We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, May 16, 2011

Green Smoke Is Sighted as Vatican Releases Glacier Report

Click here to access article by Lauren Morello from the NY Times.  
Climate change is shrinking the world's mountain glaciers, whose retreat creates new risks for humans and sensitive ecosystems alike, warns a new report commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church.
Maybe the Pope can excommunicate all the climate change deniers out there! But seriously, I don't understand the NY Time's titling of this article--are they trying to ridicule the report? The research team's qualifications look very impressive:
The Vatican academy fielded a group of two dozen researchers, including experts in snow, glaciers and atmospheric chemistry, led by Ramanathan, Lennart Bengtsson, the former director of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and Paul Crutzen, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on the ozone layer.

Crutzen later coined the term "Anthropocene" to describe the idea that human activities have pushed Earth's climate into a new geologic epoch that will last for thousands of years. That concept lies at the heart of the new report.