This article has captured the future, or what can become the future - involved young people in the political process so that change can be achieved. The baby boomers were the last generation to learn how to be active in their own governance. By realizing that only they can work to create the change to our environment for their futures, these young people are beginning to wake up, and that is WONDERFUL AND AWESOME TO BEHOLD!

I have posted on my website, standanddeliveramerica.com, an article entitled "America's Youth" that is about creating an organization, structured much like the Scouts, that would teach children what the schools and our government won't - about democracy, the environment, sustainable choices - and encourage them to become active in their communities in helping to create changes - everything from home food production to water reclamation to becoming active in local politics, as well as encouraging their families, especially their parents to do the same.

The young people described in this article give me hope once again that we can change things, but it will require the children to again lead the way, just as has always been the case through history. We need to follow their lead - and we may need to do it now, not to stop them, but to encourage them and protect them from those who would stop them. Help our young people to create a better world, because after all it is our world too.

http://www.standanddeliveramerica.com

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UK court says Gore is a fraud. August 2007 Update: Man-made Catastrophic Global Warming Not True. Unfortunately, Hansen is a political hack of George Soros. Further, flawed NASA Global Warming data paid for by George Soros. In order to be an intelligent reader you must have a basic knowledge. Please do your own homework; a starting point http://www.InteliOrg.com/

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Global warming was not caused by a lack of public spending nor by a lack of innovative technology. At its deepest level, it was caused by economic injustice and perhaps only a fair economy will fix it.
One huge piece to the puzzle usually left out is our land use pattern - sprawl - which requires longer trips and more fuel, letting more exhaust unbalance the atmosphere. Metro settlement patterns could be compact if not for land speculation. And landowners don't withhold prime sites from rational use where society levies a tax on land.
A too long causual chain for many, but if you tax land and resources, you end our addiction to cars and oil. And you give climate a chance to re-normalize.

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WTF does that mean, by contrast with our current unregulated economy of pirates? I admit, it sure has a romantic ring to it. And so long as all we need is just more power, power, power, we don't have to change, since that is what has driven Western Civilization since the days of Homer the Greek.

In an age of limits, ain't no way we can break loose from Mama Nature's many leashes. "Breakthroughs" applied to power just lead to more breakdowns. You can take that to the bank.

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gee, Teryn, I thought I read something remarkebly like this in Vanity Fair last year. It was an article by Al Gore.

before we can unleash all this "potential" for the "future", it would be great to stop WRECKING EVERYTHING NOW!!!

that means ALL of us need to stop consuming/destroying so much. Replacing consumption/destruction with green consumption/destruction lite is simply not going to do that much.

my damn mountains here in Appalachia can not wait for your brave new world of eco-consumption. They are being destroyed now.

everyone talks about how this isn't the 60's and we need something new, but the prescriptions seem to be nothing but prepackaged liberal enthusiasm for the same failed policies of the "free market".

newsflash folks: it was the so-called free market that got us into this mess.

and i'm including the so called socialists competing on the global market in that description.

the standard economic dogma of more is better and growth is god will NOT get us anywhere.

more, more, more is NOT the answer. we are all going to have to suck it up and do with less fast food, less cars, less electricity and so forth.

that means reigning in the market. Who the fuck cares if the market gets regulated more? Those jerks are running amok. Most of 'em deserve to be in jail. Some good old fashioned regulations will serve 'em right. While we are all regulatin', we might as well take apart the big boys and seize some of their ill gotten gains so we can afford all the technological innovation we supposedly need to survive.

Next time Alternet or anyone else is going to run an article about what the "new" movement needs, can it have some original ideas, please. Run something by Wendell Berry or Janisse Ray or somebody real who knows that a "green" market will not save us.

And the gall of that chump Tommy Friedman... He's all for this generation doing what it takes to rise to the challenge, as long as it is on his terms. When the previous generation challenged the status quo in Seattle in '99, Friedman, the tireless promoter of eating the planet for fun and profit, trashed those folks for daring to have a vision of the future that did not include unlimited freedom for corporations. He is about as relevent as Bush is when it comes to figuring our way out of this mess.

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Are the liberals (leftists, socialists, progressives, whatEVER) going to set an example by THEMSELVES popping out less kids? Or, are they going to be their usual two-face duplicitous selves (like ALL humans) in this matter.

With 6, 7, 8, 9 billion people does electric car matter? With 1.5 billion Chinese and .75 billion Indians fantasizing about owning their own Ford Exhibitions someday, what difference does nibbling around the edges do NOW?

Here's the REAL “Inconvenient Truth”: unless your global warming “solutions” can deal with the FACT that humans, organizations, and countries are self-serving assholes, these “solutions” are doomed to failure.

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I could not agree more with this article.

Whether or not you believe in global warming, it's hard to deny that our foreign policy is strongly motivated by the demand for oil. And our dependence on oil is funding the bad guys too, we're essentially paying for both sides of a war.

This policy is clearly not sustainable. We must find a solution to our oil dependence. But environmentalists continue to miss the point.

Environmentalist groups are entrenched in our political system. They have become narrow-minded and uncreative with age. They have become special interests, and with their complacency they have lost their unique ability to create broad social change.

I believe that environmentalists can have an impact in the 21st century, but they need to redefine themselves. More importantly, they need to band together over a common issue the same way American labor unions did a century ago. Consider the 1930s: If the thousands of separate labor groups that made up the AFL and IWW had not worked together under the same banner, would Big Business ever have given into their demands? Of course not. They'd still be working 16 hour days, screwing bottle caps on conveyor belts, and earning chump change for their effort. Union workers needed to unite - to come together under a shared vision and a common voice before anyone would listen.

Here's my point: Environmentalists are in a situation to do the same thing labor unions did a century ago. Energy is the elephant in the room. It is at the cornerstone of all the political issues that environmentalists like to address.

But instead of attacking the various symptoms of oil dependence, why don't environmentalists unite and attack the problem?

Clean and alternative energies are the golden solution to all our problems: clean energy promises to create jobs, lower the price of food, strengthen the economy, reduce funding to totalitarian states, lower our risk of terrorism, decrease the price of energy, support our expanding industries, save the environment, bolster American morale, and loosen the Arab strangehold on our fuel sources.

But most of all, clean energy offers a chance for environentalists to unite under a common goal. They must use clean energy to create a new foundation for American pride and greatness.

Environmentalist groups should embrace this opportunity to shake hands, overcome their differences, and prove they have the stuff it takes to lead towards a common goal.

The American people need a new dream for the 21st century. But it's up to the environmentalist to define it.

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It is understandable to find that enthusiasm - at least for some - smacks of naivete. But even false ideals are poorly corrected by rejoinders of utter opposition: simple negativity. Or 'realism'.
Let's get a few things straight. Politics is process. It begins without coordination, it threatens entrenched political interest and practice, and it prevails only if it has that unconditional merit that escapes summary - or prophecy - in the words of one writer.
There is reason to be enthusiastic, because young people like Teryn and myself are expressly avoiding the polar pitfalls of unqualified advocacy and outlaw political positioning. These, we understand, are by themselves quite useless. The territory of engagement, not just with those of our age group, but with those who have behind them a resume of political and personal experience, is what we understand as process. It is not didactic. It does not swear upon imminant victory or solicit those who are MERELY able and willing, without first acknowledging the potential that each of us has, and what might be possible were we to combine this potential. Finally it is not literary or made for the blogs - which rather connect at a distance the various threads of political activism that do something more substantial than read, smirk, and complain about a faithless free market that, along with the government in fact, produced the very hardware and software that gives us all this voicing and publicity. Those too were people - not 'government' and 'free market', as some stranded categorical souls of the twentieth century will insist upon making these distinctions for political purposes/orientation, rather than separate them for the very simple fact that there are two spheres that jostle, bargain, entrench, leverage, but within the law, can do nothing about an offspring of challengers who possess a vision.
And it is not a vision that can be borne out according to the mock-clarity of dreams and aspirations alone. This becomes apparent with something so simple as recognition and humility: there are more than one or two or two million-PLUS pairs of eyes and personal histories in this world.
The "climate disaster" can make no sense and provide no value to young people like myself and Teryn. That is because it is doom, and we don't want to mature for the sake of doom. Nor can flat criticism of the neoconservative movement - the whole movement reinvigorated and enjoined from disparate parts by the Reagan polity - be worth a damn either. That is the stuff of private conversation and towering editorial force. At times it is appropriate. In fact it is needed. But Teryn and I did not vote for George W. Bush. We were in junior and senior high school. Finally, we are not going to be exclusive in our appeals for help, expertise, companionship, and common ground.
Let us fall flat if we are going to fall flat. We don't believe we will because there is simply too much to be gained by trying to move ahead with vision we are dimly, now more brightly charting.

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Response originally posted here.
Coming out of Power Shift, the voice of the climate movement has never been stronger in Congress. Let’s not muzzle it.

I agree that climate activists and Al Gore should absolutely be focusing on a positive, bold vision for the future and should lobby hard for major investments in the clean energy economy. That is exactly what has gotten us to where we are now, a powerful and vibrant movement that is starting to re-write the playbook for U.S. politics on energy. However, I think it is dangerous for Norris, along with Shellenberger and Nordhaus, to say that we should not also be pushing for hard regulations as well. As we build our movement and begin to gain political power, it is more essential than ever to both define what we are for and what we are against. If we do not fight the status quo, our proposals will be co-opted by corporate interests, Big Coal and Big Oil will rein for many years to come, and people at the bottom of the political and economic food chain will be exploited in the name of clean and green.

The main problem I had with Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ last major essay, the “Death of Environmentalism” was not the substance of their arguments, but the antagonistic approach the authors took toward what had come before them. Three years after this text was published in 2004, green is more popular than ever and we have a smarter and more powerful movement than ever before. Clearly it has been proven that environmentalism did not have to die in order that something better could emerge. Part of what has made this shift possible is the work of Al Gore to call a spade a spade and get the word out that we are reaching a real planetary crisis on climate change. Before An Inconvenient Truth came out, most U.S. environmentalists were timid about calling climate change a crisis and the public responded by dropping the issue to the bottom of their concerns. Granted, we still have a long way to go toward making climate a top voting issue, but I would argue that the way toward doing that does not involve abandoning a sober description of the problem as a crisis that demands action now, not in ten years.

A major shift in incentives and investments is sorely needed, which is why many of us have been pushing for things like 5 million green-collar jobs and a major shift in subsidies away from dirty energy toward clean technology. However, there are some very crucial regulations that I believe ought to go along with this shift in dollars. The coal, oil, and gas industries are not going to abandon their core business without a fight. Big banks and other major investors aren’t going to make this shift without clear signals from government and consumers. Part of what we need is to reduce the cost of the clean energy economy. However, we also need to increase the cost of the dirty energy economy.

Continue reading this response here.

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I strongly agree with Teryn's sentiment. We must recognize that in rising to the climate challenge, the politics of protest will be insufficient - critical to the cause, yet entirely insufficient.

We must not only protest what we do not want - no coal, no new fossil fuel infrastructure, no risky nukes - or cry out about what we want to avoid - the climate crisis, a global warming apocalypse, mass species extinction, biblical weather events, etc. These prohibitions and motivating nightmare future scenarios will help guide our solutions to the climate crisis, but they are insufficient to the task on their own.

We need more than just a frightening vision of the world we wish to avoid. Al Gore has done us a service in painting that picture and spreading the nightmare vision. We know we don't want to let climate change run amok and descend into a global warming apocalypse. But we need more than that.

We need more than nightmares. We need dreams!

What we need is a compelling vision of where we want to go, the future we wish to inhabit.

Many of us caught a glimpse of that compelling future at Power Shift 2007 last weekend. Van Jones has a vision of that future. Green for All has a vision. Many of us young people have a vision.

It's a vision of a sustainable, just, and prosperous future; an America - and indeed a world - unshackled from the chains of fossil fuel dependence, with an economy both prosperous and truly sustainable, re-invigorated by the creation of a booming green economy, and full of new pathways out of poverty and into the middle class, opportunities for all to live the American dream.

It is this vision that will ultimately form the backbone of the broad-based movement that will - that must - form to rise to the climate challenge and make that compelling vision a reality.

Friedman and Gore are both certainly wrong - we need to be more than just loud protesters and we need to do much more than simply encircle bulldozers. We need to be visionaries, innovators, thought leaders, and pioneers.

So what's your vision of a sustainable, just, and prosperous future? Time to start dreaming and visioning. Our futures depend on it.

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Teryn Norris wrote, "...instead of constraining our economy, we need to unleash it, driving our engineers, scientists and manufacturers to hone their skills and knowledge, and put these forces to work toward building the next energy economy."

Exactly!

Conservation gets us nowhere when it comes to global warming, whatever other benefits it may offer (and I don't intend to diminish them). We have too many people demanding too much energy to get anywhere with belt-tightening and sacrifice.

The answer does, indeed, lie with restructuring our energy economy.

Teryn goes on to advocate, "...An "American Power" program would advance a massive public investment project -- $300 billion to $500 billion -- to develop and deploy clean energy technology, revitalize the economy, achieve energy independence and create millions of new jobs."

I understand the appeal of Rooseveltian-style politics when confronting a need for massive economic endeavors. But I think gaining the political consensus for such a massive program will be tough slogging.

And it's probably not necessary.

The technologies we need are tantalizingly close. Almost without Federal involvement, research and development are proceeding at a furious pace. A gentle hand to encourage development and fielding of those technologies - and gradually steepening disincentives for burning fuels - is probably all we need to accomplish the complete transformation of our energy economy. We can do it on the cheap.

With a budget of $20 billion annually for development and for early adopter incentives, paid for by taxes on burning fuels - net cost zero - we could accelerate the transformation of our energy economy dramatically. Going forward, all that is needed is to further steepen taxes on burning fuels - including ethanol, which is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The market, I am convinced, will do the rest.

This approach not only avoids sinking us deeper into an already catastrophic national debt, carefully applied disincentives could, in time, pay it off - if we can just avoid electing politicians eager to waste American treasure on useless foreign wars to please corporate interests.

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/67478

Thank you, George Monbiot, for a fine article. Regardless of the details, you
made it very clear where biofuels stand. "The law the British government passed
... 5% of our road transport fuel must come from crops -- will ... save between
700,000 and 800,000 tonnes of carbon a year." A huge and highly uncertain effort
will supposedly save a microscopic 800,000 tons of carbon a year. This is
political magicianship at its finest, misdirecting you from the fact that such a paltry
quantity is irrelevant. The public may be lulled into thinking that something is
being done and that all will be well. The Political magicians have fooled the
innumerate public but they cannot fool nature. Such a tiny change makes not the
least dent in our path to the extinction of so-called humans. Compare the 800,000
tons per year to the 4,000,000 tons per year saved by converting ONE 1000
megawatt coal fired power plant to nuclear. If the British government were
sincere about cutting carbon emissions, they would start with converting coal fired
power plants to nuclear. EACH conversion of a coal fired power plant would save
4000000/800000 = 40/8 = 5 times as much carbon as this biofuel law.

Now don't try to tell me that nuclear power is too dangerous. In the first place, the
comparison has to be with extinction. Do you understand what the word "extinct"
means? It means that, if we keep burning FOSSIL fuels containing CARBON,
EVERY PERSON will be DEAD. THERE WILL BE ZERO SURVIVORS.
EXTINCTION means NO MORE HOMO SAPIENS, EVER. Not even the
worst possible nuclear war, a "general exchange" between the United States and
the old Soviet Union could achieve the extinction of Homo Sapiens. In fact the
simultaneous deaths of 6,400,000,000 people would not even be noticed in the
geologic record. Human population would rebound too fast for the rocks to
notice. But extinction would clearly be noticed by some future space alien
geologist. He would find no more humans after the extinction event.

In the second place your paranoid fears of nuclear power are just that, paranoid,
irrational, crazy, the product of mental illness, ignorance and coal industry
propaganda. And yes, I know something about things nuclear. I am a physicist
with experience in the Army's lead lab for nuclear weapons effects. So, do I need
to post 10 more posts to prove it or will you read my posts on past articles before
making a fool of yourself?

Please also read my past posts on the subject of the extinction we are headed for in
something like 200 years if we don't stop burning carbon. And yes, I like wind,
solar, hydro and geothermal energy. Is there a need to repeat once again that they
are inadequate to meet our needs with current technology and current prices?

PS: To be a "fossil" fuel it has to contain fossils if it is a solid. Coal contains
many fossils, mostly of plants. Oil is a liquid, but oil shale should contain fossils.
Uranium is NOT a fossil fuel. There is no guarantee of finding fossils
anywhere near a uranium mine.

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Renewable energy as a new focus of U.S. and international foreign assistance and U.S. foreign policy must be a central part of the green vision that will create a livable and good future. An example is a proposal for the solar-electrification of a considerable part of Iraq as a core activity of a retooled Iraq reconstruction, and for founding a new solar manufacturing industry in Iraq, that I have written that appears in the current November/December 2007 issue of Solar Today magazine, published by the American Solar Energy Society:
"Make Iraq a True 'Green Zone': Rebuilding with Solar Electricity May Alleviate Iraqis' Suffering -- and the Climate Crisis."

The commentary is also on the Web at linked text. A wonderful pair of photos depicting Pre- and Post-Solar Baghdad (i.e., without, and with, numerous solar-photovoltaic panels) will be added to the page in the coming days.

This piece appears alongside a parallel commentary written by a Sierra Club energy activist making a similar point about Iran and the vexatious question of Iranian nuclear energy, and the promise of renewable energy in the Middle East.

Since Iraq and Iran -- or what we might call "Iraqn" -- is the issue most on American voters' minds, and the carbon/climate crisis is the most important issue facing America, humanity and our planet, combining these two paramount issues of the opening decade of the 21st century and third millennium is a very good idea!

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich approved the idea when I described it to him at a meeting last February. But regrettably I have not heard him publicly broach the idea since. This is exactly the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that the presidential candidates and all high office-seeking candidates should be discussing and proposing during this long two-year campaign.
________________________________________________

Or -- for another example -- the Four-Day Work Week.

A federal redefinition of the standard workweek as a four-day week of 36 hours -- four nine-hour days -- would reduce commuting for workers so rescheduled by a whopping one-fifth while restoring a full day each week to individuals, parents and families, community involvement ... and freedom. The current 40-hour workweek was established two generations ago in an America that wasn't plagued by monster commutes on gridlocked carbon-spewing "freeways" in a world that hadn't heard of global warming.

See "More Time, Less Carbon" at linked text (Take Back Your Time newsletter, Jan.-Mar. 2007)
and "Sixteen Reasons Why the Four Day Work Week Might Be An Idea Whose Time Has Come"
at linked text.

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A perspective that is based on optimism and not just doom and gloom. We are facing uncertainty, social breakdown and change in many areas. The bad news is that in times of change, we turn on each other. Witchunts, McCarthism, Prohibition, xenophobia, antifat hysteria all happened in part because of rapid change. The good news is that all that negativity that we have used in the past to turn on each other could be put to use against a REAL enemy, global warming!

"Weight obsession is a social disease. If we cared more about CO2 than BMI there would still be time."

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What young people should do about the environmental crisis and
impending extinction of Homo Sapiens is: GO TO SCHOOL. Get
degrees in science, math and engineering so that you can understand
reality and overcome your own religion. Once you are well grounded in
reality, preachers, politicians and other charlatans will not be able to fool
you into following their deadly nonsense. Stay out of majors in fantasy
subjects like the humanities, government, law and fine arts. Take few or
no courses in marginal subjects like the social sciences with the exception
of sociobiology, which is a branch of biology. It is physical reality that
will determine whether we survive or go extinct. There is no god, and if
there were, he wouldn't save us from ourselves. In an infinite universe,
there are too many other planets with life on them to care about this one.
Once you have your degree in a hard science and overcome religion in
yourself, you must defeat religion globally by educating everyone else.
The survival of Homo Sapiens cannot be guaranteed on earth unless
religion is defeated. Religions are all about the same. You have to
defeat all of them.
The alternative, after becoming a scientist, is to move off of the planet
earth. It is possible for Homo Sapiens to become extinct on earth while a
remnant survives elsewhere. Note that in that case, Homo Sapiens would
not be extinct but only extinct on earth. The whole phrase must be
retained because "extinct with survivors elsewhere" is illogical,
ungrammatical and wrong. If the only survivors are on Mars, then you
can say "Extinct on earth but surviving on Mars" but you cannot say
"Extinct but surviving on Mars" because that would be a self
contradiction.

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Nevada's Yucca Mountain contains FUEL that is being
wasted. Yucca Mountain is a very valuable place. If I owned it,
I would reprocess the fuel. The problem is people who are
irrationally afraid of all things nuclear. Nuclear power is the
safest and cleanest kind.
NATURAL BACKGROUND radiation is 1000 times what you
get from nuclear power plants and 10 times what you get from
coal-fired power plants.

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I don't believe that terrorists groups will be able to steal uranium. The place it
goes that it isn't supposed to go is Israel. This happened in a small town near
Pittsburgh, PA circa 1970. A company called Numec was in the business of
reprocessing nuclear fuel. Numec did NOT have a reactor. Numec "lost" half a
ton of enriched uranium. It wound up in Israel. Numec is no longer in business.
Terrorists can't compete with Mossad and Israeli dual citizens who are CEOs of
companies like Numec. Israeli nuclear weapons are exact duplicates of
American nuclear weapons. All persons who were "born of Jewish mothers" are
citizens of Israel regardless of any other fact. Since the US can't and shouldn't
discriminate, the reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the US stopped. That was the
only politically possible solution at that time, given that private corporations did
the reprocessing. My solution would be to reprocess the fuel at a Government
Owned Government Operated [GOGO] facility. At a GOGO plant, bureaucracy
and the multiplicity of ethnicity and religion would disable the transportation of
uranium to Israel or to any unauthorized place. Nothing heavier than a secret
would get out.

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1. Yucca Mountain is full of nuclear fuel that needs to be reprocessed. We used
to reprocess spent fuel rods until 1/2 ton of enriched uranium somehow wound up
in Israel.
2. Reference:
OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE:
THE PATH OF SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
by Alex Gabbard
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Selections from the 19th Annual Conference
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
March 14,15,16, 1996
Nashville, Tennessee

Published by the
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
1996
Edited by Jack D. Arters, Ed.D.
Conference Director
The truth is, all natural rocks contain most natural elements. Coal is a rock.
The average concentration of uranium in coal is 1 or 2 parts per million. Illinois
coal contains up to 103 parts per million uranium. A 1000 million watt coal
fired power plant burns 4 million tons of coal each year. If you multiply 4
million tons by 1 part per million, you get 4 tons of uranium. Most of that is
U238. About .7% is U235. 4 tons = 8000 pounds. 8000 pounds times .7% =
56 pounds of U235. An average 1 billion watt coal fired power plant puts out 56
to 112 pounds of U235 every year. There are only 2 places the uranium can go:
Up the stack or into the cinders.
Since a reactor full fuel load is around 11 tons of 2% U235 and 98% U238, and
one load lasts about 10 years, and what one coal fired power plant puts into the
air and cinders fully fuels a nuclear power plant.
Compare 4 Million tons per year with 1.1 tons per year. 1.1 divided by 4 Million
= 2.75 E -7 = .000000275 =.0000275%. Remember that only 2% of that is
U235. The nuclear power plant needs ~44 pounds of U235 per year. The coal
fired power plant burns coal by the trainload. The nuclear power plant consumes
U235 in such small quantities yearly that you could carry that much weight in a
briefcase.
3. See the rest of Alex Gabbard's article. U238 can be bred into Plutonium and
Thorium can be bred into Uranium. We can fuel our nuclear power plants for
CENTURIES just by extracting uranium and thorium from coal cinders and
smoke.
4. See: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html

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Background radiation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

Background radiation is the ionizing radiation from several natural radiation
sources: sources in the Earth and from those sources that are incorporated in our
food and water, which are incorporated in our body, and in building materials and
other products that incorporate those radioactive sources; radiation sources from
space (in the form of cosmic rays); and sources in the atmosphere which primarily
come from both the radon gas that is released from the earth's surface and
subsequently decays to radioactive atoms that become attached to airborne dust
and particulates, and the production of radioactive atoms from the bombardment
of atoms in the upper atmosphere by high-energy cosmic rays. Since 1945 it also
comes from low levels of global radioactive contamination due to nuclear testing.

............shortened.............

Natural background radiation

Natural background radiation comes from three primary sources: cosmic radiation,
terrestrial sources, and radon. The worldwide average background dose for a
human being is about 2.4 mSv per year. This exposure is mostly from cosmic
radiation and natural isotopes in the Earth.

Cosmic radiation

The Earth, and all living things on it, are constantly bombarded by radiation from
outside our solar system of positively charged ions from protons to iron nuclei.
This radiation interacts in the atmosphere to create secondary radiation that rains
down, including X-rays, muons, protons, alpha particles, pions, electrons, and
neutrons. The dose from cosmic radiation is largely from muons, neutrons, and
electrons.

The dose rate from cosmic radiation varies in different parts of the world based
largely on the geomagnetic field and altitude.

Terrestrial sources

Radioactive material is found throughout nature. It occurs naturally in the soil,
rocks, water, air, and vegetation. The major radionuclides of concern for terrestrial
radiation are potassium, uranium and thorium. Each of these sources has been
decreasing in activity since the birth of the Earth so that our present dose from
potassium-40 is about 1⁄2 what it would have been at the dawn of life on Earth.
Some of the elements that make up the human body have radioactive isotopes,
such as potassium-40, so there is also a very small amount of internal radiation.

Radon

Radon gas seeps out of uranium-containing soils found across most of the world
and may concentrate in well-sealed homes. It is often the single largest contributor
to an individual's background radiation dose and is certainly the most variable in
the United States. Many areas of the world, including Cornwall and Aberdeenshire
in the United Kingdom have high enough natural radiation levels that nuclear
licensed sites cannot be built there—the sites would already exceed legal radiation
limits before they opened, and the natural topsoil and rock would all have to be
disposed of as low-level nuclear waste.

............shortened.............

The exposure for an average person is about 360 millirems/year, 80 percent of
which comes from natural sources of radiation. The remaining 20 percent results
from exposure to artificial radiation sources, such as medical X-rays and a small
fraction from nuclear weapons tests.

............shortened.............

Reference:
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2000_1.html

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http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2003/
prPennStateKump.htm

http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op
=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=672

http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op
=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1535

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00037A5D-
A938-150E-A93883414B7F0000&sc=I100322

http://www.astrobio.net/news/article2509.html

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5 groups of scientists have published this same conclusion now. The most recent:
Downloaded from: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article2509.html
The greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history also may have been one of the
slowest, according to a study that casts further doubt on the extinction-by-meteor
theory. Creeping environmental stress fueled by volcanic eruptions and global
warming was the likely cause of the Great Dying, or Permian-Triassic Extinction,
250 million years ago, said University of Southern California doctoral student
Catherine Powers. The research sheds light on how past life interacted with our
planet's changing environment during one of the most important events in the
evolution of life on Earth.
Writing in the November issue of the journal Geology, Powers and her adviser
David Bottjer, professor of earth sciences at USC College, describe a slow decline
in the diversity of some common marine organisms.
The decline began millions of years before the disappearance of 90 percent of
Earth’s species at the end of the Permian era, Powers shows in her study.
More damaging to the meteor theory, the study finds that organisms in the deep
ocean started dying first, followed by those on ocean shelves and reefs, and finally
those living near shore.
“Something has to be coming from the deep ocean,” Powers said. “Something has
to be coming up the water column and killing these organisms.”
That something probably was hydrogen sulfide, according to Powers, who cited
studies from the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, the
University of Arizona and the Bottjer laboratory at USC.
Those studies, combined with the new data from Powers and Bottjer, support a
model that attributes the extinction to enormous volcanic eruptions that released
carbon dioxide and methane, triggering rapid global warming.
The warmer ocean water would have lost some of its ability to retain oxygen,
allowing water rich in hydrogen sulfide to well up from the deep (the gas comes
from anaerobic bacteria at the bottom of the ocean).
If large amounts of hydrogen sulfide escaped into the atmosphere, the gas would
have killed most forms of life and also damaged the ozone shield, increasing the
level of harmful ultraviolet radiation reaching the planet’s surface.
Powers and others believe that the same deadly sequence repeated itself for
another major extinction 200 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic era.
“There are very few people that hang on to the idea that it was a meteorite
impact,” she said. Even if an impact did occur, she added, it could not have been
the primary cause of an extinction already in progress.
In her study, Powers analyzed the distribution and diversity of bryozoans, a
family of marine invertebrates.
Based on the types of rocks in which the fossils were found, Powers was able to
classify the organisms according to age and approximate depth of their habitat.
She found that bryozoan diversity in the deep ocean started to decrease about 270
million years ago and fell sharply in the 10 million years before the mass
extinction that marked the end of the Permian era.
But diversity at middle depths and near shore fell off later and gradually, with
shoreline bryozoans being affected last, Powers said.
She observed the same pattern before the end-Triassic extinction, 50 million years
after the end-Permian.

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It is not possible to envision a sustainable world, without first creating sustainable communities.

Creating a Sustainable Future (CASF), a small but diverse group of environmentalists, knowledgeable persons and concerned individuals from around the world, proposes to establish a series of research-led, sustainable communities, provisionally named the ‘Pioneer Clusters,’ to enable transition to the post-petroleum era, a tumultuous time dominated by environmental catastrophes, food and water scarcity, resource depletion and social turmoil.
Seeking New Members for the Steering Committee

CASF invites all concerned individuals, environmentalists, urban planners, architects, permaculturists, food specialists, NGOs and everyone else with interest in sustainable communities to join its Steering Committee for the Pioneer Clusters project. Experience in any focus area is a definite plus. The initial planning and creation of ‘Blueprint’ would be completed in cyberspace to enable international participation and prevent energy, material waste and environmental pollution. http://edro.wordpress.com/
Pioneer Clusters

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is in their ability to opt-out and do what they trust--which is almost always outside the mainstream box, left and right alike.

Courtney E. Martin, a frequent contributor to Alternet, penned a great piece on the Gen Y "opt-out" trait that I believe demonstates the real power of "younger people" (i.e., anyone post-Boomer) to create a whole new way of doing things. The only thing we GenX and younger folks need is for the nostalgic Boomers to quit day-dreaming and stop putting obstacles (political, social, economic) in front of our efforts and support us for a change.

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is in their ability to opt-out and do what they trust--which is almost always outside the mainstream box, left and right alike.

Courtney E. Martin, a frequent contributor to Alternet, penned a great piece on the Gen Y "opt-out" trait that I believe demonstrates the real power of "younger people" (i.e., anyone post-Boomer) to create a whole new way of doing things in spite of existing oppression-perpetuation systems. The same thinking that created the problem cannot be used to solve it. No duh.

Most of the commentors rightly critique the notion of 'dream up new ways of doing things' with the reality check that we have a real mess on our hands and dreaming something new alone just won't cut it. Others pointed out simply wishing 'the kids would do what we did' won't cut it either. Indeed, we have to take out the damned trash first. But if all we do is focus on that, we'll be getting done about the time the earth is beyond the point-of-no-return and we're into extinction; all the dreaming will have been for naught.

Generationally speaking, taking out the trash and helping the GenYers engineer what they've figured out during their opt-out experiences is the cynical-pragmatist GenXers' job, and I for one, plan on doing everything in my cynical power to do just that as my GenX peers come into the vacancies left by retiring boomers. Afterall they and their elders forced my generation to maintain a whole lot of systems that are totally fucked and utterly useless, but we know how they can be taken down and aren't afraid to do it. We can multi-task while we start clearing out the roadblocks and obstacles; that might mean keeping the Boomers awake enough to be helpful, helping them get their naptimes when they're not, describing to GenYers how to blow the shit up that is in the way of the new paths their opt-out experiences have forged, and cheering them on when they succeed.

I firmly believe GenY's opt-out trait, GenX's cynical-pragmatist trait and Boomer's nostalgia-mass/group-energy trait can all work together if we are smart enough to step out of each others' hair and encourage each other to get the thing done wihtout carving our strengths into weaknesses. We've got to allow each other to do different things simultaneously and out of sequence.

When a Boomer gets too nostalgic or group-lusty they've gotta take a time out, when a GenXers gets too cynical or pragmatic we've gotta take a time out, when GenYers get too "out there" they gotta come back, all of that just long enough so we're not screwing each others' efforts up.

Everybody got their jobs? Good, now let's go get this fucker reworked so we can survive, already.

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