INTRODUCTION.

This publication first appeared in the first issue of ‘doom, doom, doom, and doom’. The text has been considerably expanded for this publication.

Climate politics is a new form of politics. It has arisen in the 1990s as a consequence of the scientific verification of global warming. There has been no such thing as climate politics in the past. Plato wouldn't have known anything about it nor even more recent political philosophers from marx through to hannah arendt and michael oakeshott. Science has discovered a new fact about human existence and political theorits have to try and come to terms with it. This does not mean forcing it into the strait-jacket of existing political theories hoping to incarcerate as much of it as possible. What it means is that it is necessary to start with the fact itself and then deduce a political theory from it which encompasses all of its new realities. Whether we like it or not the climate is no longer out there, something over which we have no control and which impinges itself on human existence, but is rooted in human existence. Climate politics is so new that it also quite distinct from green politics. Environmental/green politics has got very little in common with climate politics; indeed, green activists are so intent on creating a green world they are perfectly willing to see the destruction of huge areas of greenery which would be totally anethema to those who adocate climate politics.

At its most fundamental climate politics is based on the fact that everything that humans, and Animals, do affects the Earth's climate and that, as a consequence everything that humans do must be regulated by the climate - political decisions whether global, international. national, regional or local must be determined by climatic considerations or take place within parameters established by the climate. If humans continue to ignore the climate then they will perish and, given the current threat posed by global warming this is not some far distant issue but one which could take place within a matter of a few decades.

Although the greenhouse effect was discovered two centuries ago it has been only over the last decade or so that scientists have begun to unravel the nature of the phenomena which keeps the Earth some 33C warmer than it would otherwise be. It was only in the early 1990s that the world's leading scientists felt confident to announce that there was sufficient evidence to substantiate the global warming hypothesis. For a time during the 1970s a number of scientists and commentators believed that the main climatic problem was the threat of a new ice age. For some critics of global warming this is proof that scientists can make mistakes and that global warming can only be regarded as a scientific hypothesis. The fact is however that the threat of another ice age continues to exist. It is just that global warming is currently a more urgent threat and that once this threat passes then the Earth will once again be threatened by a new ice age. If the human race wants to survive in perpetuity it needs to steer a course between the dual threats posed by global warming and global cooling.

The first aspect of climate politics concerns the issue of whether humans should try and do something about regulating the climate. Even if the answer is negative there is still a residual form of climate politics in so far as it will be possible to determine what will happen as a result of doing nothing. Climate politics becomes a more substantial issue only if humans decide that some attempt must be made to stabilize the climate because it then needs to be determined who is going to take the actions necessary - and this in turn depends on who has caused climate destabilization. One of the basic principles of climate politics is that those countries who are most responsible for destabilizing the climate have the most responsibility for helping to stabilize it. The over-industrialized countries are primarily responsible for destabilizing the climate and it is primarily, although not solely, their responsibility to repair the damage.

There are those who believe that climate issues are irrelevant to, or divorced from, the major political issues of our time. This is not correct. Third world poverty is a cause of global warming, and global warming will be countered only by the eradication of global poverty. In other words, a campaign to stabilize the climate is a new way of fighting the global inequalities between the rich and poor countries. The Animal exploitation industries are the biggest cause of global warming and, consequently, the climate will be stabilized only if the Animal exploitation industry is abolished. Thereby, campaigning to stabilize the climate opens up a new front against Animal exploitation. Climate politics is thus the key to a new approach to combatting Animal exploitation and global inequalities. The attempts made so far to eradicate these two forms of injustices on the basis of humanistic considerations have failed and will continue to do so in the future; it is only if these injustices are tackled from the perspective of global warming that they stand any practical chance of being eradicated. If they are not solved humans are doomed. Climate politics is also the best rationale for promoting the creation of ooman-free Wilderness areas to protect Wildlife.

In conclusion, climate politics is not merely about stabilizing the climate, protecting the Earth’s life support system and creating a sustainable way of life enabling humans to survive in perpetuity on Earth. It is a means of overcoming the global injustice of third world poverty, the abandonment of the Animal exploitation industry and the creation of Wilderness areas to protect Wildlife. There is no other issue in 'environmental' politics which is bound up with so many other major issues. Campaigning on this one issue will help to rectify all these other issues.

If there were no humans on Earth the climate would currently be heading back into the next ice age and vast ice sheets would gradually be spreading across the north american and eurasian continents. However, since the industrial revolution the over-industrialized nations have caused so much atmospheric pollution and Photosynthetic devastation they are not merely preventing the return of the next ice age but are threatening to create a global warming disaster. There is little choice about the matter. Humans have got to regulate the Planet’s climate to avoid either of these extremes.

CLIMATE POLITICS

I: The Basic Tenets of Geocentrism; The Need For Climate Regulation.

The basic tenets of geocentrism are that:-

* all humans depend for their survival upon the Earth’s geophysiological processes;

* every creature on Earth affects the Planet’s geophysiology and anything which happens to the Planet’s life support system affects every creature;

* all humans have responsibilities not so much for all other humans but for the Earth’s life support system. The destruction of a piece of land on one side of the Planet is just as serious as the destruction of land at the bottom of the street - quite possibly, it could even be more important. NIMBYISM is useful for motivating local people to protect a particular piece of land and, if the land is saved, this will benefit all humans around the world. Geophysiologically, however, NIMBYISM is a danger because saving a local piece of land merely encourages local people to sit back and allow the rest of the Earth to be destroyed. Americans have as much interest in what goes on with the geophysiological processes in the amazon as brazilians have an interest in what goes on with geophysiological processes in america.

* it is impossible to create an ecologically sustainable way of life in one community/country whilst the rest of the world is in geophysiological chaos. It is impossible to create a stable climate for one community/country whilst the rest of the world is suffering from climate destabilization. The situation where the world's 140 odd nations support national ecological sovereignty - in which, in effect, they are trying to create their own climate - is ecocidal. It is not possible for 140 odd nations to each have their finger on the Planet's thermostat;

* because the Planet's climate is a unitary entity it can be controlled only by some form of world government/world authority/world agreement. It is not possible to coerce states into supporting, for ecological reasons, the creation of a world government because that country could easily destroy its ecology and thereby make its submission to a world government completely meaningless.

II: The Opposition to Climate Regulation.

Most commentators are opposed to climate regulation whether for theoretical, pragmatic, political, or moral, reasons.

The main theoretical argument against the possibility of climatic regulation is chaos theory, "Chaos theory tells us that we can never expect to be able to predict the weather for more than a few days ahead with any degree of accuracy. The dynamics of the atmosphere far exceed the level of complexity at which it would be even theoretically possible. It cannot be done." This philosophy developed only in the 1980s but is now old enough to have generated critiques. There are now a number of anti-chaos philosophies pointing out the underlying regularities in many phenomena. This leaves the way open for climate control, "By making continual, tiny changes to the atmosphere, meteorologists may one day be able to control the weather."

There are a number of arguments against the practicalities of regulating the climate.

There are those who believe that the necessary information does not exist at the moment nor for a long while to come, "Science has not provided, and will not provide in the forseeable future, the knowledge that we need to dominate and control nature."

"Geo-engineering .. the results of any attempt at large scale climate modification could not be perfectly predicted and might not be what is desired."

There are those who argue that regulating the climate would mean controlling the Earth’s Forest cover. This would be difficult given that at the moment there is no way of even measuring terrestrial Photosynthesis. However, attempts are being made to do this. A weather satellite noaa-7 carring the first advanced very high resolution radiometer (avhrr) provided a considerable amount of data about the Earth’s Vegetation cover, "When Tucker and Townsend mapped the vegetation index, season by season, they were able to distinguish broad areas of rainforest, grassland and so on, by the density of vegetation and its seasonal behaviour."

The meteorological satellites measuring the Earth’s Vegetation discovered one more phenomena which may turn out to be of profound importance to the issue of climate regulation - that there is a fundamental unity and structure to the Earth’s Plant life which undermines the validity of chaos theory, "No one has been able to think of any physical or evolutionary reason why pine needles, maize leaves and cactuses should all be reliably shiny in the near infra-red, and in such a strict proportion compared with red light that estimates of plant growth and transpiration are possible. Without that convenience on the part of nature, the vegetation index would not work."

There are a wide range of political reasons for opposing climate regulation.

Paradoxically, the person who can be credited with giving scientific respectability to the idea of regulating the climate is totally opposed to the idea. James lovelock has done more than any other scientist to point out that, throughout the aeons, life has regulated the Earth’s climate and yet he opposes the idea of humans’ controlling the Earth’s climate. If it seems a little bizarre for someone who believes that life unconsciously regulates the climate to oppose a conscious attempt by life to regulate the climate, it is even more bizarre that he promotes the idea of changing the climate on mars but not that on Earth.

His two main reasons for opposing climate regulation are firstly, that it would be an onerous burden for humans, "We could wake one morning to find that we have landed ourselves with the lifelong task of planetary maintenance engineering. Then, at least, we should be riding in that strange contraption, "Spaceship Earth." Secondly, that humans cannot be trusted with such a task. It is difficult not to agree with the latter sentiment but politically it is naive - as hannah arendt has argued it doesn’t matter that human nature may be evil as long as there is a political constitution which creates ‘fences between people’ to prevent this evil from enjoying free reign. In order to regulate the climate, a global constitution would have to be created to the provide the ‘fences’ between a world government and the rest of the world. Lovelock’s attitude is also unrealistic - when the damage caused by climate change becomes severe humans are almost certain to try and regulate the climate. It would be better if this was done slowly and thoughtfully rather than in haste. And, as e.g. nisbet has argued, "Ultimately .. it is in the nature of humanity to attempt to set the climate to its own liking."

Nigel calder is another high-tech, space scientist like james lovelock. He has a predilection for purposive analogies about the Earth and is opposed to regulating the climate. In Spaceship Earth (sic) he argues, "A climate model is a dream in a supercomputer." It is something of a paradox that those scientists who use mechanical analogies about the Earth seem to be most opposed to climate regulation, "If the earth had an operating manual, the chapter on climate might begin with a caveat that the system had been adjusted at the factory for optimum comfort, so don't touch the dials." Which begs the problem of what should be done given that humans have already smashed up most of the dials.

Calder is dismissive of the idea of planetary management for a number of reasons. Firstly, managing anything suggests that it is manageable. "Some sub-systems (of the earth) including vegetation, rivers and minerals, are amenable to human manipulation, while the Earth’s orbit is not, and neither are hurricanes, volcanoes or ocean currents."

"A second requirement for management is knowledge of cause and effect in the earth system: do this and that will follow. If any reader thinks that research of the kind described in this book amounts to a maintenance manual for the planet’s life-support facilities, then something has gone wrong in the writing or the reading."

Thirdly, "Management also presumes at least a broad agreement about how the world should be. Environmentalists .. delude themselves that a consensus is possible."

"Finally, and most offensively, ‘Managing planet Earth’ implies that there are managers - -officers in the computer-filled bridge of the spaceship who tell the crew what to do." Calder uses the spaceship Earth analogy but denies one of its most obvious applications. This is just like Lovelock who uses a purposive analogy of the Earth and then denies that humans should act purposively towards the Earth.

Many environmentalists fear that regulating the climate would give rise to a global scientific dictatorship, "Satellite pictures scanning the globe’s vegatative cover, computer graphs running interacting curves through time, threshold levels held up as worldwide norms are the language of global ecology. It constructs a reality that contains mountains of data but no people. In short, they provide a knowledge which is faceless and placeless .. It offers data, but no context; it shows diagrams but no actors; it gives calculations, but no notions of morality; it seeks stability but disregards beauty. It is inevitable that the claims of global management are in conflict with the aspirations for cultural rights, democracy and self determination. Indeed, it is easy for an ecocracy which acts in the name of ‘one earth’ to become a threat to local communities and their life-styles."

These dangers should not be dismissed but, then again, they should not be used as an excuse to stop climate regulation. There are undoubtedly managerialist greens in international green organizations, universities and multi-national corporations who could develop such a nightmare system but climate regulation does not necessarily lead in this political direction. On the contrary, climate regulation could be used not merely to stop ecological destruction and protect the Earth’s life support system but to liberate Animals, create Wilderness areas, bring about justice between all people’s of the world, enhance local democracy and protect cultural freedoms.

It can be argued that the need for climate regulation is one of the most compelling reasons for abolishing firstly the huge and destructive divisions between the rich, and the poor, worlds and secondly, human exploitation of Animals. There is going to have to be a co-ordination of human activites around the world to prevent a climate disaster because the Planet’s ecology is a unitary entity but humans will still have many freedoms within these geophysiological constraints.

The image that sachs creates about the dangers of climate regulation is that a huge world bureaucracy would be forced to carry out mega-Earth changing projects to control the climate. Such projects might include the creation of huge inland seas, diverting the course of rivers, fertilizing the oceans etc, etc. It is undoubtedly true that the more complicated the measures taken to control th climate, the bigger the bureaucracy would be, the greater would be the threat to every communityn on Earth. However, if the climate was controlled by one single factor, the scale of the Earth's Forest cover, then the level of bureaucracy would be minimal. If in each country one-third of the land was given over to climate Forests, humans would be left in peace to determine their own cultural values in the one third of the land which could be used to create regional Wood economies.

Sachs also believes that climate regulation would put humans above nature which has over-tones of anthropocentrism in which humans are the masters of the world and the measure of all value, "Like a patient under intensive care, the earth (sic) is now kept under continous observation (by satelites) so that therapy can be rapidly applied before the planet expires. The agenda for this technocratic ecology is the rationalization of intervention in nature - moving away from an epoch of blindness to one of enlightenment in humanity’s domination of nature." Whilst climate change would certainly put humans 'above nature' it would not make them the masters of nature. They would be controlling the climate to maximize biodiversity and the fact that they had put aside one-third of each country for Wildlife would also indicate that they were not the measure of all value. It is imperative that humans pull themselves above nature but stay within the confines of the Earth. To be within nature is to accept the barbarities of life as 'red in tooth and claw'.

Perhaps an even bigger fear than the fear of a global scientific elite is the fear of a global government. This seems a little misplaced given that a world government has already come into existence with the 'multilateral trade organization', "The MTO would be a permanent secretariat with a ministerial conference every two years. This new global commerce agency will, unlike the current GAT secretariat, have a legal personality placing it on a par with and separate from the UN ..."

"The GATT gives decision-making power to a body that no one's even heard of, the World Trade Organization. This replaces the GATT Secretariat and is in fact the GATT Secretariat signing itself jobs and pensions for life. This is the new world civil service, but where's the parliament? There is none." (Tim Lang 'The End of the Citizen' Open Eye no.3 1995 p.15).

"The MTO would be a permanent secretariat with a ministerial conference every two yaers. This new global commerce agency will, unlike the current GAT secretariat, have a legal personality placing it on a par with and separate from the UN ..." (Tim Lang, & Colin Hines ‘The New Protectionism’ Earthscan Publications Ltd, London 1993 p.48).

"Unlike the GATT, the Multilateral Trade Organization (MTO) would have a 'legal personality', enjoying 'in the territories of each of the members such legal capacity, privileges and immunities as may be necessary for the exercise of its functions'. In other words, governments would be legally obliged to amend domestic legislation which conflicted with MTO rules - a provision which has enormous implications in terms of the accountability and sovereignty of national legislative bodies." (Kevin Watkins 'Fixing the Rules' Catholic Institute for International Relations London 1992 p.134).

Perhaps the group with one of the most surprising views about climate regulation is the 'ecologist'. It might have been thought that the 'ecologist' would have been at the forefront of the battle to combat global warming and would have seen such a campaign as one of the main ways of eradicating the global inequalities between the rich and the poor nations.

The 'ecologist' believes that when local people in third world countries are fighting to save a greenfield site, the battle should be fought purely on local issues rather than on a Planetary issue such as global warming, "It is at the grassroots that they (global institutions such as the world bank and multi-national corporations) can most wisely be opposed. For it is the only level at which men and women can effectively struggle." Battles over greenfield sites are different in the over-industrialized nations than they are in the disintegrating/industrializing nations. In the former local people may protest about the loss of a local amenity, a recreational area, an area of scenic beauty, or scientific interest; but people’s jobs, homes, and way of life are rarely threatened. In the latter local people could be faced with a proposal which would affect not merely their leisure but their livelihood and entire way of life. In these circumstances it is sensible for third world people to base the reasons for their opposition to a construction project not merely upon global warming but on their survival. But to the 'ecologist' emphasizing global warming in such battles would be an irrelevance. It argues that no matter how real global warming may be, to third world people fighting for their survival it is "an abstract concern" . Campaigns must be rooted in specific materialistic demands rather than "airey fairey" ideas like global warming.

There are a number of problems with this position.

Firstly, such arguments are valid only in those areas where humans live, they are irrelevant in uninhabited areas. Perhaps the ecologist is working on that insidious green assumption that there are no Wilderness areas left on Earth and that all areas are occupied or owned by one tribe or another? Then again the 'ecologist' has never been interested in Animal rights issues so its campaigning stance is bound to manifest this stance.

Secondly, what happens if local people make demands for the development of a green area which will boost global warming? It's acceptable for outsiders in the over-industrialized world to help local people in the disintegrating world to oppose a world bank project on the terms laid down by local people themselves (although this would hardly inspire the great masses in the over-industrialized world to help out) but what if local people come up with projects which also involve the destruction of the Planet?

Thirdly, what happens once the world bank wises up to this new ideological attack and manages to win the approval of local people for massive development projects?

Fourthly, how is it possible to encourage people to think of themselves as Planetary beings, to think about the Earth and the need to regulate the climate if they are solely concerned with their own bread and butter NIMBYish attitudes? How is it possible to combat global warming if they're solely interested in local issues? How are people going to take global warming seriously if they think only about local issues? In order to combat global warming and to enable the human race to survive in perpetuity on Earth then people must see themselves as Planetary beings in which damage to the Earth, anywhere on Earth, affects everyone on Earth. The damage inflicted on america's environment should be as much of a concern to indians as damage to the indian environment should be a concern to americans.

Finally, it is blatantly obvious that it is not in the 'materialistic interests' of local people to fight against global warming. It is in the interests of every community to pollute the environment whilst letting other communities suffer most of the consequences. If all local groups aound the world continue to increase their standard of living by boosting atmospheric pollution/Photosynthetic destruction then the obvious outcome will be a global warming disaster.

The deep green movement believes the Earth is sacred; that humans should not intervene in the Earth’s ecological habitats but should browse off the Earth’s resources like Pleistocene hunter gatherers; and that humans are not 'above' but a part of nature. Deep greens support tribalism not cultivation. They are thus opposed to climate regulation.

Unfortunately, ‘living in harmony with nature’ is not the same as, and is often in conflict with, living in harmony with the Earth i.e. maintaining climatic stability. It is quite feasible for humans all over the world to live tribally, love and respect nature, live frugally within local ecological constraints, and then find they are face with climatic disasters as ice sheets begin to spread across the north american and euroasian continents. This would push vast numbers of people southwards leading to territorial disputes, intense competition for resources etc., which could result only in wars, poverty, and the total decimation of Wildlife. Tribal living would be impossible where so many humans had been pushed together by climatic disasters and were having to live off a much smaller area of land. Living in harmony with the local ecology has nothing to do with taking care of the Planet. The former is a localized, decentralized self indulgent NIMBYISM whilst the latter is Planetary, concerned with caring for the Earth and its Biodiversity.

III: Organizations Supporting Climate Regulation.

III.A: The World Conservation Union, the Worldwide Fund for Nature

These three organizations jointly published a book outlining their position on global warming. They believe global action is imperative because the Earth's climate is a unitary system. They support the use of international law, although not global government, to protect the global environment, "Thinking globally and acting locally is not enough. We must act globally as well. The environment links all nations. The atmosphere and oceans interact to provide the world's climate. Sovereign states must stop regarding themselves as self-sufficient units (which few, if any, are), and accept a future as components of a global system. International cooperation needs the backing of international law. To expand from nationalism to globalism, we need to reshape the law to reflect the need for the people of the world to live sustainably, and the obligations of nations towards the earth that they share. We need to build a global alliance, and to use international law (especially treaty law) to give it effect"

IV: Individuals Supporting Climate Regulation.

Norman Myers.

Norman myers is an admirer of james lovelock's Gaia theory. In the past he tended to take lovelock's ideas further than lovelock himself by arguing that there was a need for 'planetary management'. After lovelock's criticisms of 'planetary management' myers brought his ideas more into line with lovelock's - even though the concepts stayed the same, "'Planet management' is now an established term, even adopted by large governmental and corporate programmes for satellite communications and long term environmental monitoring. The risk is that these powerful interest groups may begin to use the term to imply control or rule of the planet by humans (and by elite groups of human at that). Once again, they are falling into the trap of getting humans "above" nature. And this hubris has rightly drawn protests from thoughful ecologists. We are a part of nature, one member of Gaia, that "very democratic entity" described by James lovelock. Of course we cannot "manage Gaia" nor rule the biosphere. We are ourselves ruled by the biosphere. No worse fate could befall the earth, or us, than for humans to take on forever the task of running the living world, with its infinite web of connections between biota, climate, soils, water and air. Should we so damage Gaia that we are obliged to attempt this role, then we should truly be aboard "Spaceship Earth" - and about to crash! But this is not the proper meaning of planet management. It means managing ourselves, with the planet in mind. Oyr civilization is global, with planet-scale impacts on Gaia's life system. Yet, whether as political leader or corporate executive or individual citizen, we rarely think or act with planetary awareness. Instead, we each act for our own, personal, local or national interest and ignore the cumulative result. We are practicising planet mismanagement on a staggering scale. The art of planet management is to do just the opposite: to manage our human affairs so that the well being of Gaia (including habitats, species, and people, present and future) comes first - because we all depend on the whole for our survival. Such a system of self management cannot be imposed from above by governments." Quite whether a self-imposed 'planetary management' will be smaller or bigger burden than 'planetary management' imposed from above is difficult to say. For many people it will be a duty they are not in the slightest bit interested in undertaking.

The issue for myers is not the creation of a world government to manage the climate but the adoption of a new ethics in line with planetary health, "Meeting it (the challenge of sustainability) will require changes in how we all evaluate our needs, how we behave, and how we perceive each other, other life, and the Earth. At base, it is a matter of ethics. The issue of ethics is fundamental, because ethics form the principles and values upon which society is built. It is ethics which determine how we pursue economic, technological, and political goals. What we do depends on what we believe: a widely shared belief is far more compelling than any government edict. .. we can create a new ethic, suitable to the new era we are entering. An ethic that embraces care for species, and all humanity - a new humanism, a new world view, a new planetary concern."

Although myers doesn't talk about the need for a world government he is all too aware of the need to go beyond national politics, "The state of the world ocean is a sensitive litmus test of our developing skills in planet management. The ocean, in short, is an indivisible resource, whereas the nation state tends to be a divisive force at a global level. However well it performs as a management tool to serve local needs, the nation state, virtually by definition, is incapable of matching up to the collective needs of the community of nations, let alone to the broader needs and interests of present and future generations. How, then, can we re-establish a concept of the ocean as the common heritage of mankind, to be administered as a necessarily shared resource."

Harris supports the creation of a world government because of the unitary nature of the Earth’s geophysiology. Global problems can be solved only on a global level, "The Earth’s ecology is a single system and its balance can be upset by practices in any one area so as to affect all others. The hydrosphere is a single system and the biological community by which it is inhabited is indivisible. Likewise the atmosphere is changed as a whole by any excessive gaseous emissions anywhere in the world. It follows that any independent sovereign nation of considerable size may fatally hamper whatever measures are taken to protect the environment by a federal world government. Accordingly, to attain its goals it must have universal jurisdiction, and that means it must be authorized to enforce its law throughout the entire world. As it could not do so upon an independent state without the use of military force, and as war has a disasterous effect on people, economies and ecological systems, the objects of the entire project can be defeated by one recalcitrant external sovereign government."

The US Vice President Al Gore is the International president of GLOBE (Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment).

Despite her crass ecofeminism Mellor is good on the global nature of green politics, "If we want to understand the global ecosystem we will have to raise our eyes from our particular cabbage patch to study the material reality of Gaia in its global context." She believes the security of the planet, "will not be achieved by a decentralized ‘communing’ with the soil. It will require collective political action at a global level." It is not entirely clear whether she supports the regulation of the climate but the arguments above are pushing her in this direction.

William Ophuls is one of the few green commentators who has come out in favour of a world government entirely unambiguously as a means for protecting the Planet - although once again, as was the case with mary mellor, he does not specifically campaign for regulating the climate, "The need for a world government with enough coercive power over fractious nation states to achieve what reasonable people would regard as the planetary common interest has become overwhelming."

Robyn Eckersley is what could be defined as a reluctant supporter of world government seeing no other choice, "Without concerted ecodiplomacy resulting in a comprehensive array of treaties providing for macro-ecological controls and standards at the international level, Green economists will remain hard pressed to convince an effective majority of voters within their own nation that they must become ecological saints while individuals and corporations in other countries continue to engage in ecologically irresponsible practices." Once again, it is not clear whether she supports climate regulation.

There are those commentators who believe it is necessary to regulate the climate but rather than doing so geophysiologically through Reforestation they prefer to use technological means. "Our planet is in need of a new stewardship based on a scientific understanding of how it works. But we are a very long way from achieving that end. We have only the vaguest idea of what controls there are in the cockpit of spaceship Earth. While we are drawing up the operating manual, we may have to come up with some short term technical fixes to help us to get by." These ‘short term technical fixes’ include carbonization devices to capture Carbon which can then be dumped into deep ocean trenches; maintaining high levels of acid rain to curb global warming; storing land on water to prevent sea level rises; using artificial chemicals to seed clouds and cool the Earth, etc etc.

There is little doubt that technological means for regulating the climate will cause a geophysiological disaster because whilst humans believe they can control the climate technologically they will continue to act in the way they doing and further diminish the Earth’s life support system. Technology has caused the current ecological disasters, it is not going to rescue humans from such disasters.

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- ‘The Blue Planet. An Ambiguous Modern Icon’ The Ecologist vol.24 no.5 September/October 1994 p.170-175.

WWF