority opinion is that global warming does exist, and those that do not believe this are just uninformed, or don't know their arse from a hole in the ground. Maybe you feel this way, I don't know. For every opinion, there is a counter opinion. Mark Twain said that when you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. When we buy into mass producted ideas, we run the risks of a narrow mind.