Jay of Melbourne
I attended many of the Prepartory Meetings for the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 and met many women from countries like Bangladesh that were already affected by climate change. I found them slightly desperate about the future, wondering how they would cope with ever more floods and droughts and the kind of extreme weather events they had been enduring with ever greater frequency. Perhaps the environmental groups that you speak of were run by men, not yet directly affected personally by the changing climate.

Perhaps, then again belief in climate change is part of fairly broad based theology, maybe the groups I've looked up view things from a secular or materialist point of view, which is also where I'm coming from .
BAPA cited government corruption and mismanagement along with unease over the treaties with India on water security and conservation of river systems as among their major concerns, acts of God didn't feature in their manifesto.

Jay of Melbourne
Worsening floods and cyclones are more acts of Man rather than acts of God and it is time they were mentioned in their (environmental organisations')manifestos.
I find your reference to climate change as a 'belief', rather than fact based on real scientific evidence, offensive. It is the denialists who have a belief and are sticking to it despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

What a happy day. Agreeing with Curmudgeon and Cheryl. Graham Cooke brought us together. What an incredible talent.

Nine billion people by 2050 and Graham thinks we are going back to the Stone Age. I'm guessing you aren't much good with a calculator, Graham.

The problems of an ageing population are miniscule compared to the problems of fossil fuel depletion and trying to give the whole 9 billion a decent standard of living on a finite planet. As my new friend Curmudgeon says older people will work longer. Get your calculator out Graham (if you have one). By increasing the retirement age / age eligible for the pension to 66 then 67 then to 70 over the next 30 years the ratio of retired to working is pretty flat. When the pension was initiated in 1910, life expectancy was 50. Now it is 80, so we need to adapt, right Graham.

Ericc
Thanks for spelling out the easiest way to beat ageing, namely by steadily increasing retirement age or eligibility for a pension to 70 gradually over the next 20 years. And if people stick to two children or fewer, that will decrease the number of dependents at the other end.

Popenperish.
I beg to differ, Apocalyptic Climate Change is a part of a wider, post modern Western theology because it is very much a set of beliefs.
You believe in anthropogenic climate change but you don't know what it's long term effects will be, belief and knowledge are two different things.
Presumably you're waiting for certain signs, or harbingers to appear as evidence of the end times.
In the same vein events such as the Copenhagen/Bali/Kyoto conferences are rituals, performed at periodic intervals and bringing together the priestly class, aka the scientists with the laity and missionaries from far flung lands.
Belief in an anthropogenic "doomsday" scenario is a pre rational, or "Magical" way of thinking, superstition in other words.
Outrage and indignation at perceived slights or contradictions offered by "deniers" adds further weight to my argument, it's behavior which would be well know to any atheist who's made the mistake of engaging with a Righteous person on the subject of faith.
To take the example of the article at the head of this thread, population pressure.
Is it rational to propose limitations on childbirth in Australia in the hope that it will alleviate the material situation of ALL people?
To a religious person that kind of causal reasoning is valid, to an atheist, such as myself it's clear that no ritual, sacrifice or penitence on the part of the righteous few is going to save the masses.