G8 failures seem to fall into two categories: first, promise to do too little, and then renege on commitments made; second, promote harmful policies and projects. In the first category comes the G8's statement on global public health. Following aggressive lobbying by public health groups, the G8 agreed to reiterate its commitment to provide universal treatment for HIV/AIDS. But the rich countries have not agreed to put the money on the table to achieve this objective... Also in the first category is the pathetic G8 statement on climate change. Dragged down most of all by the anti-leadership of the U.S., the G8 announced a commitment to a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Well, a sort-of commitment. The best science says the world needs at least an 80% reduction from 1990 emissions levels by 2050, and very likely more, so the G8 commitment is totally inadequate on its face...

In the second category of doing direct harm come many of the G8 recommendations in the declarations on the global economy and on food security. The G8 leaders call for opening and deregulating financial markets, even as it is clear that financial deregulation has helped create the current global financial crisis... The G8 leaders also call for more aid for food-importing, poor countries - to be delivered through IMF lending facilities that typically require countries to adopt more of the market fundamentalist mandates that have driven people off the land and undermined governments' capacity to assist the poor and pursue expansionary economic policies. [More] . . read more

Given geoengineering's increasing visibility, debates among scientists, environmentalists, and engineers are not hard to find. But these debates center on the scientific risks and merits of the re-terraforming proposals. Few people, regardless of position, have focused on a fundamental non-geophysical risk of the method: political control, costs, and stability.

To put it bluntly, global-scale efforts don't happen without global-scale reactions. Should we see geoengineering efforts, there will certainly be struggles over control of the program(s), conflicts over liability for problems, and - most troublingly - independent "rogue" geoengineering projects undertaken in defiance of established guidelines. [More] . . read more

We also had a little vox pop of our own asking some of the questions that we think needed to be asked on Australia's ETS.

We'd like to thank everyone involved in making this happen, particularly Ettienne Fourie from iPOWOW! and Eric Gyors from East Side FM and In the Forum for hosting the videos.

To watch the videos please click the hyperlink to "in the forum" above.   . . read more