Phil, David, Joe and Brian,

Thank you all for your observations.

Human greed is, indeed, a problem. There was a guy wandering about what 
is now Israel, almost 2000 years ago, who taught Jews, Samaritans, 
Pharisees and so on that greed was not the best way. Some of the people 
agreed with him, even after he was murdered cruelly because of his views 
and history records numerous cases of generosity by followers of his 
teachings. What worries me most about it is that many or most of the 
greediest people in either political or industrial power today claim 
also to follow his example, the most powerful amongst them even stating 
he is a born-again Christian. Yet, if I read his Sermon on the Mount in 
Matthew and other teachings, I cannot reconcile this guy's born-again 
greedy Christianity with what the Master he is supposed to be following 
taught. Nor, for that matter, the greed and lack of Christian love of 
the established churches. Personally, I am not a religious person; but I 
never say there is no God, in case He hears me. In reality, I do not 
deny spirituality and I am a lapsed Presbyterian church-goer (mainly 
because of the church's materialism. I do not really believe in the 
divinity of Jesus, but I accept wholeheartedly that his teachings were 
for the good of mankind and are as valid today as they were about 1975 
years ago, as an extension of the basic OT teachings by other men. What 
he taught has been so distorted, today, as to be societally 
unrecognisable. Until we realise this and we all lead our lives as Jesus 
et al. taught us, whether we believe in his divinity and/or God or not, 
I'm afraid greedy materialism will predominate. That is why I called my 
credo a Utopian dream.

David has obviously been rare amongst us to put into practice much of 
what I have been preaching, even before I put it into words and I 
congratulate him for his groundbreaking approach. However, I think I do 
detect a somewhat doomsaying suggestion in his sayings that total 
anarchy will break out as energy becomes scarcer. This could happen but 
it will not be necessary if we take action now. If we wait until it is 
too late, then the "haves" will almost certainly become at the mercy of 
the "have-nots" (and I don't necessarily mean $$$ in the bank, because 
money may become worthless). We don't have to go very far back in 
history to find examples. And dare I suggest that if this anarchy does 
break out, it will start in the USA?

Joe has some very interesting ideas but I fear that they are more out of 
my self-imposed environmental/energy purview. Whereas I agree that the 
world's population is more than we can sustain without "artificial" 
energy, I have no suggestions as to how it can be controlled without 
thoughts of Hitlerian dogma or, at the least, large numbers suffering 
from increasing amounts of malnutrition and general misery. I agree with 
him wholeheartedly that armed conflict abolition would be a wonderful 
ideal (just think that if all the money ploughed into armaments 
manufacture and research was consecrated into ways of alleviating 
illness or growing food for the world's starving, would not this world 
be a better place? However, that goes far beyond my Utopian dream into 
something approaching Paradise).

Brian, I agree with you generally, but I disagree with you about trees 
being used for sequestration: it would be FAR worse than you or Duke 
University suggest. I think that very few have thought about the 
enormity of sequestration. We are pumping an extra 7 billion tonnes of 
carbon into the atmosphere each year, just to make us happy with our 
SUVs, gas burners, coal power stations and what have you? Just to break 
even for a few years during the rapid growth period of trees, we would 
have to plant enough trees to produce, say, 20 billion tonnes of wood. 
This is equivalent to 3¼ million General Sherman trees per year and just 
imagine - if you can - the area of land necessary to grow that amount of 
young wood. Actually, it is worse than this because leaf/needle rotting 
will release some of its carbon as CH4 and not CO2, much worse as a GHG. 
Then, when we re-use the wood as biofuel, bingo, we release all the 
sequestered anthropogenic carbon again and we are back to square 1. See 
  http://www.cypenv.org/Files/sequest.htm.

I have two requests to make of you guys. 1) Please feel free to 
propagate my credo or, preferably, its URL amongst as many as you like, 
including politicians, industry leaders and so on. 2) Please feel free 
to discuss these matters on 
http://www.cypenv.org/smf/index.php?board=21.0. So far, in this holiday 
period, some 200 persons have viewed my credo but only one person has 
profited to comment on it on the same website (actually an interesting 
comment).

Thanks for making your thoughts known to me - I appreciate it.

Happy New Year to you all.

Brian





Brian Ellis wrote:
> As most of you know, I've been heavily involved in the environment, how
> our use of energy affects it and how we are destroying nature, for many
> years, on both a high-level professional basis and one of personal
> conviction. I'm quite aware that many of you do not agree with my views
> and we must agree to differ. I've been attempting for some time to gel
> my views into something fairly concrete and the result of this can be
> found in My Credo at http://www.cypenv.org/Files/credo.htm along with a
> linked discussion forum. Please feel free to look at this document and,
> if you feel like it, comment.
> 
> Brian
> -- 
> ______________________________________________
> Please note new e-mail address [log in to unmask]
> 

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