Halving emissions by 2050: big deal

The supposedly "strong resolve" to cut global CO2 emission by the participants in the G8 Summit is a farce. No base year has been determined, no short-term or medium-term targets have been agreed on, and even if that long-term goal was met, we'll still be in a world of hurt. Forty-two years to get halfway back to too high? give me a break. The oceans have already changed and will continue to change even if we cut all CO2 emissions out NOW: and that is going to kill the coral reefs, which will wipe out about a third of oceanic life. This is due to warming but also to acidification. We are SCREWED.

We were warned about these problems and others back in 1992. Sixteen years later the leaders of the world's nations are STILL failing to grasp that we are in dire danger from environmental collapse. Most people I know have no concept of just how far off the cliff we've already run, Wile E. Coyote-like.

We've got only a very short window to reverse the worst of the situation. The biggie is overpopulation: we're supposed to have 9 billion people on the planet in forty years. Organizations like the Worldwatch Institute and movements like Slow Food, Green politics, and environmentalism are helping change the attitudes of people everywhere, but our goose is still cooked if we don't get the people in power and the people down the street aware of the importance of these efforts. We can at least throw out our current crop of elected nincompoops and get some new ones in who maybe will Pay Attention to the writing on the wall.