North park
Did you know it takes 32 Litres of water to grow enough coffee beans to make a cup of coffee?
The 3rd world is on its own now. It will be like some of those horror films people killing over food and water as they line up to fill a 5 gallon pale.

North park

So many posters here talk about how terrible things have gotten and who is to blame, but don't really understand how humans react historically, to distaster. It is survival of the fit people.

The water and money poor countries are not going to survive because the water rich north is going to take care of its own people and just let the others die and kill themselves off. The USA has built up histories largest miltary and that will stop any intrusion from the south, by force, by violence, by whatever means needed.

When things get bad, it is going to be the same in Europe. It is going to be all about taking care of your own populations and if food and water wars break out, the West is going to use its military might to block it and keep it out.

The 3rd world has to take care of itself, because the world is a selfish place and getting more so everyday.

These issues written above are exemplified by the corporate greed and the Western worlds need to have it all. The American presidential contest in microcosm is writ large on the human factors that support the below text. The media talks about Rev. Wright who has lived and experienced the text below and has seen first hand the human disaster of displaced people.

Clinton once again shows her irresponsible thinking at any price to gain the American nomination to be able to continue to lead the world to oblivion. I read with interest the comments of Americans here as in other blogs. I consider myself a humanist and not one that has the USA tattooed to my backside, although I gave three years to the military and so have a right to speak. Nationalism, is always based in me-firstism, let the rest of the world be damned mentality. IT IS NOT ONLY ABOUT CLINTON AND THIS PROPAGANDIST, O'REALLY; Ii is about the very fabric of the USA, its people and the change necessary.

The economic system that determines all peoples survival regardless of where they exist, also determines what a country will become, much of it the result of chance. In that regard the USA has been lucky, with well-worn imperialist ideas brought over with the Pilgrims. America has taken this country from the people whom were here before, the European model, used by the pilgrims, stripping them of their land without paying them. Some of us here know the story. The so-called, "free market market system", formerly American capitalism, and now globalization into which it has now morphed continues these same policies. The US with its European allies has created the current means of controlling everything for the few. The G 8 has developed ever-greater means to develop these ideas and to take what it wants from the rest of the world and its own populations.

The African Americans, the Africans, the Hispanics, Asians and Indians have been the slave classes have built the white European and American wealth. The historic exploitation of the working classes of America brought from the entire world into its "melting pot" with the so-called freedoms and democratic ideals built from the blood spilled to form in all proceeding generations. Compared with European monarchies and divine kingship, so-called Democracy was unique in the world. It once held promise to give humanity a system to live with harmoniously The freedoms bought so dearly, from "Divine Kingship" gave birth to the new kings the "Robber Barons" and now, corporate power elitism.
To keep the masses mollified and to build the lives of Americans so they believed this to be human progress, consumer ideology supplanted education - the study human purpose- and became a goal in itself. The economic forces, which have built their power from this conditioning aided with advertising and media, care little for human development and survival. They care largely for their continued power as an end in itself- to continue for the few there lust for wealth and power with a huge military force, hence the oil wars in Iraq. All this to support an auto centered disposable consumer society.

The expense of privilege in the community of nations may become the death of the globe and its entire people as a result of the American and European economic system, now out of control. Many American economists, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Stiglitz, and others view these historical developments as a threat to global harmony and survival.

American wealth once had an altruistic quality about it. The post-World War II USA developed the Marshal Plan and cared about the condition of the world. Now the top one percent, those who have taken so much, continue to be supported by the thirty percent of Americans who still believe George Bush, and his myth of global superiority at the expense of the rest of the world. It is clear that to many of Clinton's opinions continue the Bush doctrine, of unilateralism and tokenism.

We sit on the edge of an environmental and economic disaster. The American system is out of control and the economic meltdown will continue regardless of who occupies the Oval office. The only difference is exists within the Obama campaign. He is intelligent enough to know that there are fundamental change needed in the way America and the so-called "free world" do business. 

Rev Wright, addresses continued black slavery in a world of exploitation of all people led by the US and now the power elite of the G8 in collusion with governments to continue the "American Dream" mentality, represented now by corporate multilateralism and their continued wealth and power. Corporate elitism cares for itself alone at the expense of all people, and the environment, the human experiment, its freedoms, and so called democratic ideals, which has become nothing more than an oligarchy.

We should not be too pejorative about Rev Wright who simply rails against the exploitive aspects of the Western mentality and points out the deficiency in the USA of having evolved thinking toward the slave classes and the human species. The Rev. Wright, having been able to experience directly because of his skin color, these abuses is perhaps too angry which limits his effectiveness. His experience and intelligence in seeing the wreckage of black America, has caused him to take up the defense of the disenfranchised.

America has a history of caring about others, once a genuine American direction, led by people, despite their failings like: The Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and so many others who died for their belief in a better America and a better world, and caring about humanity.

The media carries their continued assault against those, who would in any way, attempt to bring different thinking to bear on the so called "American Dream" which has become the world's nightmare must be seen by the masses for what it has become. The media must begin to understand its roll as an objective commentator to the necessary changes that must be made to the USA and the world if humanity is to survive.

The media above all must be changed once again to give democratic exposure to all-important ideas. The media must present an understanding of the complex thought necessary to be brought to bear on global complex issues of survival. A departure is required from the simplistic superficial treatment ad-nauseam we witness each day, which passes for news presented by the Barby-Doll class of newsreader called journalist.

There is a real obvious trend here. They always underestimate the speed and scale at which the warming of the global will effect life on earth. And the rich 20% of the world's population that has caused 80% of the problem will never ever ever take it's 80% of the responsibility (or even acknowledge it).

If you want to see how the world will look in the future, just head to someplace like San Paulo in Brazil where the slums stretch on endlessly with few resources and fewer rights and the rich not only have gated mansions with armed guards, but entire gated parks with armed guards - right in the middle of the city where no other parks can be found.

Will the global Mafia of the rich and powerful be able to stem the tides of billions (notice the s at the end) of refuges? Why do you think they are developing all those ultra extreme crowd control weapons. Tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and tazers are children's toys compared to what they've already developed and are working on developing. Is there any hope for humanity? Perhaps, but not if the billionaires and their lackies continue to rule the world.

Thanks for the book reference, Ruth. The world is about the experience the wrath of Gaia and it's us in the so-called "developed world" who are most to blame for the excesses that have led to our current sad state of affairs.

Yes, the corporate mass media and governments are woefully understating the gravity of our situation. Who's going to worry about the environment when there's a "world wide food crisis" that, in large part, is the creation of food commodification and futures speculation. It's all about greed, pure and simple. Agribusiness and oil corps all gleefully go to the bank while Gaia, and her population, burn.

We need to look at these realities head on without blinking and without sentimentality ALL THE WHILE working to create vibrant, local, joyful, self-sustaining ecologically conscious communities. What I'm calling for is RADICAL INTERDEPENDENCE. We need each other now more than ever and we need to wake up our mass media/NPR anesthetized and lobotomized friends. What we're facing will make the depression look like a cake walk. But we can, and must, face it together.

Yes, the U.S. bears an unbelievable amount of culpability and karmic debt for the world's current situation, and we need to continually speak up about it. However, change and support must begin at home: in our neighborhoods and communities and with our 'tribes' and 'families of choice'. We need to make the U.S. government irrelevant and create the world we wish to see right here and now where each of us live.

Nothing was said about the Himalayan glaciers. They are also thinning rapidly. They provide water for 6 major rivers for China, India, and southeast Asia. As they glaciers melt, there will be floods followed by extreme drought with no drinking water. This will effect several billion people. The oil wars may be nothing compared to the water wars.

Also, most articles seem to think of climate change as gradual. This is true up to a point. But some of those huge blocks of ice are not going to slowly drip themselves to death. They are going to cause sudden, terrible catasthophes. Our local public library has a book "With Speed and Violence". It is frightening.

Buy land in the mountains; Colorado, Montana, Yukon.

The architecture of change is not in place and therefore the world will not act effectively. The "if it ain't broke don't fix it" crowd is still in power despite twenty five years of research into change architecture. The Presidency is a Fascist throwback, the Congress has petrified, and most citizens remain ill informed and do not act until it is too late. Mankind is failing badly.

Katrina and her 39 foot storm surge illustrate the real problem with ocean levels. It's not the three millimeters a year that are killing New Orleans this decade. It's the extra half a foot a year in maximum storm surge height, owing to increased wind strength, that will ruin your waterfront home. How would you like to join the unlucky one billion and live in a football stadium or in a formaldehyde-poisoned FEMA trailer? The wind taking your roof off won't help one bit. Nor will the extra power in the tornadoes for you folks living inland.

So, how high is your particular city's hurricane barrier? No foolin?

They will devolve into Christian Republicans, of course.

The developed world will not be able to help very much those billion people affected by rising sea levels and other effects of global warming. The developed world will have its own shortages of food, water and arable land. A lot of agricultural production from low lying third world nations used to support the developed world will have ceased. Tropical diseases will have encroached into higher latitudes. What has not been destroyed by normal operations of developed society will be destroyed by warfare , gangs and riots. At some stage the rate of population loss from disasters will exceed that of births and a world population decline will ensue. Other species not considered useful for human survival, or not capable of co-existing in the human environment, or those that were hunted for food, will be all gone. Welcome to easter island world, post apocalpyse, where uncivilized remnants of the last of human kind fight and scrounge around for existence in a depleted and harsh world. Will they last for the hundreds of thousands of years necessary for the greenhouse gases to leave the atmosphere, if it still can heal? What will they devolve into?

With the anticipated increase of the world's population to 9 billion by 2050, I suspect that the figure of 1 billion being forced from their homes is a gross underestimate.

One child per family, worldwide, starting now would decrease the global population by over a billion by 2050 and the rate of decrease would be accelerating rapidly by then. As the level of sustainability was approached, families of two or three children could then become the norm.

Humanity has to make the choice of controlling its own fertility or suffering all the perils that nature has in store for it. A smaller population would alleviate all of the major problems that we are facing.

"Craig Johnstone, the UNHCR deputy high commissioner, said yesterday that humanity faced a "global-scale emergency" whose effects would accumulate over the next four decades. He said it was impossible to forecast with confidence the numbers of people who would lose their homes through climate change. But he pointed to assessments of between 250 million and one billion people losing their homes by 2050. He said: "This will be a global-scale emergency, but … it will take place gradually and over a long period of time." - One might have thought that the same could have been said for the growing wave of food shortages. However, economic factors appear to have amplified the fear factor and contributed to the politicalization of the problem. The same can be expected of the rising spectre of forced migration; border disputes, refugee camps (as in Darfur), panic caused by fear of epidemic, etc.. Expect the worst, and sooner.

Katrina............