Today would seem to be Blog Action Day, 2009. The topic is global warming, and the idea is to get as many bloggers as possible blogging about it on the same day. So...

Being a biologist, not a climatologist or an atmospheric chemist, there isn't much I can say with any real authority on the subject. Luckily, others are and have. We are in very deep trouble, and politicians, afraid of what their voters (not to mention financial backers) will say, are loath to take remedial action. It is very unlikely that this will change before it's far too late. If, in fact, we haven't reached that point already.

It isn't simply political cowardice on the part of our leaders that's sending us down this path. It is also us. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way human beings see themselves, and the goals they set for themselves. The biggest idea that needs to change is our notion of reproduction - most people conceive of it as a fundamental right. Well, there are over 6 billion people crowding onto this planet and the number is steadily increasing. Every environment, including the planet as a whole, has a finite carrying capacity - the number of organisms that it can sustain. Global warming is just one indication that we have exceeded the planet's carrying capacity for human beings. Like bacteria growing in a Petri dish, we are rapidly depleting our resources and poisoning our environment through over-population. Nothing will change for the better until we collectively conclude that population must come down. The best way to achieve that, of course, is through voluntary birth control. The very worst way, the one toward which we are racing at high, heedless speed, is through involuntary birth control in the form of the disease, starvation, and lack of fresh water that over-population will bring.

While we're on the topic of global disaster, there's this set of photographs from Chinese photographer, Lu Guang. He was just awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his work. Smith, himself, as you may know, was beaten nearly to death by thugs hired by a Japanese chemical plant when he tried to document their on-going polluting of Minamata Bay. Mr. Lu's grant amounts to $30,000.00. Mr. Smith apparently had the princely sum of $18.00 in the bank when he died. How much money do you think Exxon, Shell, the various coal companies, and others are pouring into preventing meaningful action on global warming?

I'm not being pessimistic. I wish I were.