It doesn't matter hpw many countries decide that it's time to fight global climate change as long as Wall Street is running the US government and the US military.

Greed is absolutely blind.

q

Globalized competitive "free enterprise" is a wonderful thing. The race to the abyss between the war-based and petro-based industries should provide some very interesting endgame spectaculars as the former defends "freedom and democracy" against the rising sea levels of the latter. That's assuming, of course, that another major asteroid or comet doesn't arrive first with even more spectacular results.

At my age, I'm rapidly reaching the conclusion that humanity's lifespan shouldn't and probably won't exceed my own by many decades in any case. The planet itself will survive for another few billion years and the cockroaches may eventually witness the rise of a dominant mammalian species with slightly more common sense and foresight -- or not.

The Capitalist system thrust upon the World by the U.S. is the noose around humanities neck, as we stand poised ready to leap into oblivion.

I for one apologise to one and all for my part in this suicide begging way of life.

I was a child, in England during WWII, even then at a young age I saw the utter madness resident in mankind.

"So long it's bin good to know yah"

Oh! by the way.The EARTH will do just fine. It wont die. Only those who need this environment will. So we don't need to save the earth, just our own sorry arses.

It is time to quote the big book:

New Testament, "Apocalupsis" (Greek name of this part of the Bible meaning 'unconcealment', or 'revelation'): 11, verse 18:

"And the peoples were in uproar,

and Your wrath came,

and the time has come for the dead to be sorted [or: judged];

for Your servants, the prophets, and for the saints and those who fear Your name, small and great alike, to be rewarded;

and the time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth."

**************

The phrasing of the citation is drawn from and based on the following sources:
"The New Jerusalem Bible" (Garden City: Doubleday), p. 2040,
and
Eberhard and Erwin Nestle, and Barbara and Kurt Aland, et alii, "Greek-English New Testament" (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), p. 654.

Isn’t it interesting that Americans and Western Europeans find it unfathomably abominable that a Muslim would strap on a few kilos of explosives and projectiles and blow himself and everyone around him to hell because he believes that such horror and the fear it causes will serve a purpose to dissuade infidel westerners and their collaborators from invading, occupying and polluting his country, ethically, morally and physically?

Yet the same westerners will, blithely and with little resolve or self criticism, continue down a path which will inevitably lead to killing himself and, not only the people immediately around him/her, but possibly billions, and causing immense suffering to all mankind as well as eradicate thousands of other living species, possibly causing a mass extinction phenomena, and all this not for any high and noble cause, not for freedom and self determination, not in the name of a deity, or out of blind faith but simply out of greed, ignorance, and the laziness to take responsibility for the problem by changing priorities and life styles.

Yes, true terrorism begins in Tokyo, London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Washington, and Tel Aviv etc.. But most of the people, who use the power of their institutions for making greater wealth, even if they wanted to, cannot re-write the programmes by which they or their institutions function. Like those giant banks and insurance companies, the institutions are too big to fail, to big to even turn around, and too big to stop killing us all in the process.

Perhaps in a tortuous comparative way it becomes easier to understand the terrible and simplistic act of the suicide bomber in face of these institutions taking over his world by force and in the name of “civilization” and “progress”.

Never before has a peoples' revolution been so needed nor have the corporate and government institutions been so well girded and prepared to protect themselves against the direly necessary changes demanded!

Plenty of wingnuts think Climate Science is a big "socialist" conspiracy (of scientists and politicians, I suppose) meant to increase the power of Governments, increase taxation, and keep them from making their proper profits.

It would be nice to see these people die off from their own stupidity, but unfortunately my children need the same planet that they misunderstand.

Nature is Cruel - to save my descendants, we have to save these morons as well.

Somehow I think his words are going to fall on deaf ears. Like always the rich and powerful who control everything will not listen because their greed will blind them. I don't hold out much hope for future generations.

Expect the corporate financed astroturf lobbyists whom ginned the various lies & obese mobs of the on-going health care mess to brand Ban Ki-moon with a multitude of inaccurate invectives once the time has come for the Oil business' turn to save their "right" to make obscene profits while the rest of us suffer from their depredations.

Forget the power elites. Focus on the people. They want public transport. If it is free the private auto and sprawl can be reversed.
http://freepublictransit.org

We just need to stop. Stop burning coal, stop driving, stop, stop stop. Maybe then we can save ourselves from creating a climate that we cannot live in.

But of course, such a great percentage of humanity (especially in the U.S.) - do not even know what we have created at this point. They are oblivious. They think that inventions and "other people will take care of it all".

We know they won't stop. Every one thinks they need to go to the mall, stay in fashion. I was listening to a CEO or something, of a famous jean company. He was going on about how and why the company's jean are green. Ha!!! I'll bet there are enough jeans in this world to fit everyone here more than once. What the hell...
- and I still do not understand how electric cars are going to save us. Won't that add to the electricity load over all? That sounds like a great solution... Let's burn more coal so we can drive electric cars...

Sorry but the problem is not the cause or effect of the individual people but the conservative nature of giant institutions.

Even when a president is elected on a ticket of “Change”, in fact there is very little to nothing that he can affect, despite any honestly good intentions held. To become president requires the selling of the soul and a compromise of any ability to change, in deference to all the component parts of the institution that support the “supreme power”. The greater and more powerful the institution is the greater its momentum in a certain direction, and the greater the tendency for its parts to reinforce that direction rather than to “change”. The “people”, even at the top, are relatively smaller and weaker, more restricted and replaceable the bigger the institution gets. They are figureheads of the institution not drivers.

Nature does not compromise, yet corporations and governments talk about a “negotiated solution” based on their power to influence each other and frame “solutions” in economic terms relevant to their continuity, which is irrelevant to nature’s direction.

Unfortunately even in the comments here people see the solution in terms of violence against individuals rather than a resignation to the need for clear understanding of the inevitable break-up of any institutions that cannot adapt to the necessary changes, and the changes that will be forced upon us inevitably as individuals.

What I believe Ban Ki-moon and some others are saying, is that as far as governments and global institutions are concerned there is a “bad scenario” which they have to immediately adapt to or a “very bad scenario” a little later to which they will not be able to adapt. Even if the captains of these giants supper institutions, private and public, with all hands on deck turn their wheels to port, these great ships have such momentum that they will likely travel straight onto the rocks anyway and rip out there double bottoms before they can find safe passage. Yet they are still discussing what they might do, given the right incentives!

Turn the vessels or abandon the ships of state and industry and let them sink? Have the individuals with or without life vests and the small groups in life boats a chance at sea? Well Ban Ki-moon answers to governments that in turn answer to global corporations, so one can hardly imagine a rational, non-bias, and honest assessment to this question from them.

While we all sit around and argue over who's at fault, emissions continue to rise and the climate change momentum is underway. The Hummer era has yet to show up- right now apparently we're just seeing the impacts of emissions from 30 years ago. We are so fxxx-ed, and our children are really fxxx-ed.

Trillions will be made by the rich on climate change. There will be no stopping it. Already in some boardroom somewhere, there's a group of real estate kingpins already carving-up the spoils. The shipping industry and the pentagon have already figured it out what they'll get out of it.

Imagine this dumb Secretary General believing the world's scientists instead of Ann Coulter.
Then there's that weird name of his.
I had this Ban Ki-moon guy pegged right from the start.
Nothing but a hippie with epicanthic folds.

There is HOPE. Lucitanian alluded to it. A Revolution in America. IF it happens before humanity's condition becomes terminal, and it will be close, a top-down redistribution of wealth in the US could create a country with the will and the sense to affect the direction of humankind as a whole.

HOPE is the dethroning of the power-elite in the US. We will be the 1st capitalist country to go this route-how soon will determine the fate of people the world over.

joe