The "climate change" debate has now polarized into two opposing camps. Public discussion focuses solely on their disputes and ignores the real issues. There is no doubt that human activity is a seminal cause of recent changes in natural ecosystems, including weather patterns. However, these changes result from pollution of the biosphere, environmental degradation, and habitat destruction, which in turn derive from Mankind's unsustainable exploitation of the environment. Our addiction to material wealth and mass consumerism is not only obsessive, but increasingly unsatisfying; we are destroying our planet in pursuit of dystopia.

The obvious solution is to change our lifestyles, our ambitions, our industrial processes and our economic systems. Instead, climate change advocates insist that taxes, levies, and "emissions trading schemes" are the only viable and acceptable solutions. This is clearly nonsense, and is trumpeted as part of a globalization program in which money is the dominant tool for enforcing compliance. The consequences of this over-riding agenda impact every field of human activity, and impose and unending program of social "reforms" and "restructuring" that arouse increasing civil unrest.

There is obviously an unrecognized "third option" in the climate change debate whose adherents can be named "climate change repudiators". This group views the present debate as a deliberately engineered distraction from the real issues of environmental degradation that can only be addressed by abandoning the corporate globalization agenda. Practical and effective solutions must be based on sustainable self-sufficiency planned and implemented regionally and locally, rather than by an elite global plutocracy dedicated ruthlessly to ever-increasing wealth, power, and self-indulgence. For a detailed presentation of this topic - "Climate change: the third option" - please visit:

http://52midnight.com

Beelzebub:>> Practical and effective solutions must be based on sustainable self-sufficiency planned and implemented regionally and locally, rather than by an elite global plutocracy dedicated ruthlessly to ever-increasing wealth, power, and self-indulgence.<<

Well said you little devil. You have to sit back and laugh and laugh and laugh at the Greens chasing the consumer while the master pollutes with abandon. Greens (not Rachel Carson’s greens) are possibly the most gullible acolytes to come around since Hitler’s Germany.

Listen, regurgitate, and don't inspect, is the Green mantra.

change our lifestyle?
can you think that is all we need to do.
WE can not even get some to separate rubbish and recycle.
It will take hip pocket diplomacy to fix this, if it costs not to we will do it.

if it costs not to we will do it.
Belly,
you're of course spot-on there. This is where my insistence on National Service comes into play. We need (desperately) a change in mentality. Why ? Because there are a lot of people out there who don't really have to put in much effort for the plenty money they get & they can afford to pay more and, as a consequence won't change their behaviour. I can't help think that a tax rather than a change of view of the situation will not change anything. On the contrary. I think of it like this, if people pay more tax then they'll have less money to spend which in turn will make them look at cheaper, imported options, both goods & labour. Unless we focus on getting back some discipline we'll not divert from the course we're on presently.
I'd start with teachers having to do one year National Service before being let into a class room. Apprentices do one year in NS before commencing their career. I guarantee that we'd see an improvement in our society within 2-3 years. The first positive sign will come from the economy. Have young people do physical labour for a few months & the obesity dilemma will recede. So will pollution.
Healthier people with a sense of responsibility will snowball into a cleaner environment.

> We need (desperately) a change in mentality. .. getting back some discipline ..

Exactly so, individual. We of the older generations kicked up about the often mindless disciplines we endured as children, as children always do; but now that the socially destructive consequences of lack of discipline - and especially of self-discipline - are becoming ever more apparent, many are arguing as do you. A good case can be made for this decline being deliberately engineered by the Global Power Elite. Self-indulgent spoilt brats are far easier to manipulate than are the self-disciplined and self-reliant. Think of the number of TV ads that "lovingly" persuade you to hand over responsibility for this and that to their "expert" attention, or the number of "caring" social commentators who insist that no-one should ever suffer inconvenience or hardship. There is a consistent underlying mentality that claims the moral high ground whilst undermining self-reliance amongst the public, especially the youth.

> I'd start with teachers having to do one year National Service before being let into a class room.

Now there's an interesting suggestion. However, you'd first have to take the whip to Australia's pseudo-military establishment. Oz has been a US protectorate since the Second World War, which we lost (socially, not militarily) to the Americans. Just ask any of the old fellows who came home from the war to find their wives and girlfriends in bed with GIs. None of our frontline military assets can be deployed in a war zone; the assets are unservicable and their operators incompetent. See:

http://52midnight.com/files/l-Fitzgibbon.html

> Have young people do physical labour for a few months & the obesity dilemma will recede. So will pollution. Healthier people with a sense of responsibility will snowball into a cleaner environment.

Yep, you're right on track.

Beelzebub,

I agree with you more or less and am myself consciously thumbing my nose at consumerism. Indeed I've rediscovered real quality of life in living actively and creatively, rather than consuming passively. My consumption overall is extremely modest by western standards and I'm the happier for it.
I think the real problem that confronts us is that humans are relatively short lived, and by the time we wake up to our demeaned consumptive lifestyles, we're well into the second half of our lives. Many never wake up. If we lived for say a thousand years, I'm certain that the vast majority would reject passive consumption of commodified life experience, in its myriad forms.
It's only a minority that gets sufficiently disenchanted with the gruel of consumerism that it rebels against it, nowhere near enough to compromise the functional system of dependence and patronage that both demeans what life could be and degrades the planet in the process.
So I don't believe those who refuse to play the game are anywhere near sufficient in numbers to precipitate change, though there's great quality of life to be rediscovered by those who can break the spell.