What to do about warming ?
There are some immediate steps that will be helpful so I'll list them here :
First we need to immediately recognize the value of our fellow beings on Earth, and take steps to conserve the habitat for endangered species, to learn how to create new ecological niches that contain habitat for the entire web of the engangered ecosystems as these cannot ever be replaced, not in a million years!
Second, research into conservation of energy, research into new sustainable energy sources, and research into climate science must be accelerated. The Bush administration must immediately cease to attempt to censor scientific inquiry, and should expose the industry propaganda that seeks to discredit legimate science while allowing the vital peer review process to proceed. We need solid science and there is still a lot to learn in this nacent field.
The satellite systems that monitor the climate, biology and geophysics of the earth must be made a high priority and data gatherinig must be resumed. The Bush administration seriously impaired this aspect of scientific inquiry and it must be turned around so that we can know as much as possible about the effects of our actions, the changes underway. We need to improve our simulations so we need to have better data to check our models, and we need to use our simulators to try out actions and policy changes that we contemplate before it is too late.
Since many of the changes are inevitable, simple justice dictates that we start now to respond to the changes that are comming such as moving development away from land that will be flooded, creating new zones where poor folks can live, conserving farm land that is above the new flood plains, etc.
This will be vastly less expensive if we are smart. An example is in the California Delta, where developers want to build thousands of new homes on land that will be flooded in the next 50 years even if we reverse the long term trends ( and I don't believe that we have the collective intelligence and will to do so). The corrupt system we now call government won't stop the development, and once the people are living in vulnerable locations it is only a matter of time before some event produces a catastrophy where many thousands or more will perish. This is only avoidable if we take the steps to prevent development where we know floods will come. Doesn't cost anything to conserve this land in reality, just telling some greedy folks who want the rest of us to fund their dreams of riches "no"......
Public health is going to be a huge issue, we need millions more workers who can manage epidemics, who can help deal with the spread of tropical diseases as the climate favors insects, as vectors multiply and as deserts spread. The dispora flowing from the shifts in clear water as the mountains dry up, as the deserts consume crop land and as the seas consume the flat land where so many millions now live will be a challenge unparalled in historical times.
We indeed do live in "interesting times" as the Chinese curse goes.....
By responding now we give our descendents a gift that keeps on giving for thousands of years, by failing to respond we doom ourselves and our descendents to a world that is so sad, so full of pain and dying. I think that life on earth will endure, but we must face the consequences of our inadvertant production of so much climate change, recognize our opportunity and act to make it better. There is tremendous opportunity, new industries and plenty of challenge but to fail to act with clear purpose will be to choose a course with suffering beyond any that we have ever imagined.
