market capitalism has arrived at a critical juncture

sustainable development will be the primary driver of economic and industrial change over the next 25 years

sustainability issues are central to business and should be incorporated in the analysis of business and management quality

some residents are fighting proposals to build vast solar-energy plants in the Mojave Desert, one of the most remote and reliably sunny spots in the U.S.

Up and down the East Coast, meanwhile, residents are opposing plans for wind farms, fearing they will mar views and lower property values.

The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about AGW now….

“The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.“

they simply omit the costs of many of the potential negative aspects of producing a stratospheric cloud to block out sunlight or cloud brightening

our early twenty-first century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond.

Today, our successes and problems flow from the extraordinary growth in the world economy over the last century.

While the economy is growing exponentially, the earth’s natural capacities, such as its ability to supply fresh water, forest products, and seafood, have not increased. Humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. Today, global demands on natural systems exceed their sustainable yield capacity by nearly 30 percent. We are meeting current demands by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for decline and collapse.

these underlying environmental factors that inevitably prompted societal collapse

societal collapse is often avoidable – a message that is painfully pertinent given the ecologically unsustainable nature of many modern societies

there are many reasons why societies make disastrous decisions, including a lack of foresight; poor governance that ensures people can get away with doing things that are in their personal interest but not in the interest of the society; a lack of flexibility that leaves societies that no longer work in a changing environment; and perhaps most importantly a refusal to acknowledge a problem even exists

“If I was Japan’s worst enemy trying to figure out a strategy to drive it into a crisis in 10 years’ time, my strategy would be to get the Japanese to do exactly what they are doing, which is to over-harvest their main source of protein.”

“There is a parallel based on the same fundamental mechanisms of the economic collapse that we’re seeing now and the collapse of past civilisations such as the Maya,”

only those societies able to stamp out unsustainable habits – over-logging, overspending, over-extension – have the ability to survive

"if geo-engineering studies focus too heavily on warming, critical risks associated with such possible "cures" will not be evaluated appropriately"

climate change is about much more than changes in temperature. So using temperature alone to monitor the effects of geo-engineering could be dangerous.

current climate models tend to underestimate the effects on precipitation of both greenhouse gases and of volcanic eruptions

"Today's system of political economy, referred to here as modern capitalism, is destructive of the environment, and not in a minor way but in a way that threatens the planet,"

current obsession with GDP growth at all costs must be abandoned

a shift to much more participative and popular forms of democracy

illness and premature death in coal mining regions far outweigh any economic benefits

though coal mining brought in about $8 billion to the state coffers of Appalachian states, the costs of the shorter life-spans associated with coal mining operations were nearly $17 billion to $84.5 billion

Everyone who lives near the mines or processing plants or transportation centers is affected by chronic socioeconomic weakness that takes a toll on longevity and health.

About 50 million years ago, Earth was a hothouse – the poles were ice free, and crocodiles lived in the Arctic. Then, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere started dropping from around 1000-1500 parts per million (ppm), and the Earth began to cool.

By about 24 million years ago, the uplift of the Himalayan and Andes mountain ranges led to large-scale weathering of rocks, a process that removes massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. This reduced the greenhouse effect and cooled the planet.

Trees play an important role in the sequestration of atmospheric CO2 in magnesium and calcium carbonate rocks.

Multi-national food corporations are increasingly using global food insecurity as a tool for political control.

rich countries are buying poor countries’ fertile soil, water and sun to ship food and fuel back home.

“USAID is actually an arm of the US-Department of Defense; it serves US foreign policy interest and has little to do with humanism.”

"A polystyrene cup will dissolve almost instantly in biodiesel, like a snowflake in water,"

There are 263 cross-boundary waterways in the world. Between 1948 and 1999, cooperation over water, including the signing of treaties, far outweighed conflict over water and violent conflict in particular. Of 1,831 instances of interactions over international freshwater resources tallied over that time period (including everything from unofficial verbal exchanges to economic agreements or military action), 67% were cooperative, only 28% were conflictive, and the remaining 5% were neutral or insignificant. In those five decades, there were no formal declarations of war over water2.

it is foolish for Israel, a water-short country, to grow and then export products such as oranges and avocados, which require a lot of water to cultivate

water 'embedded' in traded products could be important in explaining the absence of conflict over water