Re: Conservation psychology - What's it gonna take?

One need not rely on propaganda to formulate a reasoned opinion about where we are headed.
This is from an article by John Holden at the Boston Globe about this phenomena;

"Members of the public who are tempted to be swayed by the denier fringe should ask themselves how it is possible, if human-caused climate change is just a hoax, that:
•The leaderships of the national academies of sciences of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, China, and India, among others, are on record saying that global climate change is real, caused mainly by humans, and reason for early, concerted action.
• This is also the overwhelming majority view among the faculty members of the earth sciences departments at every first-rank university in the world."

The majority of climate scientists agree and non climate scientists are perfectly capable of assessing the science their colleagues produce and formulating educated hard nosed fact based statements regarding the threats that face us. In some cases that is their science, their job. One such scientist is David M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist from NASA Langley Research Center, who stated we could see temperature increases of 12º to 14ºC by 2100 if the positive feedback loops currently kicking in, not included in the last IPCC reports, aren't brought to a halt. This would mean sea level rises of 75 to 80 meters by 2100 which would submerge the current living area of 2.4 billion people. He states that we need to replace 80% the fossil carbon based energy we use with algae, halophytes, and cyanobacteria sourced biofuels grown on unused land, he calls it deserts and wasteland, with sea water. This would need to be accompanied by massive increases in conservation and huge deployment of drill geothermal, wind and solar capacity. All of these approaches have the capacity to far exceed the fossil carbon we are currently using. Dr. Bushnell thinks if we decide to do it we could have this capacity in 20 -25 years.

We are heading for dark times if we don't make a shift toward sustainable economies very soon. Leaving it to the consumer, the mythical free market, is guaranteed to fail. We need strong informed leaders and teachers at every level urgently getting the message across. At the same time every aware citizen needs to become active to whatever degree possible and make the changes necessary in their own lives. If governments and the corporations that own governments don't see us doing it and demanding change it is unlikely to happen.