OFF: UK's premier green awareness festival under threat from police and local council.

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Wed, 29 Jul 2009, M Holmes wrote:

> I'd love to hear how we caused global warming on Mars and Titan...
>
> *Some* of it may be linked to human activity. What we don't know is
> whether that amounts to even most of it.

 	Not, of course, that that removes the urgency of doing something 
about it... A five-degree rise in temperature could make things very 
uncomfortable for us whether we caused it or not. But this, and Mike C.'s 
suggested population culls, are all targeting the wrong places. Our 
consumption in the US and Europe is pretty appallingly high, but our 
environmental practices, while nowhere near what we might like, are 
globe-leading. (Okay, maybe not the US.) And the birth rate is below 
replacements levels both sides of the Atlantic, isn't it? The populations 
are rising, where they are, because of immigration. (I could be wrong 
about this, but I'm sure I've seen figures from heavens know what 
source for Western europe at least.)

 	No, the real problem is going to be the rest of the world trying 
to have our standard of living. That's going to cause real problems long 
before Mother Gaia decides it's time for a sweat bath. "So place your 
trust in science, for it has come so far...": I think the only way out 
that's likely is a breakthrough on the energy crisis that allows cheap and 
renewable energy out to the developing economies. And that, unlike halting 
non-anthropogenic climate change, is something we can reasonably hope to 
achieve in the short term.

 	All this aside, did the BGG fans here see that the close-down got 
a very suspicious column by George Monbiot in _The Guardian_ a few days 
ago?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/aug/03/green-activism-police-licence

or

http://tinyurl.com/lxszes

Yours,
 	Jon

ObCD: Company Flow - _Funcrusher Plus_
-- 
       Jonathan Jarrett, Cambridge    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
    =======================================================================
  "With Capitalism, man exploits man.  With Socialism, it is exactly opposite"
 	                 -Robert Anton Wilson