I am, however, quite pessimistic about the wars that are going to be fought over water…and that’s less to do with climate change than plain human stupidity.

Exactly! That’s exactly how I see it. After all, it can only help. Right?

And, as much as I believe that something does need to be done, I have often felt that the worst case scenarios were missing something important. I felt guilty having that thought, it seemed so disloyal to the cause. But it’s a nagging thought. It just won’t go away.

Still, a part of my future goals that I’m working hard toward is extremely environmentally friendly. I’d like to live on a catamaran sailboat in the tropics, where it will be quite possible for my transportation to be almost completely wind powered and my electrical needs almost completely solar powered. So I won’t need to feel guilty anymore. Plus, you know…beaches, and all that.

We know, with at least as much certainty as most other bases for political and legislative decisions, what greenhouse gas emissions can do.

We know how the processes of population growth, industrialisation and urbanisation work, and what they do in terms of increased loads on natural resources.

At the very least, we know that we don’t know how we can be sure these two won’t combine to make the planet unlivable.

So we don’t gamble. We cut down anyway.

End of.

The environment is an unknown [or at the very least a poorly known] where we’ve got conflicting information, experts who claim opposing theories, either one of which might be right. Throw in lots of sexy newspaper selling stories of floods, extreme weather, The End Of The World As We Know It and you enter into a minefield where you really are going to have to make your own decisions and pick your sources of information very carefully.

Its depressing sometimes, but then I read a new study, or see a new idea and I get excited again, or hell even seeing new shoots on the trees and smelling fresh tilled earth