WARNING: DON'T Click on the link to 'Through Greek Eyes' WEBSITE at the bottom of this article. GOT AN IMMEDIATE TROJAN VIRUS WARNING.

Here's the clincher
"Create a global Environmental Organization with the resources and power to really protect the oceans, the land, water and air from poisoning and other human depredations. No economic or strategic interest should take precedent over the health of the earth, which is also the health of human beings"

It is again is the good old 'Club of Rome' unitary government agenda for contolling the masses through the elite's influence in the UN. Keep the people feeling guilty, hungry and hating their own species and make Gaia the new god which must be obeyed above all else. Punishments to the bad humans to be handed out by the Global governance system while the mega rich elite continue doing exactly what they want. No thanks.

Thanks Atman. I've taken that part of his biog down. He must have been hacked.

I appreciate this article. It dovetails nicely with the idea that being an industrial society requires us to earn, earn, earn and spend, spend, spend (because we're above making stuff we use ourselves, apparently). At least that's the line one learns at university. Then one sees another way of viewing life, of doing things, of being resourceful and caring for the resources around us ... and that is very challenging

It is not possible. I couldn’t possibly have read an article like this, which is basically a brief history of man’s impact on the plant in recent decades, without any mention or even the slightest allusion towards human population growth!

I’m stonkered! How big is the blind spot here, Mr Vallianatos?

You write:

< The decimation of so much life in such a short period of time, 30 years, barely a moment in the age of the earth, is a result of economic development, i.e., logging, fishing, irrigation, and intensive factory-like farming. >

It is partly due to economic development. Also very largely due to enormous population growth over that period.

< The only reason this ecocidal development goes on largely unchallenged is because of corporate tyrannies >

It is not the only reason! Again, population growth and now enormous overpopulation, has got a great deal to do with it.

Remember this simple equation, first introduced by Paul Ehrlich:

I = PAT

Impact on the planet = population size multiplied by average affluence or average per-capita resource consumption and waste production multiplied by technology or the efficiency with which we utilise energy and other resources.

Again, it is truly staggering that the population factor has been left out of this article, and the author’s thinking on the subject. However, this is not uncommon. This enormous blind spot seems to affect many people, including lots of OLO article authors.

So that’s it “Create a global Environmental Organization “

You can give it all the powers you want and you will get one result

The development of a massive black market

Combined with a massive hike in prices to pay for all the pointless bureaucrats who will run roughshod over real people, beating them into submission with the authority of this “Global Environmental Organisation”

Demand and supply will ultimately resolve the problems

Demand increases and human innovation invest more in fish farming

And if the whole thing gets too much, some people will starve.

Of course any statement which starts “Europeans and North Americas have been treating the natural world as if it was a lifeless mass of dirt. They spread to the tropics like a cataclysm, and they took the best land of Africans, Asians, and South Americans and sowed it in cash crops. They killed and decimated wildlife for sport, plundering the valleys, forests, and rivers.”

Is going to be loaded

I would suggest if Evaggelos thinks his idea is such a good idea then he starts by putting it to his Greek brethren.

Lets face it, if the national economic management of Greece is any clue to the capacity of Greeks to supervise a “Global Environmental Organization”, then all is lost before it starts

Of course, if you want to see what happens when the nearest thing to a "Global Organisation" takes "control".. and substitutes for "Market Forces" you could simply look at USSR with all the authority and the tanks to achieve whatever they want -

Then you might ask

Whatever happened to the Aral Sea?

Atman.. I agree with you (obvious really) and Ludwig :-)