Reading Notes

Tim Flannery in "Here on Earth – A Natural History of the Planet"
provides some good reading and worthwhile scientific information. But as is usual for the reformers of the world, he gets the solution all wrong. After detailing the environmental problems we face, he writes, " In light of this sorry history, it would be easy to blame the Medean nature (i.e. self destruction) of the post-war period on unconstrained human ingenuity, or a rampant capitalist system (yeah, he's got it!). But evidence from the communist countries suggests that something far deeper was at work, for those countries mounted their own wars on nature which were, despite the lack of chemical weapons, as lethal of those of the West. (Oh no, he's lost it!) In Mao's China, brute human effort was the tool of choice, following the aphorism ren ding sheng tian (Man must conquer nature), in just a few decades, turned China into an environmental basket case." He goes on to show how little efforts here and there are making a difference but was deeply disappointed in the outcome of Copenhagen. How is it that intelligent, well-educated writers cannot grasp the simple nature of the problem? John Ayers