The greens will become more credible when they mention the "p" word occasionally. (population)

"Many believe we are enjoying the best of times. No doubt some are. To do this though, we have to believe that anthropogenic climate change is not real. We have to close our minds and completely ignore the terrible injustices that occur to our fellow human beings every day."

OK, done that. What next?

"We have to pay no heed to the environmental degradation and accelerated destruction of species."

There is no established link between CO2 levels and species extinctions and no reason to think that they are currently 'accelerated'.

http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3463

Since your second sentence is demonstrably false, I don't see much point in reading further.

Sorry, that should be THIRD sentence.

I do not believe totally in the green movement, but i do not think they are going to demise in the short term.
Climate change is real, but some trivialize the figures. .9c is enough for polar ice melt, and accelerating. That .9c sea temp; is disrupting the weather patterns around the globe. The increase is caused by carbon, which is at its highest level in 650,000 yrs. These are NASA calculations and measurements.

Hi Sandra, this is almost a copy of a response I submitted yesterday, but the message needs to be re-stated:

Climate change does not matter. Why? Because the economy is everything.

Slowing emissions would require us to shrink the economy. Why? Because industrial economies require lots of energy to function. As the economy grows, energy consumption grows. Unless we have alternative renewable energy that scale to levels required to support a growing global economy, we must shrink that economy to reduce emissions. At present, those viable energy alternatives do not or very likely will not exist.

Nobody is going to buy off on the idea that we must shrink the economy, get back to 350ppm, proposed by most climate scientists. We would have to tear down industrial civilization.

Even if an alternative energy miracle occurs, it would take decades to replace oil, natural gas and coal with wind, solar, hydropower etc. All that time the economy would need to be growing, because that's what human beings want.

If the economy grows, energy flows must increase. It is naive to believe that we wouldn't have to burn even more fossil fuels in the future. But where are those going to come from? Even if viable alternatives to fossil fuels appear, the possibility that GDP growth will continue year-after-year in the 21st century seems very remote there are constraints on that growth, not just cheap energy.

Ongoing climate debate just doesn't matter, whether it comes from deniers or environmentalists. Why?
1. For humans, the economy is everything, trying to grow the economy is everything, regardless of the consequences of the expansion. This has become the purpose of life in the 21st century.
2. To expand human economies, you must increase energy consumption.
3. To increase energy consumption humans will have to burn more fossil fuels. But the question then becomes where is all that oil, natural gas and coal going to come from?

So go ahead, worry about water, food, energy, climate, species loss until you're blue in the face. It won't make any difference in the end.

I thought this was a profound article written by somebody with a caring and thoughtful nature. The sheer stupidity of what we humans are currently up to will become apparent to future generations but unfortunately many people today are unable and unwilling to see it. This article really exposes that stupidity.