"If we are to have a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, each of us must reduce his or her carbon footprint."
A good start is to reduce the number of "his and hers".

Well there is our problem.

If a highly educated academic can convince themselves that the destructive riots following the death of George Floyd "show human nature at its compassionate best" it proves that political allegiances can negate any amount of book learning or common sense.

This one has it bad. If he has ever applied the math he must have at his disposal he can not possibly believe the scam of global warming, but expresses that belief to comply with the narrative of his tribe.

God help us, & protect us from academics.

Human nature is any characteristic pertaining to our species that distinguishes us from other forms of life. It can be natural or environmentally related or be a cultural or social trait.

The best example of human nature is greed. I do not know of any other life form that shares that trait. How many things can be related to human greed?

Mr O,
The worst and most important, thing related to human greed is the ongoing destruction of the Environment, and hence the planet, our only home.

ateday,

Yes, it is our greed that drives us to destroy the natural environment at the expense of driving other species into extinction.

Christianity is particularly at fault because it declares that God gave man dominion over all over things to be used for his own purpose. Prior to the growth of religious systems there was feminine relationship between people and their environment that maintained a balance between the environment and human activity. The creation of religious systems transformed the feminine / Mother Earth unity to a patriarchal / male dominated system which began to decimate the natural world to the advantage of the human species.

Mr O,
Yes sadly we have this mistaken belief that WE are the most important species and superior to all else.
The sad fact is we are the only animal species wantonly engaged in deliberately destroying our own Environment, our only life support system, for our own selfish wants.
No other animals species does this.

ateday,

But we do have a good excuse: God told us we could do it.

To some extent we are the prduct of our genetically endowed nature!
And even there that is moderated and molded by what we live and what we learn!

Every human extant on the planet can do the most obscene evil, given the right circumstances? Say the need to survive!

Or after doctrination and brainwashing to believe that this evil is not evil but somehow good? Say the systematic elimination of a particular ethnicity!? The practice of slavery. The sexual abuse of children. Non conceptual sex and rape in marriage! Etc! The list is very long and there are word limits!

On the other hand we hear of some remarkable stories of humanity and heroism in the most difficult circumstances imaginable! Or the part played by love in any of the latter? Which makes love the most powerful force for good on the planet/universe. Given my druthers, I vote for humanity to man and for love! And for the almighty irrefutable truth!
Alan B.

read the bible. It describes human nature as very corrupt. Can't argue with that unless you are in denial.

Even if we all do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint! That will not be enough! And a nonsense if only one third of the population can afford to take such steps/make those choices!

We could change the direction we are headed in if we as a race,i.e., the human race changed a couple of things?

How we generate baseload power and how we transport stuff/perisables, durables.

The first means transitioning to a clean, safe, cheap carbon free, dispatchable, reliable 24/7 power. The second is the electrification of the economy.

Do those two things ASAP. And not only is a robust recovery assured but also, unprecedented economic growth and unparalleled universal prosperity.

The roadblocks are the usual suspects, greed and I'm alright Jack,individualism. Stupidity and idiotic ideological imperatives! Nothing else!

And its the same element that is virtually shooting themselves in their own economic foot to stop or delay what we know must be done.

Moreover, there has never ever been a better opportunity or excuse!
Alan B.

Just a couple of remarks to some of the comments on this thread.

Firstly, humans are not the only biological entities to have caused planet wide environmental changes. For example, the air you breath is a result of biological action. A few billion years ago their was negligible oxygen in the air but heaps of carbon dioxide. Then cyanobacteria evolved into existence and started converting the C02 into 02, such that today the air is about 20% oxygen while C02 is a trace gas below 1%. The changes we as a species have made to the composition of the atmosphere pale into insignificance compared to cyanobacteria. There are also many other instances of planet wide changes. For example, the grasses never existed until about only 55-65 million years ago. But now grassland, such as prairies and savannah, cover about 40% of the Earth's land area. The existence of grass has had a huge impact on the animal kingdom, in our own case mammals co-evolved with it and thus our species exists because of it.

Secondly, it's claimed here that humans are the only life-form that is greedy. If you define greed as action/behaviour that claims/protects/controls a physical asset to the detrimental exclusion of other life forms then greed is extremely common among the planet's species be they animals, plants, bacteria, etc. Many (most?) species either at the individual level or at the level of the group/community are greedy because it gives them an advantage to survive and reproduce. For example, many male mammals will mark and protect their territory and also isolate their breeding partners to the exclusion of other males. Another example, many species of tree will release chemicals into the soil that inhibit the growth of other species to limit competition for nutrients. In the biological world as a general rule: greed is good!

So, straight after I post what do I see: my most common personal pet peeve grammatical mistake. "their" should be obviously be "there" in "A few billion years ago their was negligible oxygen".

There's sure to be other mistakes if I read the post again- but that particular one always annoys me. I do it all the time and I only ever seem to notice it after posting.

Alan B,

Perhaps a not so drastic (or precipitous) alternative to reach our goal.

Firstly, we know Aus is nowhere near one of the main contributors to global emissions, but it may be possible for us to partially compensate for the 'recalcitrant ones' (US, China, etc).
However, it would be costly, at least initially, and now is not a good time to be talking added expenditure. Though jobs would be created, and the project could potentially offset most of our carbon (coal export) footprint.

So, Aus has much semi-arid little-used semi-central land, and wastes the potential of huge volumes of continental northern rain-season runoff to the sea - but the topography makes it a problem to send the water south. Not an insurmountable problem, just a lot of drilling and channeling.

Vegetation converts CO2 to food, fodder, timber, and some can produce oils which may be converted to fuel to run tractors, etc.

The Bradley Scheme proposed to channel northern Queensland waters south, to provide potential to not only massively increase the productive capacity of land to the south, but also to overcome the scourges of drought and flood in this southern area - and could put an end to virtually all Murray Darling Basin problems.

Convert near-desert to productive agriculture, solar-power enhanced, feed millions, fuel a few thousand trucks and tractors, and wipe Australia's emissions slate clean a hundred times over.

Duplicate the scheme down the west coast, where land use below the Ord river is marginal, and the sky's the limit - with potential, eventually, to maybe convert the Sturt Stoney Desert to a forest or a Garden of Eden Mk2?

We Aussies can find more than one way to skin a cat.

As for Human Nature - its still 'an evolving feast' (Or, beast) - a work in progress.

Saltpetre,

That Bradley Scheme - pumping much of the waters that now flow north into the Gulf of Carpentaria, over those central ranges, into rivers that flow south from central Queensland and eventually into the Darling:

Is it possible to at least envisage nuclear power playing a huge role - first, in powering tunnelling machines; then in powering a broad system of pumping stations ?

Once the infrastructure was in place, the cheap power produced by nuclear power stations could irrigate vast areas of central and southern Queensland (and perhaps south-eastern NT), and of course the Darling-Murray Basin.

That way, South Australia could at last get back much of the water to which it is entitled, but which is currently stolen by greedy cotton-producers in up-stream states.

Joe

Sorry Joe, a better idea would be to close the bludging state of South Australia down, & let the people who's water it demands be left where it fell, for the use of those people. A much better idea than filling a huge artificial lake from which it evaporates uselessly.

If South Australians want other peoples rain water, perhaps they should buy it on the open market. If they had to pay for it, they would most certainly not waste so much.

We could then not have to pump perfectly good coal fired electricity down the interconnecter to fix a problem of too much or no wind developed by the fools who live there.

Some of us would also like the huge pipe flowing GST payments of Queenslanders to southern bludgers, left where it was collected, to do something for those who pay their own way, & South Australias as well.

A worthwhile discussion, but the author's question is faulty:
"Are we humans good or evil?" makes the false assumption as if we are human.
How we came to be associated with humans is a fascinating topic, still we are not these humans with which we temporarily associate.

When discussing human nature on its own, all we can say is that it is inert.
While relatively more sophisticated, human nature is still like animal nature, plant nature and the mineral nature from which humans are made - inert!

We enliven with consciousness the humans with which we associate, that are otherwise as good or as evil as their surrounding rocks.

Hinduism has vast and profound teachings about the relationships between spirit, matter and the mind that is sandwiched between them, but should we attempt to simplify and reduce this knowledge to the Judeo-Christian model, we end up with: "Human body - bad, Human spirit - good".

how are Sydney's dam levels? Another dud prediction by our scientific experts. You really have to be ignorant to accept evolution as a fact. Of course it was largely responsible for our first people to be considered less evolved. That is an inconvenient fact for those who think we came from apes. Yep unfortunately true science (something tested, proven and reproduced) has a very bad name due to pseudo science. Any fool can see how fanciful so called gw science is which really is an offspring of the idiotic evolution fantasy. Evolution itself proves how desperate and evil the heart of man is. They would not have to make up such idiotic stories to deny the obvious (Creator) if man was not evil.