Free Republic

How did this manage to find its way into print? Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasn't it? Too bad it's not going to for much longer. According to a new study sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, we only have a few decades left before everything we know and hold dear collapses. The report, written by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center along with a team of natural and social scientists, explains that modern civilization is doomed. And there's not just one particular group to blame, but the entire fundamental structure and nature...

Our unsustainable population levels are depleting resources and denying a decent future to our descendants. We must stop the denial. A 2009 NPR story on U.S. pregnancies reported that half — yes, half — of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended. That's a lot of unintended consumers adding to our future climate change. And that's what the right calls the "liberal" side of the mass media. The politically conservative U.S. mass media cover unsustainable population levels even less. That pretty much reflects the appalling state of U.S. public education today on population. The U.S. approach to population issues across all levels...

The Second Revolution is on the way! By Dave Duffy Does anyone know how much money a trillion dollars is? It's a handy thing to know because our country will be about $12.5 trillion in debt by the time you read this. snip There are several ways to try to get a mental grip on just how much money a trillion is. Reader Harvey Smith of Visalia, California, suggests we think of it in seconds: One million seconds would take you back 11.5 days, one billion seconds would take you back 31.7 years, and one trillion seconds would take you...

The aims of the World Summit on Sustainable Development are laudable. Cleaner air and water, better stewardship of global resources, the eradication of poverty and disease no one can argue with such objectives. The question is how to get there from here. Let me offer a prescription for sustainable development that begins with a simple and powerful idea - an idea which, unfortunately, will often be at odds with what delegates, journalists and other observers hear in Johannesburg. The idea is that economic growth leads to levels of wealth and income that, in turn, inevitably produce societies that are cleaner,...

Nearly four years ago, a group of freedom-loving organizations met in Washington, D.C., to organize the Freedom 21 Campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to "Advance the principles of freedom in the 21st century." At its first national conference, leaders from dozens of grassroots organizations adopted the Principles of Freedom, based on the founding documents of the United States. At its second national conference, the grassroots leaders launched an initiative to develop a more comprehensive document which sets forth very specific policy recommendations to advance the principles of freedom in the 21st century, as an alternative to the U.N.'s...

The World Summit on Sustainable Development will convene Aug. 26 to Sept. 4, in Johannesburg, South Africa, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the birth of "sustainable development." This concept was given life when more than 150 nations adopted Agenda 21, at the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992. Even though this 40-chapter, "soft-law" document is not legally binding, the concept of sustainable development has spread around the world, and in the United States, it is squeezing freedom from the land of the free. It is difficult to wrap a brain around this concept...

The United Nations will throw its biggest environmental party in 10 years later this month in Johannesburg. In preparation, the UN has rushed to publication a preliminary report about a new environmental pestilence, the so-called Asian Brown Cloud (ABC). The UN says the Brown Cloud will kill millions and wreck the Asian monsoon, which is responsible for feeding about 2 billion people in one way or another. But, like many UN environmental reports, this one fails to mention some crucial points. Nightmarish reports like the one about the ABC have a way of appearing right before big UN environmental conferences...

PARIS (Reuters) - A new U.S. cash handout to a global ecology fund and signs that rich nations will take a bigger role in cleaning up the planet could yet save this month's "Earth Summit" from failure, a top U.N. official said on Thursday. U.N. Environment Program chief Klaus Toepfer said he had seen progress in tackling some of the issues that scuppered a preparatory meeting in June for the Johannesburg summit aimed at alleviating world poverty and protecting the environment. "I believe there is a lot of activity going on to come to this Plan of Implementation and to...