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November 10, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - It has been over one month since the Russians launched their military and political operation in Syria and the time for hyperbole and flag waving has clearly passed.  Gone are the “most anticipated showdown in recent history” along with rumors of MiG-31s, Russian paratroopers, “thousands” of military personnel, ballistic submarines and other such nonsense.   And, contrary to what some wrote, none of what happened was “coordinated with the White House”.  What I propose to do today is to evaluate what has really has happened and to look at the Russian options for the future.  But first, a short restatement of what really took place.

A very daring operation by a small military force

I will never repeat this enough: the Russian military forces is a small one.  Yes, they are flying an impressive amount of sorties every day (anywhere between 50 to 80).  But let’s compare that to the Israeli air force effort during the war against Hezbollah in 2006 when the Israelis flew 400 (four hundred) sorties every day.  Add to this the massive Israeli artillery barrage and even attacks from the Israeli Navy.  Finally, let’s remember that Israel was not fighting all of Hezbollah at all, but only 2nd tier Hezbollah forces south of the Litani River totaling less than 1000 fighters (Hezbollah kept all the best trained forces north of the Litani River).

So let’s compare the two operations:

Keep in mind that the AngloZionist propaganda always presents the Israeli military in general and the Israeli Air Force in particular as some kind of quasi-invincible super-force of uber-trained heroes who are the best of the best.  One quick look at the chart above tells you who the real super heroes are in reality.

But my main point is not to ridicule the Israelis but to point out the huge difference in size between the two forces and to ask a simple question: if a huge Israeli force could not defeat about 1’000 2nd tier Hezbollah fighters, what could the small Russian force realistically achieve?

This, really, is THE key question.  And, the answer, is quite obvious: the Russian force was never sent to Syria to defeat Daesh or even change the course of the civil war.  The real goal of the Russian interventions were very limited in purely military terms.

First and foremost, the Russian tried to break the US and Turkish momentum for an overt military intervention.  In that they undoubtedly succeeded.  The second goal was to provide limited but nonetheless crucial support for the Syrian military (including moral support).  Again, in that they also undoubtedly succeeded and on most sectors the Syrians are on the offensive, however slowly.  Third, it now appears that one of the goals of the Russian intervention was to basically provide the Syrians with a modern air-defense capability and, in that, the Russians have also succeeded, even if partially.  Why do I say partially? Because while the current air-defense capabilities of the Russian forces in Syria are adequate to defend the Syrian airspace against a limited attack, they are far from being sufficient to prevent the US from a determined large scale attack.  All the Russian did is raise the costs of intervention for the USA, but they did not make it impossible.  Interestingly, the Iranians have declared today that they have (finally!) finalized the sale of Russian S-300s to Iran.  In doing so Russia not only helps protect Iran, but the Russian military also helps a friendly country secure an airspace which might be vital for Russian efforts in the future.

The real “action” however was never military but political: Russia literally forced the US to negotiate with Iran and, eventually, Syria by making it politically impossible not to.  The mantra “Assad must go” is now gone and the AngloZionists have to at least give the appearance of being willing to negotiate.  Again, this is undoubtedly a major victory for Russia.

Now let’s look at the (predictable) bad news

Of course, this is “bad news” only for those who from day 1 bought into the “game changing” narrative about the Russian military intervention.  For those who, like myself, prefer facts to slogans, none of the following came as a big surprise.  In fact, all this was predictable and predicted.

First, Daesh did rapidly adapt to the Russian air campaign.  The first thing Daesh realized is that regardless of how intensive the Russian bombing campaign was, it would have a very limited impact on the actual line of contact, on the front line.  As far as I know, the only location where the Russians did provide some limited close air support was in the Latakia province and along the main highway to the north.  This is now slowly changing as the Russian are now gradually shifting from operational targets to tactical ones, i.e. instead of hitting command or training centers or ammo dumps, they are now gradually increasing their support for the Syrian military engaged in direct combat.  Until last week or so, all the Syrians had to support them on the ground were 30 year old MiG-21s and MiG-23s.  This is now reportedly changing in some key sectors of the front.

Second, instead of just hunkering down, Daesh went on the offensive in several sectors of the front, thereby forcing the Syrians to send troops to these sectors and that, in turn, prevented the Syrians from concentrating enough firepower and manpower along their chosen axes of attack to achieve an operational breakthrough.  The lack of manpower (the 4 year long civil war took a terrible toll on the Syrians) is a crucial Syrian vulnerability which Daesh has very skillfully exploited.

[Sidebar: for those confused by the above, let me explain this: the general rule of thumb – not an absolute rule for sure – in the military is that the defending side has a big advantage over the attacker and that therefore the attacking side needs roughly a 3:1 advantage over the defender.  Again, this is a very rough approximation and in certain situations such as urban or mountain warfare this ratio might go much higher up, to 6:1 and even higher.  Now, the attacked does not need to achieve this 3:1 ratio in the full length of the front, only in the primary and, possibly, secondary sector of attack, which is typically very narrow.  Hence the importance of making deliberately detectable false attacks – to have the defender concentrate his forces in the wrong place.  By constantly going on the offensive along various parts of the front Daesh is forcing the Syrians to send in reinforcements which they would otherwise use in the offensive.  This is why the Syrians did not achieve any operational breakthrough, at least so far]

The (truly) unpredictable bad news: Flight 9268

More and more signs are pointing to the very high probability that Kogalymavia Flight 9268 was destroyed in mid-air by a bomb.  Interestingly, even Egyptian experts which everybody suspected of wanting to cover this up are now saying that they are 90% sure that a bomb caused the crash.  The Russians ain’t saying much, but all their actions are consistent with the same hypothesis.  While we will have to wait for the official report to get the facts (yes, I trust this report simply because there are too many countries involved and the Russians have no reasons to lie) I personally have come to the conclusion that by now the destruction of Flight 9268 by a bomb is a reasonable working hypothesis.  I believe that this bomb was placed inside the aircraft by one or several individuals either sympathetic to Daesh and the Muslim Brotherhood or simply for money.  I am aware that there are already plenty of goofballs out there offering much more exotic explanations (from a fly-by-wire backdoor to an Israeli missile to an energy weapon) but, being a great believer in Occam’s razor, I will stick to the simplest explanation until I am provided with fact-based logical reasons to think otherwise.

As I have written in the past, I don’t believe that this tragedy will have a significant impact on the Russian operation in Syria or on Russian policies, if only because there is really nothing much the Russians can do.

In this case again, there is a lot of hyperbole around what the Russians might do if it is proven that Daesh or Daesh sympathizers placed this bomb on the aircraft.   Furthermore, since Daesh is really a creation of the AngloZionist Empire, then the latter would have to be held accountable, at least under the Command Responsibility doctrine.  The Washington Post has already decided to preempt any such suggestions by ridiculing any possible Russian or Egyptian statements that the CIA might be involved.  And considering the “special relationship” the USA has the Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE or Qatar, any suggestions that these countries are involved would also put Russia on a collision course with CENTCOM.  Personally, I think that it is perfectly fair and reasonable to place the responsibility for all the atrocities committed by al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh & Co on the AngloZionist Empire, including the wars in Bosnia, Chechnia and 9/11.  Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, Qatar or Israel are all just parts of the “Empire of Kindness” created by the US deep state and while they might have disputes with each other they are basically all serving the same interests.  And there is no doubt in my mind that Putin fully understands that.  The problem is that Russia is too weak a country to be able to declare that or even to acquiesce to any such statements.  Not only does the Kremlin want to avoid a direct war with the USA, but even an open-ended political and economic confrontation with the so-called “West” is something which Russia is trying hard to avoid due to her comparative weakness.  I therefore don’t believe that Russia will take any direct actions against the countries sponsoring and controlling Daesh.

There is another interesting hypothesis made by some observers.  According to them, the real purpose of the bombing of Flight 9268 would  be to draw Russian into a ground operation against Daesh.  Here again, if that was the goal behind this atrocity, I don’t believe that it will work.  Just like Russia did everything in her power to avoid openly intervening militarily in the Donbass, Russia will do everything possible to avoid any ground operation in Syria (for a detailed discussion of the Russian reasons please see here and here).  If 60% of Russians are opposed to an direct intervention in the Donbass, then there will be even much more opposition to any Russian ground operation in Syria.  Finally, as I have written many times, the Russian military (as a whole) was never designed to operate at beyond 1000km from the Russian borders and Russia therefore simply lack that kind of power-projection capability.

Frustrating as this might be, the right thing do to for Russia is to do nothing or, more accurately, to do nothing different from what she has been doing so far.

Russia does have the capabilities to increase her military involvement in Syria and I have already mentioned these options in the past.  They include using long-range aviation from Russia or, better, using an Iranian air base.  Alternatively, Russia could decide to build a “Khmeimim 2″ airbase near Latakia and commit more aircraft.  Maybe I am wrong here, but I don’t see that as a solution.  In my opinion, there is a limited timeframe for the Syrian military to achieve an operational victory against Daesh, after that I see no other option left but an Iranian ground intervention (which, by itself, would be a very complex matter and which would trigger a massive anti-Iranian hysteria in the US-controlled part of our planet).

So all I am left with is the hope that the Russian General Staff’s modeling capabilities are as good as they are supposed to be and that the very limited but highly effective Russian intervention will be sufficient to go from having a quantitative effect to a qualitative one.  I hope that the sum of small tactical victories will eventually bring Daesh to a breaking point significant enough to allow for a Syrian operational success.  I will gladly admit that at the end of the day I trust Putin and the superb team of generals he has placed at the head of the Russian armed forces.

In conclusion I want to say that I am very proud of what the Russians are doing in Syria, both militarily and politically.  They have shown an immense amount of courage and skills, at all levels of the game.  But I also think that it is crucial for all of us, who are sympathetic to Russia and the anti-imperial Resistance worldwide, to stop presenting this intervention like some kind of “game changing” “done deal” in which the Russian Bear will crush all the terrorists and restore peace to Syria.  Alas, we are still very very far from that.  What the Russian have provided is an absolutely vital and very daring last minute temporary solution to a very dangerous situation about to get much worse.  They did that knowing full well that they were at a huge political, geographic and military disadvantage and that their move was extremely risky.  I would not say that Putin is risk averse, but he is certainly very cautious and for him to have authorized such an operation must have been very difficult.  My guess is that what made him decide in favor of this intervention is the (correct) belief that the Russian forces in Syria are not only fighting for Syria, but that they are first and foremost fighting for Russia.  Every Wahabi/Takfiri organization on the planet has already declared a jihad against Russia and Russia has been fighting these crazies ever since the USA and the Saudis literally federated them in Afghanistan (the “brilliant” plan of Brzezinski and, later, Reagan).  The Russian people know and understand that, and Putin has repeated that often enough to have this message fully sink in.  This is why the Russians will hold the course even if a major setback occurs and this is also why they will not have an events like the bombing of Flight 9268 by US-run puppet distract them from their real objective: help the Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians defeat Daesh.

This year the rains failed in southern Ethiopia and some 25% of a country of 90 million people are facing acute food shortages in the coming months. This climate disaster, brought on mainly by western industries damage to the environment, has left the Ethiopian government quietly begging the international community for a preliminary food aid package worth $500 million, desperately needed to start feeding over 7 million people.

Wait a minute. Didn’t the World Bank just anoint Ethiopia with the title of the worlds fastest growing economy and not just for 2015, but for 2016 and 2017 as well? Get this now, Ethiopia is the worlds fastest growing economy yet it needs half a billion dollar$ in emergency food aid to keep millions of its people from starving?

When you fight your way through all the smokescreens thrown up in self defense by the international financial banksters you finally find that Ethiopia is expecting a total net export income of $3 billion this year, depending much on the price of coffee, for the sacred brew and cut flowers make up most of Ethiopian export income.

$3 billion dollars a year is all that Ethiopia actually creates, and this to run a country of 90 million?

The bottom line is Ethiopia’s “wealth” is almost entirely in the form of foreign aid/investments, something that can disappear even faster than it arrived.

On top of all this Ethiopia has the largest best equipped army in Africa including advanced missile systems which it used to attack the Eritrean town of Dekamhare early this year.

Ethiopia has hundreds of thousands of troops on the Eritrean border including occupying Eritrean territory. Ethiopia also has tens of thousands of troops on the border with Somalia or in Somalia itself.

Ethiopia is fighting an insurgency in the south east, the Ogaden. Ethiopia carrys out counterinsurgency activities in the west in Gambella, home to some 1 billion barrels of oil reserves. And of course, Ethiopia is fighting a large well armed guerilla army in the regimes ethic homeland of Tigray based on the Eritrean border, an army now directed by the leadership council of the newly united major Ethiopian opposition groups such as Ginbot, the real winners of the 2005 “election”.

All of this funded by a total of some $3 billion actually generated by the country? In reality it takes another $13 billion a year to fund the Ethiopian “miracle”, with the tab having been picked up until recently mainly by the western banksters and governments.

With the appearance of China in a major way Ethiopia has been a subject for concern by the western warlords, with Barack Obama spending several hours reassuring Ethiopian P.M. Desalegne during a first ever visit to the country by a sitting US President during Obama's recent trip to Africa.

Ethiopia is the only country in the world to be allowed to expel both the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from an entire region/nation, the Ogaden. And this during the worst climate disaster droughts in history. Even North Korea allows the Red Cross.

When you get past all the smoke and mirrors Ethiopia is the policeman on the beat in East Africa for the USA, part of Pax Americana’s policy of using local gendarmes to do its dirty work.

And now China is jumping into the mix with a major economic infusion, building a $3 billion railroad from Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa to its only port, Djibouti amongst many billion$ of capital projects in the country.

The capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, is the most visible sign of this investment, taking on a boom town look, with Africa's only urban electric train and double decker freeways running through the city. Its only when you leave Addis Ababa and the freeway turns into a dirt road does the real Ethiopia come into play.

In the real Ethiopia journalists are not allowed outside the capital Addis Ababa. If they try to sneak into the rest of the country they are shot and wounded, thrown into a dungeon and then convicted on terrorism charges. I met one of the Swedish reporters I am referring to who have written a book about their ordeal and are on a speaking tour which includes the USA.

A good representation of what life is like for most Ethiopians can be found in the film “Lamb” making the rounds of the international film festivals. Living in a one room hut, no electricity, carrying drinking water on donkeys for long distances, few schools, fewer medical clinics and now at the mercy of climate disaster and famine.

Yet this is the fastest growing economy in the world for years to come according to the financial terrorists at the World Bank.

The bizarre side of all this is that as scenes of millions of starving Ethiopians once again blight the tv screens of the world, the banksters through the western media will keep telling us how fast the Ethiopian economy is growing, one of Africa's success stories.

The problem is climate disaster doesn't care about all the propaganda, it just goes about its deadly task of reaping what you sow, as in the western industrialists destruction of the environment and African people starving to death as a result.

Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached via twitter @thomascmountain, on facebook at thomascmountain or thomascmountain at gmail dot com

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 to be held in Paris, from November 30 to December 11 is already a failure even before it starts. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs were submitted by 155 nations by the October 1 dealine. Analysis of the INDCs reveal that the pledges made by the nations can limit temperature increase only to 3 degrees Celsius. It is a climb down from they 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference which sent the the long-term goal of limiting the maximum global average temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, subject to a review in 2015. There was, however, no agreement on how to do this in practical terms. It also included a reference to consider limiting the temperature increase to below 1.5 degrees - a key demand made by vulnerable developing countries.

Quoting an analysis by the European Commission Joint Research Center on the INDCs submitted by 155 countries Yale Environment 360 reported:

National climate pledges submitted so far by 155 countries — responsible for around 90 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — could limit the planet's long-term temperature increase to around 3 degrees Celsius, according to an assessment by the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC).

The climate pledges, submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change ahead of December's climate negotiations in Paris, are officially known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs. Analysis of unconditional INDCs concludes that, if fully implemented, they could set global emissions growth at around 17 percent above 2010 levels by 2030.

Combining unconditional and conditional INDCs — those that would rely on such mechanisms as international climate financial support — JRC found that global carbon emissions could peak shortly before 2030 at 12 percent above 2010 levels, then decline sufficiently to hold temperature increases to 3 degrees C.

USA, the second largest emitter and the highest per capita emitter made a vague declaration under the American Business Act on Climate Pledge. Under this pledge 81 companies committed to reduce emissions. In 2014 November, President Obama had set an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide by 26-28% by 2025.

China which is the largest Carbon emitter in the world, but only 6th in terms of per capita emissions pledged to aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 60-65% from 2005 levels. China said it would increase the share of non-fossil fuels as part of its primary energy consumption to about 20% by 2030, and peak emissions by around the same point, though it would “work hard” to do so earlier.

India, the world’s third biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has pledged to source 40% of its electricity from renewable and other low-carbon sources by 2030. India’s population of 1.2 billion, about 363 million of whom live in poverty, is projected to grow to 1.5 billion by 2030. “It is estimated that more than half of India of 2030 is yet to be built,” India’s submission claimed. The country has previously pledged an emissions intensity cut of up to 25% by 2020.

The EU’s INDC is set out in a relatively brief three-page table repeating climate and energy targets for 2030 agreed by EU leaders last October. Th aim is to reduce domestic EU greenhouse gas emissions by “at least 40%” by 2030, against a 1990 baseline.

Climate scientists are almost unanimous in their assessment that a temperature rise beyond 2C, the internationally agreed safety limit, may push the climate beyond tipping points and into dangerous instability.

At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held.  Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treatythat designated that phenomenon a threat to planetary health and human survival), the Paris summit will be focused on the adoption of measures that would limit global warming to less than catastrophic levels. If it fails, world temperatures in the coming decades are likely to exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit), the maximum amount most scientists believe the Earth can endure without experiencing irreversible climate shocks, includingsoaring temperatures and a substantial rise in global sea levels.

A failure to cap carbon emissions guarantees another result as well, though one far less discussed.  It will, in the long run, bring on not just climate shocks, but also worldwide instability, insurrection, and warfare.  In this sense, COP-21 should be considered not just a climate summit but a peace conference -- perhaps the most significant peace convocation in history.

An alarming new study has found that, no matter what we do to fight climate change, it is already too late for more than 400 U.S. cities — including Miami and New Orleans — which will be overcome by rising sea levels caused by anthropogenic climate change. Under a worst-case scenario, New York could be unlivable by the year 2085. Most of the population in those cities live within five feet of the current high tide line.

The reason that current efforts to combat climate change won't save many of these cities is because of what mankind has done in the past, as carbon pollution that humans have already emitted will continue to affect planetary surface temperature for centuries to come. "Historic carbon emissions have already locked in enough future sea level rise to submerge most of the homes in each of several hundred American towns and cities."

The researchers warned that, under a "business-as-usual" scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked through the end of the century, then the total number of "locked-in" cities could grow to more than 1,500. However, if society somehow manages to achieve extreme carbon reductions, many cities could be saved, such as Jacksonville, Florida; Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach in Virginia; and Sacramento and Stockton in California.

"In our analysis, a lot of cities have futures that depend on our carbon choices but some appear to be already lost … and it is hard to imagine how we could defend Miami in the long run," said Strauss, who noted that due to the city's low elevation and porous limestone foundation, sea walls and levees will not be enough to stop a rising sea.

The study, which was edited by renowned NASA climate scientist and activist James Hansen, found that the worst hit state will be Florida, home to at least 40 percent of the American population living on land that may be affected by sea level rise. After the Sunshine State, the next three states that will most likely be overcome by the ocean are California, Louisiana and New York.

"In our analysis, a lot of cities have futures that depend on our carbon choices but some appear to be already lost," Strauss said. "We were really trying to show what the consequences of our carbon choices are going to be."

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Many of us know about the staggering levels of ocean pollution, but not all of us have seen a giant sponge sliced through by fishing line or have tugged back armfuls of trash lurking deep underwater.

Now, through a striking photo campaign, Beneath The Waves, from the Project AWARE Foundation —a global community of scuba divers who are working toward trash-free oceans—we get to see how our oceans are treated like trash dumps up close and personal, and why action must be taken immediately.

 A photo posted by Wil Goix (@wilgoix) on

For the past month, divers from around the world have been uploading photos of marine debris to bring attention and urge for solutions to this transnational issue.

Why scuba divers? Well, few people know the scourge of ocean pollution better than they do.

“We’re citizen scientists, educators, philanthropists and advocates. We’re united together under a common passion, respect and desire to protect our ocean,” Project AWARE in a statement from the campaign.

In the photos below, divers share their unique and haunting view of underwater life affected by pollution. Some of the most devastating photos are of marine life such as whales, rays and crabs trapped in discarded fishing line, bottles and other debris.

The efforts from this 30-day campaign led to the second. Our Ocean 2015 conference, which was held in Chile Oct. 5-6, in which topics such as illegal fishing, marine plastic pollution, ocean acidification and climate change were discussed. The first conference was held last June in Washington, DC, as an initiative of Secretary of State John Kerry.

You can see more photos of marine debris as well as upload your own at this link here. You can also participate on social media using the hashtag #BeneathTheWaves. What lies #BeneathTheWaves? Sadly, marine debris. Share photos so we can work for solutions at #OurOcean2015.

Grey Whale ... almost got free. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

Juvenile Green turtle found in a ghost net on a beach, Alphonse Island, Seychelles. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

Divers are taking action through #DiveAgainstDebris. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

Dead Green turtle, caught in the netting of a Fish Aggregating Device (FAD), Alphonse Island, Seychelles. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

The beach at Chirebon, Indonesia. Photo credit: Project Aware

Dive Downbelow, Richard Swann. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

This octopus had claimed this bottle of beer and PVC pipe as refuge. I just couldn't convince him to move out and find a more natural environment. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

Entangled spider crab. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

Look Close. The Fishing line is still hanging there and sliced the giant sponge. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

Removing "mooring lines" tied to coral by inconsiderate boats at Soyak Island. Photo credit: Project AWARE Foundation

Lorraine Chow is a freelance writer and reporter based in Los Angeles, California.

The world's oceans are teeming with life, but rising carbon dioxide emissions could cause a collapse in the marine food chain from the top down, researchers in Australia said Monday.

The first-of-its-kind global analysis of marine responses to climate change forecasts a grim future for fish.

Marine ecologists from the University of Adelaide reviewed more than 600 published studies on coral reefs, kelp forests, open oceans, and tropical and arctic waters.

Their meta-analysis, published in the October 12 edition of the US peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that ocean acidification and warming will cut down on the diversity and numbers of various key species.

"This 'simplification' of our oceans will have profound consequences for our current way of life, particularly for coastal populations and those that rely on oceans for food and trade," said associate professor and co-author Ivan Nagelkerken.

Very few organisms are expected to be able to adjust to warmer waters and acidification, with the exception of microorganisms, which are expected to increase in number and diversity.

But the increase in the smallest plankton is not expected to translate into more zooplankton and small fish, meaning bigger fish will struggle to find enough food to eat.

"With higher metabolic rates in the warmer water, and therefore a greater demand for food, there is a mismatch with less food available for carnivores -- the bigger fish that fisheries industries are based around," said Nagelkerken.

"There will be a species collapse from the top of the food chain down."

Oysters, mussels and corals are also expected to take a hit from global warming, which will further harm the environment for reef fish.

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As the world’s most populous country, China consumes a lot of food. As an emerging economic powerhouse, even despite recent financial woes, China consumes a lot of food in greater quantities than it did three or four decades ago — meat, in particular. And with a growing population and a growing middle class, the demand for meat in China is expected to continue to rise. As a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers posits, it “will place enormous burdens on an already challenged domestic food system and have significant ramification on international trade in agriculture.”

The report, released Monday, is mainly concerned with the economic effects of China’s changing diet, but the rise of meat consumption — and increasing dependence on imported animal feed required to meet that demand — are tied up in global land use, resources, and climate change too. While estimates vary, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization attributes 14.5 percent of global emissions to the world's livestock farms. As the report notes, China feeds 20 percent of the world’s population but only has 8 percent of the world’s arable land, which means that when the Chinese diet changes, the echoes will be felt beyond the country’s borders.

Black pigs for sale in China (image: Sung Ming Whang)

Much has been made of the rise in that nation of meat consumption, which went from representing just 125 calories of the daily diet in 1971 to representing 691 in 2011. Between 2003 and 2013, consumption jumped by nearly 25 percent, and raising more hogs, far and away the livestock of choice in China, means buying more feed — both activities have a significant carbon footprint. But the PWC report points out something important in the broader conversation about meat consumption and its environmental woes: Even with the rapidly increasing appetite for meat, the average Chinese person still eats less meat than the average American. In 2015, Chinese residents will eat about 130 pounds of meat annually, while people in the U.S. will eat more than 230 pounds per person per year.

“It could be justifiably argued,” the report reads, “that the American number reflects excessive levels of consumption and that China is unlikely to ever reach those peaks.” Instead, the authors expect China to peak at 165 pounds per person per year, which is the amount eaten in Taiwan. If it were to hit that level of consumption immediately, “almost the entire expected corn output of Brazil and Argentina in 2014” would be required to feed the animals.

Already, China is irrigating more of its own farmland, trying to buy up arable land elsewhere in the world, and becoming an outsize player in the global commodity crop market—all of this from a country that has a long-standing policy of being agriculturally self-sufficient.

While it is far from the worst offender when it comes to having an unsustainable diet — again, Americans can claim that honor — the sheer scale of its population makes China’s changing diet a global concern.

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Our economy, says Schor, is failing for two reasons. First, our current economic system generates dangerous levels of greenhouse gases. Second, the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans continues to rise, forcing more and more families into poverty.

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“The reason I say it’s a systemic crisis or a structural crisis is that typically, the solution to that economic problem is to expand the economy,” Schor says. “But that makes the climate problem much worse because emissions move pretty closely with economic activity.”

Her solution? Find ways to change our economic system to be more financial and environmentally sustainable.

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Liz Pleasant is an assistant web editor at YES! magazine. Follow her on Twitter @lizpleasant.

These "global warming tipping points" include regions that host critical elements of Earth's planetary system, such as the Amazon forest and the Tibetan plateau. While none of the areas implicated in the study are located near any major cities, the potential impact to the planet could still be grave, as they could cause a domino effect that would intensify the risk of climate change and have dramatic impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity, which in turn could affect human civilization.

Published online earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study is the "first systematic screening of the massive climate model ensemble" that was presented in reports for the 5th Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body that supports the ongoing efforts to establish an international treaty on climate change. The research team included meteorologists, oceanographers, climatologists, ecologists, and environmental scientists from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and France.

The researchers report evidence of "forced regional abrupt changes in the ocean, sea ice, snow cover, permafrost and terrestrial biosphere that arise after a certain global temperature increase." Even more worrisome is the fact that their research casts some doubt on the generally accepted goal of keeping the increase of global surface temperature to a maximum of 2° Celsius, as they found that 18 of the potential disaster events occur at global warming levels below the 2° "safe limit" threshold.

These abrupt ecosystemic shifts, which are caused by an increasing global mean temperature change, suggest the "potential for a gradual trend of destabilization of the climate."

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Study co-author Victor Brovkin noted that these abrupt climactic events might lead to natural disasters. “Interestingly, abrupt events could come out as a cascade of different phenomena,” added Brovkin, a meteorologist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. “For example, a collapse of permafrost in Arctic is followed by a rapid increase in forest area there. This kind of domino effect should have implications not only for natural systems, but also for society.”

We are already witnessing such impacts in the form of droughts, wildfires, more frequent and intense storms and other forms of extreme weather.

Specific examples of "climate tipping" include sudden movements of sea ice and changes in ocean circulation, which is Earth's "conveyor belt" that maintains a stable climate. In addition, the scientists detected evidence of sudden alterations in vegetation and marine productivity, which could impact regional and even global food security. With demand for food on target to increase 60 percent by 2050, when the human population is expected to reach 9.6 billion, it is critical to assess the impact of climate change on agricultural production. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has called for "climate-smart" agriculture to maintain global food security through a rapidly changing climate.

Sybren Drijfhout, the study's lead author, said that the study "illustrates the high uncertainty in predicting tipping points." Drijfhout, a professor at the National Oceanography Center at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, added, "More precisely, our results show that the different state-of-the-art models agree that abrupt changes are likely, but that predicting when and where they will occur remains very difficult. Also, our results show that no safe limit exists and that many abrupt shifts already occur for global warming levels much lower than two degrees."

“The majority of the detected abrupt shifts are distant from the major population centres of the planet, but their occurrence could have implications over large distances.” says Martin Claussen, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and one of the co-authors. “Our work is only a starting point. Now we need to look deeper into mechanisms of tipping points and design an approach to diagnose them during the next round of climate model simulations for IPCC.”

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We floated by Zodiac to icebergs gathering at the fjord mouth: caves, pillars, monumental and illumined with blue light, and darkness in the deep recesses—so enigmatic and imposing I said nothing for hours. Were it not for Sheena McGoogan, who’d begun translating what she saw into her sketchbooks and encouraged us to do the same, I might have come away from the whole experience unable to express a word about it. Only after two years of looking at the images I sketched, both in the book she gave me and on watercolour paper, have I been able to speak. I was finding, in the North, that words are a secondary language: first we see images, then we feel heat, cold rock, flesh. We taste air before words.

The first words I encountered in the North were made not through symbols but by rock, sky, and water — and, later, by the profound animals who possessed potent languages of their own. In the dramatic gallery of ice that cracked and floated off the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier into Disko Bay I began to perceive speech and language that proved other than human: to translate it I’d need to understand my own mind and body in a new way. This would take coaxing and tutoring by the land we were to travel, and because I’d been conditioned toward reason, to linear and compartmental thought built by explanation and deduction, it would take time.

I was far from the first human to lose my bearings here. Historians call Disko Bay the last place John Franklin was seen by European eyes. Witnesses claimed they saw him with his ship moored to an ancestral cousin of the icebergs we were encountering; once Franklin sailed from Disko Bay, no one from that part of earth ever saw him again. I felt, on seeing the icebergs, how one might easily vanish after being in their presence. The idea of mooring one’s ship to the ice had a ring of sad folly: had Franklin trusted the ice because of its mass and presence, even though it was made of frozen water and insubstantial as a dream? I tried to picture his ship moored to the ice and felt nothing but surprise at the prospect: both ice and ship seemed destined for dissolution. Might Franklin have sensed this at the outset?

Back on the ship we headed up Karrat Fjord, home to narwhals and seals and colonies of dovekies. We were to go ashore on an uninhabited island, and I saw we were entering a new psychological zone, a hybrid between the urban life we all knew and another, less knowable life ahead. Passengers tried to conjure memories of wilderness hiding within the cities we’d left behind. Surely we knew something about wilderness, about animals? The birders talked with Richard Knapton, the ship’s ornithologist, about birds common to both Greenland and their own homes in the south.

“A peregrine falcon,” a passenger said, “lives at 2180 Yonge Street in Toronto, on the corner of Yonge and Eglinton. It sits high on the Canadian Tire building, hunts from there, brings prey, and in full view of everyone in the offices, tears it to pieces. Blood everywhere.”

“Ravens in Greenland,” Richard answered, “will assess the length of a sled dog’s chain, then sit just outside of it.”

I’d seen those ravens coexisting here with chained huskies. I’d sensed the dogs’ haunted spirits cloaking the settlements in resounding howls over the gardens and graveyards. Those dogs tore prey to pieces as well as any peregrine falcon could.

But the land on which we were now about to walk had no dogs and no living humans. There would be human bones, though. The land knew how to devour its share of blood and bone, more ravenous than peregrine or dog.

“Be aware,” said Aaron, the young New Zealander who would lead us on our first walk far from any settlement, “that out on the land there are human remains. Respect them, and be aware of the boundary. Notice where the gunbearers are standing. Whatever you do, don’t go beyond the gun perimeter.”

He sent scouts ashore to establish sightlines and safe hiking places. Aaju and others readied their guns in case we met polar bears.

Marc St-Onge talked of the rocks we were about to walk on as if they were agents of action instead of the stationary lumps I witnessed in the distance. As we approached the rocky island I noticed him getting even more excited than usual.

“The rocks here” — he gesticulated as if at entities that hurtled and tore through space-time — “are all about the collision and suturing of continents.”
Marc saw movement where I did not; it amused me, yet I sensed he was trying to transmit a message I couldn’t intercept. Rocks, to Marc, were far more powerful than they appeared to me. It wasn’t that I doubted Marc’s view — but I lacked his perception and could not hear or decipher anything the rocks might be trying to say. I didn’t want to even try to hear their language. I was more interested in the ice, water, air, and myriad tiny lichen. On other voyages this ship had brought a botanist along, but we did not have one. I spent a lot of time with my face close to the ground, listening not to Marc’s stones, but to the eloquence of diminutive plants. I found their voices exquisite and brave.

We clambered onto a rise where black and orange lichen blazed in perfect circles on the rocks. There were, indeed, human bones, not buried in southern fashion where there is soft ground, but ritualistically lain under cairns of stone that we had to be careful not to disturb. It would have been easy to walk on one if you were negligent, and send rock and fibula and skull tumbling disastrously down the embankment, disturbing spirits. I climbed high over a carpet of tight green moss and minute leaves, and I sprawled on a sun-warmed blanket of turf from where I watched tantalizing icebergs float in the distance, breaking off into smaller and smaller pieces that floated then melted in the water with a fluid serenity. I was elated to have a vantage point no other passenger had found, though it meant I lay near the bones of a long-dead hunter reclining under a stone mound.

I lay alongside those bones on top of the stony ridge, listening to the soundscape. On our ship our captain once again fished from his deck, a distant figure raising and lowering his single line while around him roared a crashing boom as icebergs cracked and avalanched. The fjord acted as an orchestral chamber, magnifying the sounds of these ice monoliths as they crushed and worked. It sounded like a vast construction site. There was a gunshot crack, then a thump and another avalanche; layered under these were the lapping of water, the echoing roar of wind around the moonscape mountains, and other, more distant collisions of ice echoing down the fjord. I climbed higher and found a rock shelf. I sat on the ledge in one place for a long time, alone and listening.

Never doubt the power of the people to respond when they know their kids are in peril.

This is especially true today, because of the increase in risks from global climate change to human existence. There is a tremendous urgency for us to act quickly, even if governments do not, to protect our children and make planet Earth a child-safe zone.  

My research is in the interface (often a gap) between the physical and social sciences, and includes the historical and present day writings of philosophers, novelists, poets, as well as the conceptual work of artists. The perspective I present is a “transdisciplinary” crossing boundaries between the sciences and the humanities.

We know our kids are in danger because there is now indisputable scientific evidence that Earth has left the remarkably stable 10,000 years of the geologic era called the Holocene, and the planet is now in transition to some other state. This is not breaking news, even if the mainstream media has duped the public and the real news is not reported.

What is remarkable about this moment in time is that people have the capacity to determine the future of the planet.

Martin Rees, the renowned astrophysicist tells us that for the first time in 45 million years one species – the human species – has the capacity to determine the future of the planet.

Planet Earth As We Know It Is Changing

Scientists are unequivocal – and here I am quoting:

• “Earth System has moved well outside the range of the natural variability” and “is currently operating in a non-analogue state.”

• “The nature of changes now occurring simultaneously in the Earth System, their magnitudes and rates of change are unprecedented.”

• “Humanity is standing at a moment in history when a Great Transformation is needed to respond to the immense threat to the Earth.”

In 2009 Johan Rockström and scientists working with him, identified nine planetary boundaries essential for “a safe operating space” for human life on the planet and provided scientific evidence that four of these planetary boundaries have been breached.

Rockström states that these planetary boundaries, which are depicted in the graphic, are “hard-wired,” “non-negotiable,” and vulnerable to “disruptive change.”

Scientists have been quite clear that significantly altering two of these planetary boundaries – climate change and biosphere integrity both of which have been breached – will "drive the Earth System into a new state."

“We are running blindly, head on,” to quote Bertrand Russell who was speaking of the H-bomb on December 23, 1954 when he delivered his somber message, "Man's Peril" to the BBC.

“The question now confronting the world,” Russell said, was: Are human beings "so destitute of wisdom, so incapable of impartial love, so blind even to the simplest dictates of self-preservation," that they would carry out "the extermination of all life on our planet?"

Einstein, who had agitated vigorously against nuclear weapons since their inception, responded that he agreed "with every word" of Russell's letter, and he said, "something must be done" that "will make an impression on the general public as well as on political leaders."

“If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd, (effed)” the glaciologist Jason Box, known as the “Ice Man”, tweeted on 29 July, 2014. There were 12,891,289 retweets, and almost 500,000 people favored it.

“We’re on a trajectory to an unmanageable heating scenario, and we need to get off it,” Box tells us. “We’re fucked at a certain point, right? It just becomes unmanageable. The climate dragon is being poked, and eventually the dragon becomes pissed enough to trash the place.”

“Small steps will no longer get us to where we need to go,” Box tweets. “So we need to leap.”

Glaciologists (@nick_golledge, @PopePolar) are tweeting warnings on an almost daily basis now; and science writers (@lknaranjo) are tweeting that the glacial lakes are ticking time bombs, and that seismic signals reveal changes in water release from glaciers.

Massive shifts, both north and south, are already taking place in the long established habitats of flora and fauna. Ecological shocks are causing great terrestrial migrations, and changes in both temperature and acidification are causing similar aquatic mass migrations.

Life on the planet is on the move, but there are no safe havens for any species –and people are equally affected by this human induced exodus from the very stable period of the Holocene into the epoch of extremes now called the Anthropocene.

Great human migrations are already taking place with 60 million people stateless worldwide. Many are refugees fleeing persecution from countries in which there is armed conflict following years of drought and famine that can in part be attributed to climate stress and anthropogenic change.

And we know that the unspeakable human suffering will undoubtedly increase if we continue on our present trajectory, perturbing the planet, standing by while species die, and producing vast dead seas of plastic, as we continue to treat the planet like a giant trash receptor and an electronic waste dumping ground.

How To Stop The Madness

But, however bad the news there is also good news.  Many scientists are optimistic that we have the scientific knowledge and capability to respond to the anthropogenic changes that are occurring. They are adamant that unless the laws of physics rule something out, we have the capacity to alter course, however difficult that might be.

And so, for the sake of our kids we cannot lose hope. Despair paralyzes us, and we have to give it up. Hope is the essence of human existence, and what is inspiring about so many ordinary people – young people, old people, you and me -- is that we are incredibly good at reaching beyond what we think we are capable of doing, and we become positively heroic when we are confronted by life threatening catastrophic events.

It is this inner strength, strength that comes from emotion as well as reason – the never doubt the power of the people to respond when they know their kids are in peril strength – that we must dig deep and find now. However dire the situation, we can overcome it.

We know what is happening to the planet and we know what is going to happen to our kids if governments don’t act and act quickly.

But still the climate change deniers in the U.S. Congress and the pro-carbon lobby promulgate doubt with the intent to derail all thoughts we might have of the actions we can take when the future of our kids is at stake.

By profligating denial of climate change, and by defunding and limiting expenditures on mitigating climate change and environmental problems, the US Congress is actively engaged in protecting the corporate interests that have supported their political campaigns, while willfully ignoring the very real and very grave threat that exists to children and to all human life on the planet.

If we are to save our kids from a bumpy ride in the 21 century it will take every last one of us working together, sharing insights, imagining ourselves differently, as we re-establish the connections  -- the systemic relationships -- between not only people and the planet, but also people and the universe.

“We’ve just got to think longer and harder,” Martin Rees the renowned astrophysicist says, and that is exactly what we all must do.

“We’ve learned that we live in a solar system that is one planetary system among billions,” Rees says, “in one galaxy among billions.”

“And another thing which I think is a really great discovery,” the astrophysicist says, “is that … every atom in our bodies can be traced back to before the solar system was formed, and we can say that each of us has inside us atoms of hundreds of different stars which lived and died in different parts of the milky way galaxy more than five billion years ago, and so we are intimately linked to the stars  … and this is a wonderful way in which we realize the unity of the cosmos.”

For many of us this knowledge alone changes our conceptions of the relationships between people and the planet. It interrupts the clockwork of our mechanistic world and changes the way we think about the universe. Imagining ourselves as being midway between atoms and stars changes the ways in which we think about the complex relationships between humanity and nature.

Intuitively it encourages us to imagine time differently, as we rethink our place here on Earth and the Universe, or the Multiverse, which is the way that Rees imagines it.

Rees states, “This century is a defining moment” for people and the planet. He speaks of the “human induced alterations” that are occurring to the biosphere, and when asked how long he thinks we have got, he responds that within two hundred years we could enter “a post human era” if steps are not taken to eliminate our carbon footprint on the planet.

If we imagine ourselves as intimately connected to the dawn of time, then even a very long human life is very short indeed. If I stretch my hand back I can imagine holding my grandmother’s hand when I visited her as a child in the 19th century coalmining village in Wales. If I stretch my hand forward I can hold my granddaughter’s hand who was born in the U.S. in the 21st century.

In my imagination I can hold the hands of both my grandmother and granddaughter, and intuitively I can feel time pressing in as we experience the weight of the world upon us.

Decarbonize and Change How We Educate

Scientists are telling us that if we are to avoid a catastrophe of cataclysmic proportions, we must decarbonize and reach zero carbon emissions by 2050. And they are almost universally pessimistic about the likelihood of this happening – not because it is an impossible task but because to minimize the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere depends on the actions of politicians and parliamentarians and the growing difficulty of governance.

So again, what can we do? We know that this century will be a defining moment for humanity. Our children and future generations of children are in danger, and our political masters leave us without even a rudimentary attempt at governance on these great problems. So what we can and what we must do is become first responders and act.

If we shake off old habits of mind – the mechanistic ranking sorting ways in which we have been taught to think – and if we study the scientific evidence, we can work together to establish first response initiatives that will minimize the impact of anthropogenic changes on our kids. It is up to us to make provisions to safeguard the future of our children.

Our kids will have to cope with the increasing incidence of extreme weather events, human habitat destruction, population displacement, air, water, and ground pollution, crop failures, food supply depletion, public health emergencies, and other factors, which will lead to increases in global unrest and armed conflict.

If we re-imagine our connection to the planet and the universe, we can begin to imagine time differently, and we can become far more aware of the destruction caused in the last two hundred years by people on Earth.

If we are to change societal thinking about our way of life, if we are to reestablish and reconnect the severed relationships between people and the planet, that work must become the bedrock of our K-12 public school system.

If we can change the way we educate our children, we can restore the social fabric of society and make equality integral to our economic system.

If we imagine ourselves differently – midway between atoms and stars – of necessity we will have to think differently quickly, because if we don’t, this will be humanity’s darkest hour.

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe”, H. G. Wells advised us, and so the fastest way to change the future of the planet is to change the way we educate our children. It is the quickest and most effective way we have of making Earth a child safe zone and sustaining human life on the planet.

We have got to reverse the damage caused by presidents and prime ministers, politicians and parliamentarians, who have set the world’s children on a collision course with anthropogenic changes to the planet by turning schools into training grounds for children to become laborers in the maladaptive, profit-driven, competitive workforce of the anthropocene.

In U.S. public schools and U.K. primary schools children are programmed through multiple-choice exercises and tests to establish a linear mindset that rank orders things. This includes the rank ordering of people, and is a form of societal control that can be characterized as the fill-in-the-bubble standardization of political thought, which frames the fill-in-the-bubble workforce of our anthropogenic world.

Capitalizing on these politicians’ anthropogenic acts, corporate education reformers have now monetized public education, and companies such as Pearson are reaping the benefits in revenues and profits in the U.S. from the mandating of the maladaptive Common Core and high stakes tests.

The policies and mandates of federal and state sanctioned corporate education reform has turned public schools into anthropogenic child labor mills, established for the sole purpose of providing anthropogenic workers for the very industries that are causing climate and ecological change.

Policy makers are pushing our kids beyond the limits of human existence on the planet into the abyss of unprecedented uncertainty – with the very real possibility that our children will experience cataclysmic changes to the planet in their lifetime, far worse than any previous generations have experienced before them.

Quite literally, the U.S. Congress and their business partners are preparing our kids to participate in the anthropogenic business/industrial system that is junking the planet. The same could be said about the U.K., where the exploitation of teachers is rampant and the abuse of children in the education system has become the nation’s shame.

What has occurred is a step change in the education of children – an academic anthropogenic shock in both the U.S. and U.K. – that has well-documented deleterious effects on children’s health and wellbeing, as well as on their intellectual development. 

Immediate action can be taken to make schools safe places for children to be and foster resiliency before there is a catastrophe.

In the aftermath of a catastrophic event, schools are integral to the community’s survival and recovery, and must be safe places for children to foster their resiliency.

High-stakes test-driven school environments are unable to provide the support that children need.

There is a significant body of medical research which supports the proposition that to foster resiliency in children, it is important that we do everything we can to create schools as safe, joyful, playful places even before catastrophic events take place. 

If children are to have the maximum opportunity to become resilient and recover from potentially traumatizing experiences of the existential risks of anthropogenic change, every effort should be made to:

• 1. Establish schools as safe, joyful places for children;

• 2. Ensure that schools are nurturing and fun environments in which play is central to the curriculum;

• 3. Recognize the importance of the languages children speak and respect their heritage and national identity;

• 4. Promote children’s health and well being by providing them with opportunities to sing, dance and play musical instruments;

• 5. Enhance academic learning through literacy activities, art and science projects, and other meaning making practices;

• 6. Welcome families and encourage parents and caregivers to actively participate in the life of the school through events that incorporate music, theater, dance, science and literature.

Power brokers should know that the steps they are taking to dismantle U.S. public schools and privatize public education are obstructing the preparations communities need to make in response to anthropogenic change.

Instead the focus of federal and state representatives and agencies should be on reallocating resources and establishing social and psychological support systems so that schools have sufficient time to recover from the structural disadvantages that have been imposed on them.

The enduring message is that children need schools to be safe joyful places before disasters occur if they are going to have the opportunity to recover when disasters occur.

Education Opens or Closes The Door To Solutions

In the years to come, as anthropogenic change intensifies and catastrophic events occur more frequently, as will undoubtedly happen, it is parents who will rise to the challenge to protect their children, and teachers who will invariably be first responders when disasters occur.

We might not have faith in the U.S. or the U.K. governments, but we do have faith in people, in the ability for parents and teachers to quickly morph from the ordinary to be extraordinary, to take a leadership role and act, when our “leaders” are bogged down in the increased polarization of the political process and are too burdened by privilege to act.

All public schools have the same potential to create learning environments in which children can live imaginatively in both the physical and virtual worlds –learning environments in which intellectual engagement of students in imaginative thinking is the foundation of a project-driven, problem-solving curriculum, and where students are not restricted by test driven lessons.

There is no reason why such intensely cognitively stimulating academic environments cannot be made available to all children. It is in such learning environments that our children quite possibly might, individually and collectively, grow-up to show the leadership that will be needed to tackle problems of cumulative anthropogenic dimensions that their survival will require. For they will be the ones left to them to make the vital decisions that the leadership of this generation has failed so abysmally to make.

In the final analysis we are the greatest source of uncertainty, if we act now our children’s survival is more likely to be secured. 

Never has there been such a common purpose to unite people on the planet to confront the very real threat we face, if not in our lifetime then in our children and grandchildren’s lifetime. By establishing a common purpose for the education of children in K-12 public schools, the possibility exists that parents and teachers can create opportunities for children to form deep connections with the life forces of Earth, and also establish the conditions for a rapid rethinking of these connections that will cascade through society, uniting the people around the world who are also struggling to establish strategies for survival even if their governments are not.

There is no time to waste. It is of vital importance that we ditch all of the detrimental testing and test preparation that occupies our children for most of the school year. If we do the dropout rate will fall, fewer kids will be medicated, and the money being siphoned off from our educational system by large anthropogenically minded corporations will flow back into our schools.

Most importantly, our schools will become critical sites for the re-visioning of the future, in which caring for our children is the oxygen we breathe. A future in which the wisdom of teachers is recognized and their time is not spent, as it is today, being forced to participate in the commodification of their students’ lives.

Let’s make our schools spill over with vitality and intellectual curiosity, where kids smile and laugh, and where they cannot get enough of discovery and learning, knowing that by this re-imagining the schooling of our children they will have a chance of overcoming the problems that we have heaped upon them.

Power brokers will do well to remember that we are not just appealing to their humanity, which has been found sadly lacking. Our appeal is based on science, on empirical research on human development, on research on language and learning, on anthropological research, on sociological, psychological, medical and psychiatric research, and now, in recent decades, on research in Earth system science, all of which have brought into sharp focus the indivisible relationships between people and the planet.

If our children are to survive and thrive in this century, it is imperative that we prepare them with new forms of “worldliness”. In their backpacks and tool-kits the “worldliness” they will need is a perspective on life which values imagination, creativity, originality, and innovation, one that is deeply rooted in Earth-human history, is grounded in the present time of human dissonance with the planet and does not flinch from addressing human conflicts that we experience with each other. In tackling climate change for our children it is imperative that we are vigilant and sensitive to the limited time that they will have to find new ways to sustain human life on the planet and to live more closely with Earth.