Hi all, New data that I had guessed would emerge, finally has. James Hansen of NASA (who was the first to broadly alert the world to the accelerating greenhouse effect) and many other scientists, have now released a report that gives a much more urgent warning on the global carbon/climate crisis than previous releases; especially by comparison to the very weak reports that emerged from from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Previous recent releases by scientists suggested that as a planetary civilization we needed to hold CO2 to 400 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere (the planet is currently at 387ppm) to avoid a planet wide climate catastrophe. The new report shows that, because of new understandings about rapid feedback effects in the planetary system, it is now clear that we must instead -reduce- levels of CO2 in the atmosphere from their current levels -down- to at least 350ppm, and possibly even lower than 300ppm. This new information gives us iron clad credibility in our renewable energy, mass transit, localization and efficiency campaigns to sharply state that catastrophic climate, and therefore planetary and human civilizational change is unavoidable unless we immediately switch to a zero carbon emissions economy and food system, AND use rapid soil building, biodynamic agriculture and forest watershed management, in order to draw carbon back -down- out of the atmosphere as rapidly as possible. (Among other realities, this clearly amplifies that biofuel crop production, which is inherently monocultural and forest/soil disturbing, is even more untenable than we have already begun to realize from the serious warning signs of the planetary food crisis.) The previous alarm that I and others sounded that we must cut our CO2 emissions 100% by 2030 is now outdated. The new alarm is that we must both reduce our emissions to zero as quickly as possible, and, completely reform our global agriculture systems to become biodynamically self sustaining (using zero fossil fuel inputs) -and- designed to rapidly pull carbon back down into the soil creating new -feet- of topsoil in decades. (Note that there are already permaculture agriculture techniques that are actively achieving this amount of soil building - we now must simply make these techniques our new global way of life.) To see a report about the new release go to: http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/740711 To see the scientific release itself go to: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf This all gives us the best argument we have had to date to insist that our communities take immediate action. Instead of talking in generalities of how global CO2 output must be reduced by various percentages, we can now simply focus on our own local infrastructures and food systems and start setting more immediate rapid targets for specific changes; such as 100% mass transit accessibility by 2018, 100% zero carbon electricity by 2023, a local biodynamic food growth and distribution system by 2028 etc. We can now shift from setting vague targets for climate composition, and instead start setting specific dated targets for specific critical municipal tasks. We have now moved from and age of climate activism based on amorphous scientific figures, to a new phase of climate rescue based on actual near term and large scale infrastructure tasks in our own communities and food systems. The new mantra can now be: Specific complete infrastructure changes must be made - as quickly as possible. peace Eric Brooks -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara