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For instance, while trying to understand why scepticism of climate-change policies seems to correspond to a conservative persuasion, the Guardian’s Damian Carrington recently opined: “The problem is that global environmental problems require global action, which means cooperation if there are to be no free-riders. That implies international treaties and regulations, which to some on the right equate with communism.”

James Lovelock, has distanced himself from the more extreme implications of his hypothesis. Where Lovelock once predicted “Gaia’s revenge,” he has reflected in a short interview for MSNBC.com on his alarmist tome, and criticised others such as Al Gore for their over-emphasis on catastrophic narratives. This is a remarkable volte face in itself, but reflects a broader phenomenon: the coming to fruition of environmentalism’s incoherence.

The idea that there are too many people, or that the natural world is so fragile that these things are too difficult for normal, democratic politics to deliver, flies in the face of facts.

The truth of “sustainability,” and the meeting at Rio next month, is that it is not our relationship with the natural world that it wishes to control, but human desires, autonomy and sovereignty. That is why, in 1993, the Club of Rome published its report, The First Global Revolution, written by the club’s founder and president, Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider. The authors determined that, in order to overcome political failures, it was necessary to locate “a common enemy against whom we can unite.”

the ethics of dealing with scientific uncertainty may be the most pressing ethical problem facing the human race

The small organic farm greatly discomforts the corporate/industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet.  Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.  Thomas Jefferson said he didn't think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.  It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can't be bullied because they can feed their own faces.

Massive industrial conglomerates that look upon people as anonymous passive serfs, obedient cogs in a mechanistic world, now control far too many aspects of human existence.

National Parks are often view by Americans as the emblem of nature—even with roads running through them clogged with traffic.

The evidence for personal amnesia comes from an analysis of the responses of those people who thought that the bird fauna of the area had not changed

evidence of “generational amnesia

Personal amnesia is when people forget how things used to be during the course of their own lives, for example they may not remember that things which are rarely sighted now were once common

over one-third of participants had a static view

“If we don't realize what we are losing we stand the risk of sleepwalking through the destruction of the natural world without taking action to remedy the situation,”

in the western United States wolves have been locally extinct for so long that no one remembers when they were plentiful. As far the community is concerned wolves are not a part of the natural environment

The problem is especially exacerbated when scientific data is not available regarding past conditions of an ecosystem

human perception of nature is subject to all sorts of failings, due to short life spans, poor communication (generational amnesia), and unreliable memory(personal amnesia)

by 2030, if nothing changes, mankind would need two planets to sustain its lifestyle

Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific adviser, said: "We all need to agree that there's a crisis of understanding, that we're removing the planet's biodiverse resources at a rate which is as fast if not faster than the world's last great extinction."

50 countries are already experiencing "moderate to severe water stress on a year-round basis"

27 countries are "importing" more than half the water they consume - in the form of water used to produce goods from wheat to cotton - including the UK, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and the Netherlands.

A person's footprint ranges vastly across the globe, from eight or more "global hectares" (20 acres or more) for the biggest consumers in the United Arab Emirates, the US, Kuwait and Denmark, to half a hectare in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Afghanistan and Malawi.

The global average consumption was 2.7 hectares a person, compared with a notional sustainable capacity of 2.1 hectares.

the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.

Today the Highlands of Scotland are one of the most deforested lands in the world. Perhaps equally disturbing, the Scots of today, according to Hand, have virtually no conception of a forest, of its ecological vastness and beauty.

environmental problems can be understood as equally serious across generations even while the problems worsen.