The bad news is that we are in quite a pickle.
The good news about the bad news is that the national science academies of the G8 countries, along with those of Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, China, and India, have issued a unanimous and remarkably strong statement (PDF) about our global energy quandary.
The bad news about the good news about the bad news is that the press is almost totally silent about it, at least in English-speaking countries.
Among the crucial statements in this document (PDF):
- “Our present energy course is not sustainable."
- "Responding to this demand while minimizing further climate change will need all the determination and ingenuity we can muster."
- "The problem is not yet insoluble but becomes more difficult with each passing day."
- "G8 countries bear a special responsibility for the current high level of energy consumption and the associated climate change. Newly industrialized countries will share this responsibility in the future."
Let me be as polite as I can stand about this. Where in the @$#! is the press? A unanimous statement by what amounts to all the world’s scientists is not some transient breeze in the to and fro of politics. These are the facts, according to almost all the extremely smart people whom we ask to figure out what the facts are. Everywhere.
I have friends in the press, and I hate to be confrontational, but this is beyond inexcusable. Can we please draw people’s attention to this, at least a hundredth the attention directed at cheap Hollywood scandals?
I’d appreciate some bell clanging in the blogs about this. I am unhappily astonished by the deathly silence that has greeted this remarkable statement. Let’s fix it. Thanks in advance.
