Posted on 03/19/2012 11:26:35 AM PDT by Mount Athos
Almost six years ago, I was the editor of a single-topic issue on energy for Scientific American that set out a plan for how to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below a planet-livable threshold of 560 ppm.
If I had it to do over, I would scale back on the nuclear fusion and clean coal, instead devoting at least half of the available space for feature articles on psychology, sociology, economics and political science. Since doing that issue, Ive come to the conclusion that the technical details are the easy part. Its the social engineering thats the killer. Moon shots and Manhattan Projects are childs play compared to needed changes in the way we behave.
A policy article authored by several dozen scientists appeared online March 15 in Science to acknowledge this point: Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.
The report summarized 10 years of research evaluating the capability of international institutions to deal with climate and other environmental issues, an assessment that found existing capabilities to effect change sorely lacking. The authors called for a constitutional moment at the upcoming 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in June to reform world politics and government. Among the proposals: a call to replace the largely ineffective U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development with a council that reports to the U.N. General Assembly, at attempt to better handle emerging issues related to water, climate, energy and food security. The report advocates a similar revamping of other international environmental institutions.
Unfortunately, far more is needed. To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers. There would have to be consideration of some way of embracing head-in-the-cloud answers to social problems that are usually dismissed by policymakers as academic naivete. In principle, species-wide alteration in basic human behaviors would be a sine qua non, but that kind of pronouncement also profoundly strains credibility in the chaos of the political sphere. Some of the things that would need to be contemplated: How do we overcome our hard-wired tendency to discount the future: valuing what we have today more than what we might receive tomorrow? Would any institution be capable of instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting decades, if not centuries? How do we create new institutions with enforcement powers way beyond the current mandate of the U.N.? Could we ensure against a malevolent dictator who might abuse the power of such organizations?
Behavioral economics and other forward-looking disciplines in the social sciences try to grapple with weighty questions. But they have never taken on a challenge of this scale, recruiting all seven billion of us to act in unison. The ability to sustain change globally across the entire human population over periods far beyond anything ever attempted would appear to push the relevant objectives well beyond the realm of the attainable. If we are ever to cope with climate change in any fundamental way, radical solutions on the social side are where we must focus, though. The relative efficiency of the next generation of solar cells is trivial by comparison.
Right. The technical details of fusion energy are easy. What a joke this guy is.
The problem they proposed to solve was how to create a socialist world government.
The answer was to create a global crisis requiring a global dictatorship and, Oila! AGW/Climate Chanee was born.
Doesn't sound very scientific.
Pump up the U. N.
I stopped having any interest in Scientific American when it’s focus stopped being science, and started being politics- left wing politics of course.
And like a good fascist no discussion is allowed.
Sure, Gary. China and India, not to mention the Muslim nations, will be eager to embrace your solution./mega sarc/
Give it a rest, already!
Nobody except Algore and AlecBaldwin still believes in Global Warming.
Scientific American USED to be an excellent mag. that explained complex subjects to the general public.
Now it’s a swill mag.
ping
“Scientific American is considering renaming the magazine to “Totalitarian World Government”
So true. I remember devouring SA (those articles which I could comprehend) as a kid and reading those articles i could understand a dozen times. My Dad worked as a pharmaceutical chemist and subscribed. It has taken decades, but I started noticing it a while ago. The magazine has gone from a paragon of scientific investigation to the absolute epitome of egghead leftist advocacy.
The communist system in Russia fell precisely because the commie bosses themselves were able to get to European shopping malls and districts (Koeln, Marrienplatze etc.) and see ordinary middle-class people buying things which even the rulers of the commie state could not own. WITHOUT that capability, the Russian people might in fact have simply all perished without ever even being able to figure out what the **** had gone wrong.
World government would be the greatest disaster ever visited upon the human race. A thermonuclear war would be better.
My response to him? F*ck you!
How medieval is this?
All ya need to know about where he's coming from right there.
Effective Worl Government is the Mother of all Oxymorons.
Schizophrenic American: the magazine dedicated to double think and the new world order, picking up the banner from Technocracy and striving for one world government representing all the right ideas with none of that messy voting stuff. We know best so just submit to your betters.
To think I subscribed to this rag for twenty years. When Michael(?)Rennie took over, the leftward lean became a left 90 degree turn toward socialism. It was once a pretty informative magazine now it’s just propaganda.
Note to Global Warming Cultists: You have lost the war it is over fools, you are not going to force people to pay taxes on an insane hoax You can yell, scream, jump up and down all what you want but it is not going to happen. In the meanwhile I am enjoying your misery.
Make no mistake, this evil human, if he had the power, would end up ordering the murder of 100's of millions of fellow humans. He would feel no guilt.
This evil human is the product of the left. He and millions of others on the left are godless demons who live to destroy.
Someday blow-back will come to them all. May none of them be shown any mercy.
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