s problem -- the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels.
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Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.
Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at ...
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Added by Michael Grove at 15:58 on November 30, 2010
al counsel for Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
It means President Biden is now relying on a change of policy from these states or a change from Congress - otherwise the US is unlikely to achieve its climate targets. This is a significant loss for the president who entered office on a pledge to ramp up US efforts on the environment and climate.
On his first day in office he re-entered the country into the Paris Agreement, the first legally-binding universal agreement on climate change targets. And he committed the country to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 52% by 2030 against 2005 levels.
"While this decision risks damaging our nation's ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, I will not relent in using my lawful authorities to protect public health and tackle the climate crisis," he said. The outcome of this case will be noted by governments around the world, as it will affect global efforts to tackle climate change. The US accounts for nearly 14% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
A United Nations spokesman called it "a setback in our fight against climate change" but added that no single nation could derail the global effort. In the US, this ruling could also affect the EPA's broader existing and future regulatory responsibilities - including consumer protections, workplace safety and public health. The ruling gives "enormous power" to the courts to target other regulations they don't like, Hajin Kim, assistant professor of law at University of Chicago, tells the BBC.
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ies will be jeopardised and life as we know it severely disrupted. Almost all predictions of the likely rate of climate change have been based on estimates which professional observers in the real world NOW show are consistently underestimating the true rate of change.
As a global community we continue to be fixated by conventional 'green' ideas which we believe will help save our world. Lovelock argues that only Gaia theory, which he originated over forty years ago, can really help us understand the crisis fully. The root problem is that there are too many people and animals for the Earth to carry. And there is in fact only one possible procedure which might bring a permanent cure for climate change, but we are unlikely to adopt it.'Our wish to continue business as usual will probably prevent us from saving ourselves' says Lovelock, so we must adapt as best we can and try to ensure that enough of us survive to allow a more capable species to evolve from us. There could hardly be a more important message for humankind. James Lovelock has been an active and accurate observer of the Earth environment since the 1960s and was the first to find CFCs and other gases accumulating in the air. His Gaia theory provides insight into climate change in the coming century.This is his final warning.
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predicament was this terrible! What a pit we are in!” My rather gleeful response was due to the fact that I happen to be in the midst of researching and writing a book exploring the evident fact that resource depletion, debt overhang, and climate change have brought about the end of world economic growth (as currently defined). When I drilled into Fleeing Vesuvius, I encountered a rich vein of thought very much attuned with my own, one that includes stimulating ideas and examples that were new and helpful to me.
While other readers may come to this book with backgrounds different from mine, I think they will nevertheless find just as much stimulation and help as I did.
The authors have applied themselves to an analysis of the most important and fateful economic transition in human history. They are among the People who are Paying Attention (PPA)—an almost completely unorganized demographic consisting of individuals who have the privilege to devote a substantial amount of time to following world political, economic, and environmental news, but who are not blinded by any fixed religious or political ideology.
PPA probably number globally no more than a few million, and (if I may speak for them) have generally come to the conclusion that the world is facing a triple crisis:
The depletion of important resources including fossil fuels and minerals;
The proliferation of environmental impacts, principally climate change arising from both the extraction and use of resources (including the burning of fossil fuels)—leading to snowballing costs from both these impacts themselves and from efforts to avert them; and
Financial disruptions due to the inability of our existing monetary, banking, and investment systems to adjust to both resource scarcity and soaring environmental costs—and their inability (in the context of a shrinking economy) to service the enormous piles of government and private debt that have been generated over the past couple of decades.
While these three crises are converging on us, our leaders remain obsessed with one thing, and one thing only: the maintenance of economic expansion. For a variety of reasons, growth has become essential to the political well-being of modern societies.
Yet our fixation on economic growth prevents our addressing any of the three crises: Governments refuse to curtail greenhouse gas emissions (and thus fossil fuel consumption) because doing so would reduce growth. They refuse to reduce their vulnerability to oil supply shocks because that would require them to proactively rein in oil use, thus threatening growth. And they refuse to explore fundamental changes to financial and monetary systems that would make their economies less susceptible to bubbles and crashes because…well, you can finish the sentence.
Richard Heinberg…