Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.
“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”
One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”
Lovelock, 90, believes the world’s best hope is to invest in adaptation measures, such as building sea defences around the cities that are most vulnerable to sea-level rises. He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.
“That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion,” he said.
Twenty-eight nations have cooperated with the U.S. to detain in their prisons, and sometimes to interrogate and torture, suspects arrested as part of the U.S. “War on Terror.”
The complicit countries have kept suspects in prisons ranging from public interior ministry buildings to “safe house” villas in downtown urban areas to obscure prisons in forests to “black” sites to which the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC) has been denied access.
According to published reports, an estimated 50 prisons have been used to hold detainees in these 28 countries. Additionally, at least 25 more prisons have been operated either by the U.S. or by the government of occupied-Afghanistan in behalf of the U.S., and 20 more prisons have been similarly operated in Iraq.
As the London-based legal rights group Reprieve estimates the U.S. has used 17 ships as floating prisons since 2001, the total number of prisons operated by the U.S. and/or its allies to house alleged terrorist suspects since 2001 exceeds 100. And this figure may well be far short of the actual number.
Countries that held prisoners in behalf of the U.S. based on published data are Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Libya, Lithuania, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Somalia, South Africa, Thailand, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zambia. Some of the above-named countries held suspects in behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA); others held suspects in behalf the U.S. military, or both.
Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, termed the detention policies used by the U.S. “Crimes against Humanity”:
[snip]
Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of British human rights group Reprieve, told the UK Guardian June 2, 2008: “By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.” Note: The UN Commission on Human Rights asserts prolonged incommunicado detention itself can “constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture.”
A brief look at the prison operations of America’s accomplices follows:
You’re already mostly there. Just get rid of the stuff that’s holding you back. There’s no excuse not to do it.
I must say I’m pretty discouraged after a day watching the Tennessee legislature about the over-all intelligence of the human species, but for folks reading this, I know we can do it, let’s evolve to some more intelligent beings.
5 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
the storm before the calm? Maybe?
Author
James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 2010
Author
28 Countries Helped U.S. Detain War on Terror Suspects
by Sherwood Ross, March 30, 2010
I know we can do it.
You’re already mostly there. Just get rid of the stuff that’s holding you back. There’s no excuse not to do it.
I must say I’m pretty discouraged after a day watching the Tennessee legislature about the over-all intelligence of the human species, but for folks reading this, I know we can do it, let’s evolve to some more intelligent beings.