Here's what we should be doing: preparing for the coming resource crisis/war.

We need to ultimately aim for sustainability at the individual, community and national level first, like so:

1. Rein in debt except that which is used as a direct creator of sustainable wealth and infrastructure.

2. Related to that is weaning ourselves off cheap imported goods as the long term effects of our addiction to such things are not good at several levels. We're currently weakening our own social, industrial and economic networks, whilst strengthening those of our eventual enemies, all for short term gain. ie. China is selling us the TV cables with which to hang ourselves.

3. Expand scientific research, especially into ways of improving our self-sufficiency efficiency.

4. Redesign (or at least implement in all new areas) housing, infrastructure, and distribution networks to be much more efficient (ie. as local webs rather than fragile, drawn out systems).

5. Be part of a stronger political/military alliance that will at least protect us from those who covet what we have, if not to allow us to covet what others have.

This needs to happen both bottom up and top down, but I don't think we will do any of this. Basically, I think we're going to be stuffed. At best, we might end up as the vassal of a much more powerful nation simply because we will have lived entirely for the present and made no provision for the future.

Mary; I agree entirely, we must all, as individuals and as citizens, try to reduce greenhouse gasses. Our government certainly should do more, much more, but governments are moved by voters. If our government sees that the voters are not committed enough to combating climate change to alter our own life styles, they will have little incentive to do anything on a nation-wide level. We need to apply pressure to our government and look to our own back yards.

Sir Vivor; well said.

The 'overwhelming scientific evidence of human-driven climate change' is a complete and utter lie. Such a pathetic comment should not be written by an objective and intelligent person.

There can be NO SUCH THING as overwhelming scientific evidence in this field. All data comes from computer models, which cannot account for all the different variables involved, and historical investigation. As the climate system is a incredibly highly complex system all such models are badly flawed. No experiments can be run to verify the man made climate change hypothesis.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

Check out a list of many thousands of scientists who disagree with the man made climate change hypothesis
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm

The overwhelming scientific evidence line is so obviously false that Mary should be embarrassed to have ever said it. Shame.

Grey sees red?

"The overwhelming evidence is so obviously false ..."

Perhaps to Grey. Then Grey must have a theory explaining its increasing scientific and political acceptance, in spite of all the glaring flaws which probably can't be addressed in 300 words or less.

But the difficulty with Grey's (assumed) theory is the difficulty as with greenhouse gas behaviour modeling: scientific evidence gathered concerning an aspect of a theory will not prove or disprove the theory, it will only fuel an argument from a particular point of view.

Mary has put a number of positive suggestions concerning action. I have been acting on some of them for years, well before the IPCC became a force to reckon with. My long-term interest in the Club of Rome, in the ecological modeling system of HT Odum, and in biological systems, stems from my awareness that we live on a finite planet, with finite resources and finite space for people and pollutants. That is sufficient for me to invoke the "Precautionary Principle" and do what I can to ensure the future of my children.

If there were no greenhouse gas increase, or by some mechanism, a decrease, our pattern of global industrial development would be no less limited. An organism or society cannot grow beyond its means, in terms of energy and resource requirements.

That being said, I discount Grey's argument and especially support the idea of ethical investment as a growing means of providing benefits to shareholders and influencing economic activity toward more sustainable patterns of living.

It's obvious from Grey's comments that some people don't understand what’s been going on behind the scenes - leading to a lot of controversy, confusion and uncertainty.

The IPCC doesn’t gather scads of data just for kicks – it issues very comprehensive reports at regular intervals for very specific purposes. Why is this so important? Because the IPCC reports are the top of the food chain, the standard of standards, the Big Kahuna of rational and logical reasoning. The IPCC reports are the most ambitious, comprehensive, heavily reviewed, authoritative knowledge-gathering enterprises ever undertaken. It’s got its flaws, but nonetheless, it is as close as humanity is ever likely to get to the understanding of climate change.

Today, 174 countries have ratified, accepted, approved or acceded to the Kyoto Protocol, except most notably the US and Australia.

We have the UN for a reason; it is not good enough for a major UN signatory to take the ball home if they don’t like how the other players play the game. It happened with the war in Iraq, it is happening again with the war on climate change.

People must be able to rely on experts and leaders to guide us. In the context of Global Warming, we have the experts, are we sure about the leaders?

The issue of what we can do is primarily a function of our attitude and behaviour on how we deal with energy use. No matter what we do, Global Warming is going to cost us in some way, but those costs can be met – if targets are agreed, guidance is given and we all just get on with it.

We need to think globally, act locally – we can act in an environmentally sustainable way at the grass roots level, but we need our business and political leaders to act in an environmentally sustainable way at the highest levels of society – as individuals, we need to drive this.

Global Warming is not about political ideology - it’s about giving the planet an environmentally sustainable life – all else follows.

There will always be a few ostriches with their heads in the sand. Best thing is to ignore them now. I trust thousands of scientists and researchers around the world collecting and analyzing ice cores and climate data. Some people seem to think scientists simply "make stuff up" and reveal their obscene ignorance in the process. These people have listened to their [sarcasm]trusted, oh so very trustworthy[/sarcasm] politicians and media sources whose sole concern these days is to sensationalise reality, resulting in serious distortion....and the few skeptics who get unwarranted attention, far more than their more numerous, more substantiated counterparts, by both of the former groups of well renowned spinners/liars (the politicians and media sources).