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One of the most important actions that could be taken to slow carbon dioxide emissions quickly is simply to halt the burning and destruction of rainforests. This is a principal conclusion of many leading scientists and conservationists - including Sir James Lovelock. However, there are many other reasons to save the remaining areas of tropical forest.
Lovelock has also warned that excess human population simply cannot be sustained on the Earth. However, whilst reducing population levels will be a long process (it will take several generations unless billions die owing to natural or man-made calamities) halting rainforest destruction could in principle be achieved within a few months or years. This is the aim of The Prince's Rainforests project. You can help support it by signing up using your email address.
Put simply, HALTING DESTRUCTION OF THE REMAINING AREAS OF TROPICAL RAINFORESTS is probably the single most important measure that could be taken in the short term to help Life on Earth to survive - and irrespective of whether all the mainstream theories about global warming are entirely correct.
For the reasons why this and other corrective actions will not be taken read this article by the SeeRed author (it was written before the 'credit crunch' and seems even more relevant now).
For a wide-ranging discussion of whether the green agenda is a conspiracy theory, try this. There is a readable account with many links discussing the 'problem' that in previous warming periods increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration have lagged behind temperature increases.
For a very readable account of Earth Science that sets present arguments about temperature rise into a long perspective, ask your library for a copy of The Revenge of Gaia. Two excerpts are given below.
Excerpts from 'The Revenge of Gaia' by Sir James
Lovelock.
Past and present atmospheric pollution with
carbon dioxide and methane is similar to the natural release of these gases fifty-five
million years ago, when comparable quantities of carbon entered the atmosphere. Then the
temperature rose about 80C in the temperate northern regions and 50C
in the tropics; the consequences of this heating lasted 200,000 years.
In explaining that the great tropical
rainforests are already stressed by existing on a warm earth (warm compared to long ago)
it is emphasised that even a small increase in temperature might cause them to collapse:
"a 40C rise in
temperature would be enough to disable the Amazon forest and turn it into scrub or desert,
and it would happen partly from the local consequences of a faster evaporation of rain but
also from global changes in wind patterns."
