- today Fearless Leader whines and carps --

Today Fearless Leader is petulant.

Today Fearless Leader finds someone to blame.

Today Fearless Leader is afraid that his regime is being shortchanged.

So Today Fearless Leader lashes out.

Today Fearless Leader has a PLAN for cooperation.

Today is the first day that Fearless Leader has actually had a PLAN that did not include killing mass numbers of people.

Today Fearless Leader uses his favorite word for the one millionth time.

Today Fearless Leader thinks people believe what he has to say.

Today Fearless Leader show that he thinks he owns the American government.

Today Fearless Leader forgets how many people he has made homeless, made suffer, made limbless , made hopeless, put in secret prisons and those he has had killed.

Today Fearless Leader is worried about the ritzos who want to move into their new digs.

Today Fearless Leader, as always, can go fuck himself.

Radio Address of the President to the Nation

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. One of the most important jobs of any President is to find good men and women to lead government agencies, preside over our courts, and provide vital services to the American people. So I have nominated talented individuals for these positions. Unfortunately, the Senate is not meeting its responsibility to consider these nominees in a timely manner. More than 180 of my nominees are waiting for confirmation. Some have been waiting for more than a year. As a result, careers have been put on hold, families have been placed in limbo, and our government has been deprived of the service of these fine nominees.

On Thursday I stood with many of these nominees at the White House. They are decent and talented people. The Senate needs to confirm them to address important issues, from the economy to public safety to national security.

One of the most important institutions for America's economy is the Federal Reserve. The Fed decides monetary policy, and it sets key interest rates that have an impact on homeowners and businesses across our country. Yet the Senate has been delaying three of my nominations to the Fed for nearly 9 months. My nominees have valuable experience and skills, and I urge the Senate to confirm them as soon as possible.

Another important institution is the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA plays a vital role in keeping you safe when you fly. In October I nominated Bobby Sturgell to lead the FAA. Bobby has nearly 20 years of cockpit experience from his time as a Navy fighter pilot, Top Gun instructor, and commercial airline pilot. He's committed to addressing problems that have caused airline delays, and I urge senators to put politics aside and confirm him to office.

In this time of war, we need a strong Department of Justice. Yet the Senate has not voted on nominations for seven senior leadership positions at the department. One of those vacancies is for Deputy Attorney General. The Deputy Attorney General helps lead efforts to detect and prevent terrorist attacks at home.

I've selected an outstanding nominee for this position: Judge Mark Filip. This former prosecutor has earned a reputation for being fair-minded and dedicated. Several years ago the Senate confirmed him unanimously for a lifetime position on the Federal bench. Now I ask senators to confirm him once again so he can help keep our nation safe.

As senators confirm these nominees, they must also confirm judges to the Federal bench. I have nominated highly qualified individuals who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel. Unfortunately, the Senate continues to delay votes for 28 of my judicial nominees. Three of my nominees for the Court of Appeals have waited nearly 600 days. These delays are irresponsible, they undermine the cause of justice, and I call on the United States Senate to give these nominees the up or down vote they deserve.

When men and women agree to serve in public office, we should treat them with respect and dignity, and that means giving them a prompt confirmation vote. When the Senate fails to give nominees a timely vote, it leaves important positions in our government vacant, and it makes it harder for Presidents of both parties to attract good men and women to serve in these vital posts.

By working together, Republicans and Democrats can chart a better course. We can bring every nomination to the floor for a vote, and give the American people the kind of public servants they deserve.

Thank you for listening.

2007's most loathesome!!

The link will take you to the ENTIRE LISTING. Good freakin work, bud!!

50. Nicole Richie

49. Trent Lott

48. Carson Daly

47. Mike Huckabee

46. Judith Regan

44. Hugh Hefner

43. Sherri Shepherd

42. Bud Selig

C

41. Chuck Norris

40. Lou Dobbs

39. John Boehner

38. Steven Moore

37. Mitt Romney

36. Master Chief

35. Tim Russert

34. Joe Francis

33. John Hagee32. The Founding Fathers

31. Dana Perino

30. Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman

29. Dinesh D'Souza

28. The Troops

27. Britney Spears

26. William Kristol

25. Mormon Jesus

24. Deryk Schlessinger

23. Bill O'Reilly

22. David Petraeus

21. David Vetter

20. Larry Craig

19. Robert E. Murray

18. Kevin Martin

17. Hillary Clinton

16. Chris Matthews

15. Michael Ledeen

14. Glenn Beck

13. Anne Coulter

12. Michael Vick

11. Harvey Levin

10. Alberto Gonzales

Crimes: The most truckling, amoral flunky to ever serve as Attorney General. A jurisprudent organelle, he manifests no concept of the law independent of its expediency to the president. Would smilingly accuse himself of providing material support to al Qaeda at President Bush's request, hurriedly plead guilty, sign his own death warrant and flip the switch himself. His testimony before congressional committees is to public service what cholera is to the small intestine. As first Hispanic Attorney General, Gonzo typifies the self-betrayal and ethical compromise necessary for minorities to become successful Republicans. Been felching sweet approval from Bush's lily-white ass since Texas. A conscienceless, memo-drafting, loophole-crafting liar for hire, pushing for all the worst administration policies, including nixing habeas corpus, denying and then defending rendition, torture, political firings, and a ton of other evil stuff. He even visited a seriously ill and disoriented John Ashcroft at the hospital, attempting to coax him into reauthorizing a clearly illegal wiretapping program. The only Attorney General who ever could have made John Ashcroft a sympathetic character by contrast.

Exhibit A: "The fact that the Constitution -- again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away."

Sentence: Death by dull guillotine, head bent by Beckham.

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn't get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn't cover. You deserve it, chump.

8. Michael Chertoff

Charges: Looks and acts like a man who sleeps in a coffin. As the head, or should we say skull, of our latest redundant security bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff used 2007 to further Rumsfeld's purportedly defunct policy of "Total Information Awareness," ordering U.S. military satellites be trained on American soil for first time in history. Beyond that, DHS seems to function as a corruption farm, spending billions on programs that either don't work or are never implemented, often lobbied for by former DHS employees. If the terror threat really is as dire as Chertoff says, then he is criminally negligent.

Exhibit A: Habitually references his "gut feeling" that the next terror attack is imminent.

Sentence: Gut feeling is actually stomach cancer.

7. Erik Prince

Charges: Priming Baghdad's streets for American imperialism by making them pristinely wog-free. Prince's Iraq is one massive free-fire zone for his bullet-sweating mercenaries, a Hogan's Alley in which everyone dusky is blithely expendable, rape is a mischievous dalliance, and accountability an inside joke. Remarkably, enabling the US occupation and simultaneously fomenting destabilizing enmity. Bringing the privatization of warfare to full fruition -- next time, Exxon can just invade a country directly.

Exhibit A: Blackwater Vice Chairman Cofer Black is Mitt Romney's campaign counterterrorism policy adviser. The company's website also hawks infant onesies.

Sentence: Tanned and tethered outside Baghdad's Green Zone after curfew. Whatever happens, happens.

6. Rudy Giuliani

Charges: 9/11 Tourette's syndrome, compounded by compulsive lying. Despite the '93 WTC bombing, didn't act to put all first responders on the same radio frequency and chose to house his Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor of WTC 7. Giuliani Partners consulting firm routinely did business with a Qatar ministry run by royal Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, a man whose farm has seen guests the likes of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Osama bin Laden. Wooed mistress and future wife with an NYPD chauffeur and trips to Southampton on NYC taxpayers' dime. Ruined the prospect of a Times Square tug-job.

Exhibit A: Stages phone calls from his wife during campaign stops-to show 'em he's got family values. Family values apparently do not include rudimentary put-it-on-vibrate cell phone etiquette. Invoked 9/11 to explain this.

Sentence: Victim of the next 9/11, which consists of two radio-controlled hobby planes smashing into his face.

5. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid

Charges: Graduates of the Neville Chamberlain school of appeasement, the Democratic leadership continues to ignore the constitution-and the American people-by keeping impeachment "off the table" and refusing to defund the war. True pushovers, they're too stupid, cowardly, weak and outmatched politically to accomplish anything substantive, their "strategy" essentially boiling down to whining a lot while handing Bush whatever the hell he wants. There is just no way that appearing this weak and ineffectual could be any better for them politically than impeachment. Everything that the White House gets away with, it gets away with because congress allows it.

Exhibit A: Failure to woo the two thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto is moot: They could defund the war with a 41-senator budgetary filibuster. But that would take guts and conviction.

Sentence: 2 cups anthrax bisque.

4. Seung-Hui Cho

Charges: A useless fucking nerd who shot a bunch of better people because he couldn't get laid. Take note, all you pent-up losers out there: If you think you're about to go on a murderous rampage, either take up a drug habit, find a hooker, or just kill yourself. Your inability to cope with a comfortable life in a developed nation is nobody else's fault, except maybe your parents. Nothing says "I have a tiny penis" like a douchebag taking pictures of himself with a gun.

Exhibit A: Cho's infamous "disturbing" stories are only disturbing in how completely terrible they are, but now every kid with an imagination is going to be hauled off to the nuthouse if he expresses himself.

Sentence: Used as kindling at bonfire kegger for rich, popular kids.

3. Fred Phelps

Charges: Leads a picketing campaign so hyperoffensive that his Church is unanimously reviled by queers and Bible thumping homophobes alike. Along with daughter Shirley, will drag hate into the public spotlight wherever it might seem least helpful or appropriate as long as it garners his "cause" attention. Harasses widows of heterosexual soldiers at funerals because their beloved were employed by a government that does not stone fags. Torments loved ones of those murdered in anti-gay violence. Is almost definitely gay himself.

Exhibit A: He is such an effective, soul-sucking brainwasher that Fred's granddaughter declines relationships because of her delusion that world will end in her lifetime.

Sentence: Finally comes out of closet and is immediately killed by his followers.

2. Dick Cheney

Charges: Worst president ever. So openly horrible, he now makes jokes about being Darth Vader. Unashamedly advocating for executive abuse of power and corporate theft. In and out of public office since his congressional internship during the Nixon Administration. Didn't care about the quagmire he foresaw in '94, because since then he'd deftly maneuvered to profit from it. Polling lower than HPV.

Exhibit A: His Halliburton stock rose 3000% in 2007. No joke.

Punishment: Raped by the sun.

1. George W. Bush

Charges: Is it a civil rights milestone to have a retarded president? Maybe it would be, if he were ever legitimately elected. You can practically hear the whole nation holding its breath, hoping this guy will just fucking leave come January '09 and not declare martial law. Only supporters left are the ones who would worship a fucking turnip if it promised to kill foreigners. Is so clearly not in charge of his own White House that his feeble attempts to define himself as "decider" or "commander guy" are the equivalent of a five-year-old kid sitting on his dad's Harley and saying "vroom vroom!" Has lost so many disgusted staffers that all he's left with are the kids from Jesus Camp. The first president who is so visibly stupid he can say "I didn't know what was in the National Intelligence Estimate until last week" and sound plausible. Inarguably a major criminal and a much greater threat to the future of America than any Muslim terrorist.

Exhibit A: "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."

Sentence: Dismembered, limbs donated to injured veterans.

A bit from George Monbiot

Here's George's latest article - and you'll KNOW I totally concur - and THEN a list of his nuclear articles - and THEN a great review he did of The Road Well Travelled. Enjoy or Don't, but try to read it.

Ban the Bomb - But Only in Iran

Posted November 20, 2007

When will Bush and Brown acknowledge that there is already a nuclear power in the Middle East?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 20th November 2007

George Bush and Gordon Brown are right: there should be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The risk of a nuclear conflagration could be greater there than anywhere else. Any nation developing them should expect a firm diplomatic response. So when will they impose sanctions on Israel?

Like them, I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb. I also believe it should be discouraged, by a combination of economic pressure and bribery, from doing so (a military response would of course be disastrous). I believe that Bush and Brown - who maintain their nuclear arsenals in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty - are in no position to lecture anyone else. But if, as Mr Bush claims, the proliferation of such weapons “would be a dangerous threat to world peace”(1), why does neither man mention the fact that Israel, according to a secret briefing by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, possesses between 60 and 80 of them?(2)

Officially, the Israeli government maintains a position of “nuclear ambiguity”: neither confirming nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. But everyone who has studied the issue knows that this is a formula with a simple purpose: to give the United States an excuse to keep breaking its own laws, which forbid it to grant aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction(3). The fiction of ambiguity is fiercely guarded. In 1986, when the nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu handed photographs of Israel’s bomb factory to the Sunday Times, he was lured from Britain to Rome, drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents, tried in secret and sentenced to 18 years. He served 12 of them in solitary confinement and was banged up again - for six months - soon after he was released.

But in December last year, the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert accidentally let slip that Israel, like “America, France and Russia” had nuclear weapons(4). Opposition politicians were furious. They attacked him for “a lack of caution bordering on irresponsibility.”(5) But US aid continues to flow without impediment.

As the fascinating papers released last year by the National Security Archive show, the US government was aware in 1968 that Israel was developing a nuclear device (what it didn’t know is that the first one had already been built by then).(6) The contrast to the efforts now being made to prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb could scarcely be starker.

At first, US diplomats urged the government to make its sale of 50 F4 Phantom jets conditional on Israel’s abandonment of its nuclear programme. As a note sent from the Near East Bureau to the Secretary of State in October 1968 reveals, the order would make the US “the principal supplier of Israel’s military needs” for the first time. In return it should require “commitments that would make it more difficult for Israel to take the critical decision to go nuclear.”(7) Such pressure, the memo suggested, was urgently required: France had just delivered the first of a consignment of medium range missiles, and Israel intended to equip them with nuclear warheads.

Twenty days later, on November 4th 1968, when the assistant defense secretary met Yitzhak Rabin (then the Israeli ambassador to Washington), Rabin “did not dispute in any way our information on Israel’s nuclear or missile capability”(8). He simply refused to discuss it. Four days after that, Rabin announced that the proposal was “completely unacceptable to us”(9). On November 27th, Lyndon Johnson’s administration accepted Israel’s assurance that “it will not be the first power in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons”(10).

As the memos show, US officials knew that this assurance had been broken even before it was made. A record of a phone conversation between Henry Kissinger and another official in July 1969 reveals that Richard Nixon was “very leary of cutting off the Phantoms”(11), despite Israel’s blatant disregard of the agreement. The deal went ahead, and from then on the US administration sought to bamboozle its own officials in order to defend Israel’s lie. In August 1969, US officials were sent to “inspect” Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. But a memo from the State Department reveals that “the US government is not prepared to support a “real” inspection effort in which the team members can feel authorised to ask directly pertinent questions and/or insist on being allowed to look at records, logs, materials and the like. The team has in many subtle ways been cautioned to avoid controversy, “be gentlemen” and not take issue with the obvious will of the hosts.”(12) Nixon refused to pass the minutes of the conversation he’d had with the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to the US Ambassador To Israel, Wally Barbour(13). Meir and Nixon appear to have agreed that the Israeli programme could go ahead, as long as it was kept secret.

The US government has continued to protect it. Every six months, the intelligence agencies provide Congress with a report on technology acquired by foreign states that’s “useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction.” These reports discuss the programmes in India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and other nations, but not in Israel(14). Whenever other states have tried to press Israel to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the US and European governments have blocked them(15). Israel has also exempted itself from the biological and chemical weapons conventions(16).

By refusing to sign these treaties, it ensures that it needs never be inspected. While the IAEA’s inspectors crawl round Iran’s factories, put seals on its uranium tanks and blow the whistle when it fails to cooperate, they have no legal authority to inspect facilities in Israel(17). So when the Israeli government complains, as it did last week, that the head of the IAEA is “sticking his head in the sand over Iran’s nuclear programme”(18), you can only gape at its chutzpah. Israel is constantly racking up the pressure for action against Iran, aware that no powerful state will press for action against Israel.

Yes, Iran under Ahmadinejad is a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad. The president is a Holocaust denier opposed to the existence of Israel. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iran responded to Saddam Hussein’s toxic bombardments with chemical weapons of its own. But Israel under Ehud Olmert is also a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad. Two months ago it bombed a site in Syria (whose function is fiercely disputed). Last year it launched a war of aggression against Lebanon. It remains in occupation of Palestinian lands. In February 2001, according to the BBC, it used chemical weapons in Gaza: 180 people were admitted to hospital with severe convulsions(19). Nuclear weapons in Israel’s hands are surely just as dangerous as nuclear weapons in Iran’s.

So when will our governments speak up? When will they acknowledge that there is already a nuclear power in the Middle East, and that it presents an existential threat to its neighbours? When will they admit that Iran is not starting a nuclear arms race, but joining one? When will they demand that the rules they impose on Iran should also apply to Israel?

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. George Bush, 17th October 2007. Press Conference by the President. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071017.html

2. US DIA, July 1999. The Decades Ahead, 1999-202. Extracted at: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/index.html

3. Luke Harding and Duncan Campbell, 13th December 2006. The Guardian.

4. Greg Myre, 12th December 2006. In a Slip, Israel’s Leader Seems to Confirm Its Nuclear Arsenal. New York Times.

5. Yossi Beilin, quoted by Luke Harding and Duncan Campbell, ibid.

6. The archive can be viewed here: http://www.gwu.edu:80/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/index.htm

7. Parker T. Hart, NEA, 15th October 1968. Memo to the Secretary of State. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-02.pdf

8. Department of Defense, 4th November 1968. Memorandum of Conversation. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-03a.pdf

9. Department of Defense, 8th November 1968. Memorandum of Conversation. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-03b.pdf

10. Paul C Warnke, Assistant Secretary of Defense, 27th November 1968. Letter to Yitzhak Rabin. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-03d.pdf

11. Henry Kissinger and Elliot Richardson, 16th July 1969. Phone conversation. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-12.pdf

12. Department of State, 13th August 1969. Memorandum of Conversation. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-16b.pdf

13. Harold H. Saunders, the White House, 8th December 1969. Record of the President’s Talk with Golda Meir. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/IN-26.pdf

14. Joseph Cirincione, 11th March 2005. Iran and Israel’s Nuclear Weapons.
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3217

15. No author given, 20th September 2006. Arab states urge IAEA to slam Israel for atomic arsenal. Haaretz.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/765538.html

16. It has signed but not ratified the CWC. It has not signed the BWC.

17. Mohamed ElBaradei, 27th July 2004. Interview with Al-Ahram News. http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Transcripts/2004/alahram27072004.html

18. Shaul Mofaz, deputy prime minister, quoted by Tim Butcher,12th November 2007. Israel calls for sacking of IAEA’s ElBaradei. Daily Telegraph.

19. Correspondent, 17th March 2003. Israel’s Secret Weapon. BBC Two. http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/correspondent/transcripts/17_03_2003.txt

A Catalogue of Idiocy

Posted September 12, 2006

The emerging disaster at Dounreay is a powerful argument for open government. Read more »

Thanks, But We Still Don’t Need It

Posted July 11, 2006

Some of the arguments against nuclear power are no longer valid, but it remains the wrong technology.

Read more »

A Self-Vindicating Policy

Posted January 24, 2006

Building new nuclear weapons creates the threats they are supposed to avert.

Read more »

How Much Energy Do We Have?

Posted November 29, 2005

Are there enough renewables to keep the lights on? The answer will be comforting to no one.

Read more »

Our Own Nuclear Salesman

Posted October 25, 2005

The government’s chief scientist appears to have succumbed to politics

Read more »

The Treaty Wreckers

Posted August 2, 2005

In just a few months, Bush and Blair have destroyed the global restraint on nuclear weapons

Read more »

Proliferation Treaty

Posted September 21, 2004

Of course Iran wants the bomb, and the international system has given it everything it needs to build one.

Read more »

Two Kinds of Mass Death

Posted September 7, 2004

The argument for nuclear power has strengthened, but it’s still not good enough.

Read more »

The British Threat

Posted March 30, 2004

By hardening its position on nuclear weapons, Labour is encouraging proliferation
Read more »

Dirty Bombs Waiting for a Detonator

Posted June 11, 2002

The British ships about to pick up a consignment of plutonium present one of the gravest of all threats to global security.
Read more »

Nuclear Power is Melting Down

Posted March 30, 2000

Fifty years of fraud may be coming to an end
Read more »

The UK’s Nuclear Terrorists

Posted April 23, 1998

The British Government is increasing the dangers of nuclear proliferation
Read more »

Don’t Trust Them!

Posted December 10, 1997

Britain’s nuclear industry keeps lying
Read more »

Secret Dumping

Posted January 1, 1997

Britain’s hidden nuclear crisis is beginning to resemble Russia’s
Read more »

The Road Well Travelled

Posted October 30, 2007

Are we already shutting our minds to the consequences of climate change?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 30th October 2007

A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small is Beautiful or even Walden. It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world.

Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road considers what would happen if the world lost its biosphere, and the only living creatures were humans, hunting for food among the dead wood and soot. Some years before the action begins, the protagonist hears the last birds passing over, “their half-muted crankings miles above where they circled the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl.”(1) McCarthy makes no claim that this is likely to occur, but merely speculates about the consequences.

All pre-existing social codes soon collapse and are replaced with organised butchery, then chaotic, blundering horror. What else are the survivors to do?: the only remaining resource is human. It is hard to see how this could happen during humanity’s time on earth, even by means of the nuclear winter McCarthy proposes. But his thought experiment exposes the one terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our dependence on biological production remains absolute. Civilisation is just a russeting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change. Six weeks after finishing The Road, I remain haunted by it.

So when I read the UN’s new report on the state of the planet over the weekend, my mind kept snagging on a handful of figures(2). There were some bright spots - lead has been removed from petrol almost everywhere, sulphur emissions have been reduced in most rich nations - and plenty of gloom. But the issue that stopped me was production.

Crop production has improved over the past 20 years (from 1.8 tonnes per hectare in the 1980s to 2.5 tonnes today), but it has not kept up with population. “World cereal production per person peaked in the 1980s, and has since slowly decreased “(3). There will be roughly 9 billion people by 2050: feeding them and meeting the millennium development goal on hunger (halving the proportion of hungry people) would require a doubling of world food production(4). Unless we cut waste, overeating, biofuels and the consumption of meat, total demand for cereal crops could rise to three times the current level(5).

There are two limiting factors. One, mentioned only in passing in the report, is phosphate: it is not clear where future reserves might lie. The more immediate problem is water. “Meeting the Millennium Development Goal on hunger will require doubling of water use by crops by 2050.”(6) Where will it come from? “Water scarcity is already acute in many regions, and farming already takes the lion’s share of water withdrawn from streams and groundwater.”(7) One-tenth of the world’s major rivers no longer reach the sea all round the year(8).

Buried on page 148, I found this statement. “If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress.” Wastage and deforestation are partly to blame, but the biggest cause of the coming droughts is climate change. Rainfall will decline most in the places in greatest need of water. So how, unless we engineer a sudden decline in carbon emissions, is the world to be fed? How, in many countries, will we prevent the social collapse that failure will cause?

The stone drops into the pond and a second later it is smooth again. You will turn the page and carry on with your life. Last week we learnt that climate change could eliminate half the world’s species(9); that 25 primate species are already slipping into extinction(10); that biological repositories of carbon are beginning to release it, decades ahead of schedule(11). But everyone is watching and waiting for everyone else to move. The unspoken universal thought is this: “if it were really so serious, surely someone would do something?”

On Saturday, for some light relief from the UN report (who says that environmentalists don’t know how to make whoopee?), I went to a meeting of roads protesters in Birmingham. They had come from all over the country, and between them they were contesting 18 new schemes: a fraction of the road projects the British government is now planning(12). The improvements to the climate change bill that Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, anounced yesterday were welcome. But in every major energy sector - aviation, transport, power generation, house building, coal mining, oil exploration - the government is promoting policies that will increase emissions. How will it make the 60% cut the bill enforces?

No one knows, but the probable answer is contained in the bill’s great get-out clause: carbon trading(13). If the government can’t achieve a 60% cut in the UK, it will pay other countries to do it on our behalf. But trading works only if the total global reduction we are trying to achieve is a small one. To prevent runaway climate change, we must cut the greater part - possibly almost all - of the world’s current emissions. Most of the nations with which the UK will trade will have to make major cuts of their own, on top of those they sell to us. Before long we will have to buy our credits from Mars and Jupiter. The only certain means of preventing runaway climate change is to cut emissions here and now.

Who will persuade us to act? However strong the opposition parties’ policies appear to be, they cannot be sustained unless the voters move behind them. We won’t be prompted by the media. The BBC drops Planet Relief for fear of breaching its impartiality guidelines: heaven forbid that it should come out against mass death. But it broadcasts a programme - Top Gear - that puts a match to its guidelines every week, and now looks about as pertinent as the Black and White Minstrel Show. The schedules are crammed with shows urging us to travel further, drive faster, build bigger, buy more, yet none of them are deemed to offend the rules, which really means that they don’t offend the interests of business or the pampered sensibilities of the Aga class. The media, driven by fear and advertising, is hopelessly biased towards the consumer economy and against the biosphere.

It seems to me that we are already pushing other people ahead of us down The Road. As the biosphere shrinks, McCarthy describes the collapse of the protagonist’s core beliefs(14). I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel before we decide that civilisation is in trouble.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Cormac McCarthy, 2007. The Road, p55. Picador, London.

2. United Nations Environment Programme, 2007. Global Environment Outlook: GEO4. http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/report/GEO-4_Report_Full_en.pdf

3. ibid, p86.

4. ibid, p110.

5. ibid, p110.

6. ibid, p83.

7. ibid, p110.

8. ibid, p99.

9. Alok Jha, 24th October 2007. Warming could wipe out half of all species. The Guardian.

10. James Randerson, 26th October 2007. The edge of oblivion: conservationists name 25 primates about to disappear. The Guardian.

11. David Adam, 23rd October 2007. Carbon output rising faster than forecast, says study. The Guardian.

12. The organisation RoadBlock, which convened the conference, has lists of the government’s new trunk road schemes. http://www.roadblock.org.uk/

13. HM Government, March 2007. Draft Climate Change Bill. http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm70/7040/7040.pdf

14. p93.

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Idiocy

http://gnawingonthespineoflunacy.blogspot.com/2007/08/idiocracy.html