Climate Emergency – Quality of Life

CLIMATE EMERGENCY  –  QUALITY OF LIFE:
[copy of page that has some problems, with updates]

Contents:
Introduction: The issue, Appeal to all readers, Further introductory remarks
Short Summary
Short description of the near future according to HCW proposals 
Description of problem areas, feedback loops (vicious cycles), loss of balances
Causes of the climate crisis
PLANS AND PROPOSALS – Summary of basic goals and recommendations for actions
PLANS AND PROPOSALS – specific proposals including proposals that are our invention or reinvention and experimental (this includes the central issue of carbon sequestration)
Further thoughts concerning the problems and looking towards a solutions
Regarding problems in implementing necessary, radical changes
Regarding human nature and ethics
Regarding quality of life, peace, prevention of wars
–  Previously written material for this page

Introduction: The issues, Appeal to all readers, Further introductory remarks   (edited 4/2026)

· The model: “climate change, then a different climate” is obsolete. We are destabilizing the climate and weather catastrophes keep getting much worse and more unpredictable – how should people be able to adapt?.
· Efforts to mitigate the consequences of global warming are like aiming at a moving target or “a dog chasing a truck!”.
· “I do good deeds and don’t have time to deal with the climate issue” is like saying “I’m very busy with the neighborhood association and have no time to study election issues – I don’t vote!”.
Climate activists and writers generally miss the following points:
We must acknowledge that, In a broad way the main cause of global warming has been consumerism: cars, beef, gadgets, everything bigger rather than better.
1. The cause of continued global warming and climate destabilization is not priarily our present CO2 releases but the very high levels of atmospheric CO2 and methane, and the consequent feedback loops (vicious cycles).
2. There is rapid climate destabilization, not ‘change’ to which we can adapt.
3. Fossil fuel use has been only part of the problem. Since 1850 about 1/5 of the wortld’s vegetation has been destroyed, causing major greenhouse gas releases and greatly decreasing the vegetations’ capacity to absorb CO2. Today, most of the agricultural land that has been gained produces beef which is not healthy and ecologically disastrous.
4. Private efforts will never accomplish the needed radical changes – a government response as decisive as after the attack on Pearl Harbor in1941 is needed – massive ‘re-vegetation’ efforts and restructuring infrastructure, transportation system, industries, land management and economic institutions: we need rail lines, public transportation and ultra-light vehicles, mostly plant-based diets, less consumerism, etc. [Most people do not see this 4. point clearly; they believe their projects are steps that will add up to a solution; every effort is valuable but local projects, while improving local conditions, will never add up to reversing developments.]

The issues:

· Feedback loops (vicious cycles), not present greenhouse gas releases, primarily drive the rapid increases of global temperatures and consequent destabilization of our climate. Temperatures and CO2 levels of the last few million years indicate that we may reach temperatures 2.5-4°C higher than pre-industrial temperatures, unless radical measures are taken and there are major changes in human activities. Carbon neutrality will not halt global warming*.
· The present disastrous developments, if allowed to continue, will lead to decades of weather catastrophes that will become much more unpredictable, frequent, and deadly. Even without further green house gas releases, feedback loops and vicious cycles will keep heating the planet and worsen the climate instability**.
· Not pursuing effective, radical actions to halt and start reversing global warming is de facto complicity in genocides.
· Mitigating and adapting to worsening, unpredictable weather events will not be possible in much of the world.
· Climate change is not like an incurable disease that requires palliative care, it is a side effect of the misguided economic growth that results from bad economic institutions and the failures of society’s leaders.
· These developments can be halted, preventing the rapid deterioration of climates.
· People must learn about 1. the extreme seriousness of the problem, including the likelihood of imminent major population movements and worldwide violence; and 2. about a feasible solution to the problem. People have to inform themselves and each other and, together with activists, scientists, authors, journalists, and NGOs, speak out and demand a radical emergency government response.
· The only solution we can envision is government-led actions that are radical and effective (not what is now being pursued). The people and NGOs must demand actions as decisive as during WWII. Government-led public-private partnership non-profit enterprises must pursue as a primary goal reforms of  land management and promoting many ways of sequestering carbon. Goals have to include greatly reducing meat, particularly beef, production, reforesting, creating natural prairies, and planting bamboo on much land that is presently used for beef production. Also important is preventing the burning and rapid decomposing of organic material. Government actions must pursue saving energy and resources, reforming industries, transportation systems, leading to a future of a radically reformed economy with much decreased consumerism. Simpler lives with lead people to become healthier and happier. (Reforms must broadly apply many approaches that have been shown to have a significant impact and they must promote relevant research.)
· Eco-anxiety or climate anxiety must be addressed by working towards radical changes. Advising people to join groups that work on some climate-related projects that will not change the trajectory of developments may have social benefits. Eco-anxiety is an understandable, rapidly growing mental health issue, caused by the lack of an effective response to the crises.
· Following present paths is extremely cruel. Thinking about electric cars – close to 50 million (2024) on the road, another 1,500 million planned “needed”: 30 times the environmental degradation, with horrific violence and human rights violation around the cobalt mines in East Africa, and ecological damage often with toxic pollution around mines in poor countries, in the Arctic and with sea bed mining; additionally: huge amounts of greenhouse gases from the steel production and from concrete use in the construction of roads, parking garages, factories, etc. – such activities would unnecessarily worsen our future, particularly the fate of the most affected poor people.
· Learning to live in ways that are ecologically sound and that follow most basic rules of ethics enhances people’s health and happiness. Living ethically includes being modest, generous, forgiving, cooperative, compassionate, considering people who are distant and/or different, and considering how we influence the more distant future.

The last section on Quality of life may in the future prove to be the most important issue.
We may learn from the past – studying climates in the last few million years and recent history: through the 1930s there was unease about developments, but eventually, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a radical response and people of the U.S. readily accepted major sacrifices – we need a “Pearl Harbor moment”!

Appeal to all readers: (fall 2024 – edited spring 2026)

Dear activists, dear friends and colleagues:
In these desperate times, please help us to broadly distribute information about what can and must be done to save the world as we know it. We must think in radically different ways. Don’t ask “HOW is the economy doing?” – ask “WHAT is the economy doing?” Answer: It is destroying our civilizations, causing suffering and deaths like in a worldwide war. Global warming is not like an incurable disease that needs palliative care, it is the result of a toxic economy and consumerism, compounded by people broadly lacking an understanding of basic happiness research and ethics.
All NGOs that deal with issues of ecology, climate, helping and saving children, etc. must broaden their mission, add to their narrow niche of activities, and start cooperating in efforts to educate the people regarding the seriousness of the problem and a likely feasible solution; eventually a broad movement should advise governments and demand effective emergency actions.
Everybody may make a real difference, a move towards saving the planet, by educating others and writing directly to leaders of NGOs, university professors, journalists, authors, and open-minded politicians, rather than mainly writing in support of minor legislative actions.
We need a national movement that demands decisive government actions, comparable to the USA’s response during WWII (business-as-usual-with-incentives has not and will not work). Primary goals are: we must  start to reverse global warming by reforming land management, industries, transportation systems, economic institutions, etc., and by saving energy and resources, addressing consumerism and waste. Particularly effective are reforesting, creating natural prairies, and planting bamboo on much land that is presently used for beef production. America must be in a leadership position (along with China, which is a leader in expanding renewable energy, increasing forests and natural grasslands, and building high-speed trains) – we can then expect other nations to follow.
Please communicate with many people, refer to these pages on social media, make efforts to influence influential people, encouraging them to speak out, ask your friends and acquaintances to pass on the information, etc. – as many people as possible should at least read about and largely understand this information, and/or review summary statement in    humanecivilization.org/climate-emergency.
Introductory considerations:
• Relevant issues concerning human nature and the climate crisis include: humans are naturally very culture-bound, following the values and traditions of ancestors, parental figures, group leaders, work-place culture, and also advertisements; people rarely show inventiveness or an interests in possibe major changes. People are also very docile compared with the large majority of other animals; people are easily exploited, enslaved and compelled to do degrading, uncomfortable work for decades. Thinking is generally locally and short-term oriented. Us-versus-them thinking is a major factor leading to many people being ignored and mistreated. Propensities to psychological-behavioral addictions are problematic, the possibly worst being the pursuit of wealth and power. People have to work on being ethical: giving and forgiving, cooperating, being broaldy compassionate and pursuing a simpler, ethical, ecologically responsible lives.
• When major changes are highly meaningful or forced on them, people are very adaptable, and they sometimes show unusual inventiveness. Examples include a couple deciding to have children, people deciding to move into a very different culture with a low material living standard, or people having to flee from a dangerous place.
• For steps towards real progress we generally do best thinking of an ideal goal state, re-inventing institutions, without consideration of how that goal may be reached. We need to make efforts to overstep traditional beliefs and habits, be open-minded, maybe learning from other cultures, etc. while always considering cognitive issues, such as the optimism bias and going back and forth between multiple realities (particularly religious beliefs sometimes interfere with rationally screening all steps we consider). We must work with what we can derive from anecdotal knowledge including self-observation, and scientific data. Only after having figured out what would be a good, if not the best, solution, should we pursue ways of working towards that goal.
Concerning the present situation:.
• PRESENT DISASTROUS DEVELOPMENTS HAVE BEEN PREDICTED. In the 1980s, scientists predicted that the 2030s – 2040s will be catastrophic if developments continue essentially unchanged. There has been huge technological progress but greenhouse gas levels keep rising and we are not addressing feedback loops and vicious cycles – due to melting ice, decreased snow cover and drought-damaged forests and wetlands, the earth absorbs much more sunlight; melting permafrost releases much greenhouse gases; warmer oceans absorb less CO2; etc. There is more air conditioning use, often powered by coal power plants, and people tend to travel more. We are doing worse than projected.
• MANY ORGANIZATIONS FORMED, MANY SHOW CONSTRUCTIVE WAYS FORWARD THOUGH MANY PURSUE MISGUIDED GOALS. ALL ARE FAILING, The reasons are: Most do not ask to halt misguided economic growth and none shows a feasible path to realize their goals. They follow the erroneous belief that there will be enough insight and idealism that corporations and financial institutions will forgo profits for the benefits of the planet. Is there another way than a top-down, emergency response by our government? Much of the civilian economy must be shut down and radically reformed; actions must be as comprehensive and decisive as during WWII.
• MOST PEOPLE STILL LACK INFORMATION; they must learn about principal aspects of the crisis, particularly about necessary steps to reverse global warming, and they must inform each other, reaching out to everybody they know, and ask influential people such as journalists and activists to speak openly – tell the whole truth.
THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION MUST SPREAD, RAPIDLY:
1. The situation is catastrophic – feedback loops and vicious cycles, more than presently released greenhouse gases, accelerate global warming; we are overstepping points of no return.
2. The solution includes concerned organizations and citizens cooperating in forming a national movement that will demand a comprehensive emergency response by our government. Governments must restrict credit and take care of people’s needs. Public-private partnership non-profit enterprises must restructure industries and transportation systems, widely plant trees and bamboo, reestablish natural prairies and wetlands, cultivate kelp and other fast growing plants (much land that is presently used for beef production should be reforested – today 75-80% of agricultural land is used for beef production). We must transition to food that is mostly plant-based (including lab-produced milk, salmon and other meat), widely use extreme white paint for buildings in place of more air conditioning, build mostly with wood and bamboo in place of steel and concrete, etc. To sequester much carbon, we also must prevent the burning and decomposing of organic material. Decomposing is much slowed or prevented by keeping organic material very dry and/or cold or by burying it in ground that is immersed in stagnant water, which quickly becomes acidic  and anoxic, covered with peat moss, duck weed or other plants; particularly wood, can be sunk into deep lakes or cold oceans, or ‘vaulted,’ buried in dry ditches, covered with clay containing soil that largely prevents oxygen containing water to reach it.
• Following present paths is extremely cruel. Millions will have no way to escape fire and storm-prone areas, heat waves and floods. Regarding transition to electric cars: there are close to 50 million on the road (2024), another 1,500 million planned – ‘needed’: 30 times more! – this would create toxic pollution and serious environmental degradation in most places where there is mining (mining in sea beds, in Arctic areas and in poor, particularly African, countires). Furthermore, there would be the release of huge amounts of CO2 from the steel production, and from concrete for roads, parking garages, factories, etc. All are unnecessarily worsening our future and particularly the fate of the most affected poor people. We must stop this cruel craziness, NOW!.
• If perceived as meaningful, people will easily adapt to living more simply and ethically, ecologically minded, closer to nature and to each other. Such changes would greatly improve people’s health and happiness.
I hope we are not alone in our effort to rapidly build a nationwide movement that demands radical, comprehensive emergency government actions, but I am not aware of any other organization with same goals.
TO SUMMARIZE: the goals must include
• Top-down government-led actions without an interfering need for profits.
• Halting consumerism, restricting credit, curbing data gathering and abuses of artificial intelligence, , forbidding bitcoin, while governments take care of people’s needs with good ‘safety nets.’.
• A comprehensive approach, that addresses all aspects of our economy; influencing developments by highly taxing greenhouse gas releases, beef production and import, wealth, etc. and directing efforts to the sequestration of huge amounts of carbon (re-vegetation and minimizing the decomposing and burning of most organic material).

We believe that there is a lack of comparable organizations – please inform us if we miss organizations we should closely work with (hae.hac@gmail.com). This apparent lack is why we energetically pursue the climate goals of Humane Civilization Worldwide (humanecivilization.org/climate-emergency/)

Thank you.
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* Some scientists seem to assume that oceans will continue to absorb much atmospheric CO2 after ‘carbon neutrality’ or ‘net zero’ has been reached, leading to a stabilisation of the climate. However, it is not clear how the recent ratio of 30% of CO2 being oceans-bound will change, when there will be an equilibrium between atmospheric and ocean CO2 and how many centuries or millennia that would take; it is known that warmer and more acid ocean surface water is less able to absorb CO2. Furthermore, feedback loops lead to growing CO2 releases from sources other than human fossil fuel use. There are also hard to predict methane releases not dierectly related to human activities. It is even much more important that much of the recent global warming is due to a significant decrease in the earth’s albedo, the reflection of sunlight, due to less cloud cover and continuous decreases in ice and snow. (At the Sixth Assessment of the International Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Joeri Rogelj of the Grantham Institute in London stated “It is our best understanding that, if we bring carbon dioxide [emissions] down to net zero, the warming will level off. The climate will stabilize within a decade or two. There will be very little to no additional warming. Our best estimate is zero.” – this almost certainly overoptimistic statement has been repeatedly quoted – why?)

** Regarding climate instability prior to the last 11,000 years: Greenland ice core records show that during the last glaciation period, temperatures varied widely; there were 25 spikes in temperature from 80,000 to 18,000 years ago. about 20-10,000 years ago, temperatures kept varying widely but in the average warmed, melting much of the ice cover of the last glaciation period. There are theories about what triggered the warming but what is most relevant is that positive feedback loops led to very rapid warming, several degrees C within decades. A main feedback loop is rapidly decreasing albedo (reflectivity of the earth’s surface) when ice and snow fields start melting. WE DO NOT KNOW IF THERE WILL BE A SIMILAR SPEEDING UP OF WARMING IN THE NEAR FUTURE.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20a%20subtle%20shift,Clement%20&%20Peterson%20(2008).

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Further introductory remarks:

Americans have not been a happy people, even before climate anxiety became widespread – much has gone wrong in our development; most people do not understand that the pursuit of happiness and health largely coincides with the pursuit of simple, ethical, ecology-minded living, with little consumerism. People may believe they need much income to be contented, however, contentedness is much influenced by advertisement and peers, it is not the same as happiness. People still tend to respond with impulses that belong into the border areas of the territories, which hunting-gathering groups occupied: expressing vindictive, aggressive and competitive attitudes with us-against-them thinking These attitudes are reinforced in most cultures.
We do not need pessimism or false hope; WE NEED REALISM AND ETHICS: GLOBAL WARMING IS THE WORST CRISIS IN HUMAN HISTORY – CERTAINLY WORSE THAN WWII. We must address it accordingly.
Reporting on “climate change” keeps downplaying its seriousness and focuses mainly on inventions and technologies that  may slow down global warming, ‘adapting,’ and transitioning to a luxurious all-electric future with more consumerism than ever. Allusion to the seriousness of the crisis are rarely followed by describing effective, realistic responses and tend to leave readers more hopeless or uninterested.
IS IT NOT TIME FOR THE NEXT STAGE IN CLIMATE ACTIONS – responding as radically as after the attack on Pearl Harbor? From then until the end of WWII, our civilian industries were mandated to work for government contracts, women were pulled into the work force, and food was rationed.
The people must learn 1. how urgent the situation is and 2. that there actually is a way to start reversing global warming within years – we must all work towards a tipping point, a “Pearl Harbor moment” – when the needed radical changes will be broadly recognized as meaningful and as making people happier and healthier.
We have the science; we know how to start reversing global warming in the near future, but if we allow developments to continue on the present course, there will be unimaginable suffering and likely violence worldwide, including at the borders of and within the highly developed countries.
THERE ARE COMPREHENSIVE PLANS OF ACTION, particularly saving energy and resources in many ways, greatly increasing vegetation while radically reforming the economy to halt and start reversing global warming within years; we must slow down, consume (and work) less, travel more slowly, live more simply, etc. – it is far too late for a gradual piecemeal approach, relying on ‘business-as-usual-with-incentives.’ Many approaches will be needed and scaled up, as described in drawdown.org, regeneration.org and humanecivilization.org,  but only governments can lead decisive actions (profits would distort goals).
It has not been adequately considered has been that the most effective way of sequestering carbon consists in not only growing trees, bamboo, kelp, etc., but then preventing the burning and decomposing of dead plants and other organic matter.
Relatively stable climates that lasted about ten thousand years are ending due to our misguided economic growth. Our economies increase atmospheric greenhouse gases and are causing feedback loops and vicious cycles that accelerate global warming and climate destabilization. (About three to five million years ago, CO2 levels were comparable to today’s, but temperatures were about 2-3.5°C higher. During some interglacial times, average temperatures reached similar levels as today’s at CO2 levels of less than 300ppm.) By human activities induced climate destabilization threatens lives and the livelihood of half to more than a billion most-affected poor people in the coming decades – common sense and compassion compel us to do what we can to stop spewing out greenhouse gases and start to actually decrease atmospheric CO2 levels without delay, not gradually over decades.
For-profit enterprises working with government incentives and people trying to invest in ‘green’ corporations has not worked and will not work. A worldwide movement must demand the restructuring of economic activities within years. America is in the best position to lead. There is NO rational alternative to decisive government action. Activists, scientists, science journalists, NGOs, media, followed by a substantial part of the populations, must demand that governments act without delay.

Additional introductory thoughts regarding addressing the climate crisis:
– When planning ways to avert catastrophic global warming, we must also consider human needs and well-being during the transitions.
– Much in recent profit-driven economic developments has been bad for individual people, communities, and ecosystems, and much that is important for societies is not being addressed; we are not doing well. Recognizing and addressing these problems may be more important than plans for transitioning to renewable energy sources. Consumerism is bad for individuals, their families and communities; credit buying often leads to major debts which has severe emotional consequences. Driving cars is a major stress factor for most people: people often get frustrated and angry at other drivers; many or most do not handle unforeseen delays well; traffic safety in the U.S. is much worse than in Europe. Self-driving cars may be quite safe, but riding fast through dense traffic is nerve-wracking. Commuting in cars is physically and mentally unhealthy: sitting, lack of frequent short walks, and the psychological isolation in individual cars are unhealthy. Continuously looking straight ahead while driving and frequently using screens, we are not stimulating the parts of the brain that are involved in looking to both sides: looking out of a moving train or bus is calming because, moving the eyes to both sides when following passing objects stimulates both hemispheres of the brain. People benefit from frequent encounters with strangers and acquaintances in train rides or when walking to train stations; train use may encourage a sense of temporary emotional connection, more than city buses and buses where people feel ‘cooped in.’
– Climate change is not a high priority for most people. Instinctively, adults’ thoughts tend to be narrow-minded and short-term-oriented, and this is reinforced by our culture – the profit-driven developments are dangerous and unpredictable, thus adults think mostly about the next few years in their own and loved ones’ lives. Mainly young and some elderly people have eco-anxiety, off and on worrying about the more distant future, their own and/or their children’s and grandchildren’s. (Re. increase in eco-anxiety, reported by CBS News. Aug 26, 2023, Harvard political reviews: Climate anxiety among international youth is at an all-time high. In a 2022 poll, “59% of youth and young adults said they were very or extremely worried about climate change and more than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.”).
– What people hear and think about climate actions is very confusing. There is too much talk of successes that hardly change the trajectory of developments. The U.S. appears to be progressing towards the capacity to produce more renewable energy than it needs, but research and development work to produce most cement, steel and glass with renewable energy is slow, and methane releases from oil and gas drilling, orphaned oil wells, and from cattle are not appropriately addressed. Even optimistic views concede that it is questionable whether the EU and U.S. will reach the goal of ‘net zero’ by 2050, and ‘net zero’ is hardly affecting the feedback loops and vicious cycles that drive global warming; the goal must be to radically decrease atmospheric CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases that human activities have been releasing.
– The U.S. is in some regards progressing rapidly, however, with only about 4% of the world population, it has an incredible amount of arable land and land that lends itself to create large solar and wind farms; Europe, China, and particularly Japan, and India, are much more densely populated. However, our private corporations cannot halt global warming, because their priorities are 1. profits for investors, 2. their public image. What is best for people and the planet may be distant 3. or 4. priorities.
– Rather than dealing with the causes of global warming, some scientists propose to shield the earth from sunlight with in the atmosphere suspended particles or a “giant space parasol.” Obviously these proposals, while decreasing average temperatures, would not prevent worsening ocean acidification with its severe consequences for all marine life, and it would only slow the worldwide melting of ice, release of greenhouse gases from permafrost, burning and dying of forests, and the rise of sea levels.
– While realistic proposals are described in drawdown.org, regeneration.org, and humanecivilization.org; more work is needed. Peter Fierkowsy‘s proposals in Climate Restoration 2022 must be further evaluated and incorporated in comprehensive plans. His focus on sequestering huge amounts of carbon is relevant, but some of what he writes may not be exactly correct (at least in warmer oceans, most dead algae will be consumed by animals and/or decompose, not sink to the bottom of the ocean). Our proposals may be more effective and realistic(?).
– The middle-class of poorer countries and to a lesser degree Europe and the other highly industrialized countries follow the model of pursuing much more renewable energy, air conditioning, electric cars, etc. rather than making radical changes in transportation systems to save energy and resources and minimizing waste. This ‘energy transition’ is far too slow to prevent extreme suffering and vicious cycles ‘spinning out of control’ as points-of-no-return are overstepped. Usually nothing is mentioned about rapidly absorbing much CO2¹, except for fancy approaches that take far too much time and investments to adequately scale up²
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1 According to a study on climate change by the ETH university, Zurich, Switzerland, there is enough land in the world that is not used by humans and suited for reforestation to plant 1.2 trillion trees (0.9 billion hectars or 9 million km2); obviously a wide variety of trees must be chosen to be adapted to the local, maybe dryer, climate; and we should add much land that is today used for cattle grazing and to produce feed for farm animals. Once matured, new forests of 1.2 trillion trees could store 205 billion tones of carbon, about 2/3 of the 300 billions that has been released as a result of human activities since 1850 (there is conflicting data re. CO2 absorption and releases – more trees may be needed to absorb most of the excess CO2) on [https://greenmax.eu/en/tree-planting-has-mind-blowing-potential-to-tackle-climate-crisis/]
2 Oct 21, 2015 — New Climeworks plant in Hinwil (20 miles East of Zurich, Switzerland) has the capacity to capture 900 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere per year. This is the first industrial-scale direct air-capture plant
The system has been used in Iceland where the CO2 was bound to powdered basalt. In the U.S. the system is expected to be able to pump much CO2 into geological formations that can hold and bind the CO2.
[Occidental and Climeworks are big winners as Biden allocated billions for CO2 removal. Occidental’s CEO, Vicki Hollub, said she estimates the hub has the potential to remove up to 30 million tons metric tons of CO2 per year through direct air capture once fully operational. Switzerland, currently has the world’s largest DAC (direct air capture) plant in Iceland, which removes about 4,000 tons of CO2 per year.] https://climeworks.com/news/climeworks-builds-first-commercial-scale-direct-air-capture-plant https://climeworks.com/press-release/expanding-our-us-tea.   

Short Summary

We need broad education describing and clarifying
– How grave the climate crisis is: feedback loops and vicious cycles speed up the deterioration of climate stability; densely populated areas become unlivable; if not enacting radical changes, we must expect mass migrations and world-wide violence;
– How Americans, particularly young people, are doing poorly regarding mental health and happiness; how a pursuit of living more simply, ecologically minded and ethical coincides with a pursuit of being healthier and happier; (‘ethics’ meaning broad science-based ethics, addressing what is good for individuals and society and considering human nature)
– That addictive credit buying, and the pursuits of unethical thoughts, conspiracy theorizing, and of wealth and power are mental disorders that cause distorted and even delusional thinking; that these need treatment; they should preclude people from leadership positions. Also: major debts lead to cognitive impairments, and to anxiety, depressive and substance use disorders; sometimes to crimes and suicides;
– What government actions are needed: dealing with the climate crisis requires emergency government actions akin to the response to WWII; governments must establish and fund public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises to enact major changes, reforming industries, transportation systems, land management, etc.;
– What specific, feasible proposals exist.

Following present plans of gradually decreasing greenhouse-gas releases over several decades is inconceivably cruel. Assuming we continue present policies:
• It is highly probable that due to worsening heat waves, droughts, storms, floods, and fires, along with rising sea levels, many densely populated areas become essentially uninhabitable long before ‘carbon neutrality’ is reached. There will be rapidly rising numbers of deaths, migrations of half to one billion people, likely violence worldwide, particularly at many borders, and within the highly developed countries; also a rapid decrease in biodiversity¹.
• With more intense heat waves², the human body will be essentially defenseless (our ability to adjust is very limited) – if wet bulb temperatures surpass 35°C (95°F), 100% humidity, for some time or 31°C (87°F), 100% humidity, for an extended times – people suffer multi-organ and brain damage; few will recover (these temperatures apply to young healthy people; for older people, 22°C may be the limit).
• Hardly any country could afford the costs of necessary repairs, rebuilding, preventive measures, and the repatriation of climate refugees.
Some researchers may believe that the situation may be less dire, but who is cruel enough to gamble with the future of the world?

There is near unanimity among scientists: the world is rapidly moving towards catastrophic scenarios³. Consequently:
• The people deserve and should demand brutal honesty from scientists, activists, NGOs, science journalists, and politicians; we cannot rely on for-profit corporations to ‘fix’ the problems; we cannot continue building cars and skyscrapers; consumerism, the buying of clothing, gadgets, and food that get wasted, must dramatically decrease; etc. No more “the situation is serious, but we make great progress”; instead: “we are making progress, but much economic progress is misdirected; we are not halting global warming.” People’s belief in “climate action light” or “party-line climate denial”, and “think globally, act locally” are today’s main problems.
• The people must understand alternative developments. Many approaches are described by the Project Draw Down (drawdown.org), Regeneration (regeneration.org), and Climate Restoration (peterfiekowsky.com, foundationforclimaterestoration.org). We (Humane Civilization Worldwide, humanecivilization.org) describe an alternate future that is not relying on profit-driven corporations (business-as-usual-with-incentives), we propose replacing cars with rail lines that include a dense network of small narrow-track light-rail lines (many less than 100cm track), electric buses, and 2-4 wheel ultra-light electric vehicles; building mostly with wood and bamboo instead of steel and concrete⁴, planting trees instead of raising cattle, using cooling white paint, other radiative and reflective materials, shade trees, and passive solar design principles instead of more air conditioning, etc. We must minimize all waste of resources and energy, produce much less clothing and fabrics, eat mainly plant-based foods, produce goods more locally, and be judicious in when and where to travel and ship goods. Avoiding waste also includes addressing the incredible misuse of electricity and computing resources by bitcoin (which is like a Ponzi Scheme – its value relies exclusively on new investments), the ubiquitous data gathering, storing, and analyzing, which is mostly done to promote consumerism, artificial intelligence developments that are not directly designed to improve the care of humans, and other unethical goals. To sequester much carbon, useless organic matter, which includes most land-fill trash and dead wood and underbrush removed from forests, may be buried in anoxic environment (soil that is soaked with stagnant, acidic, and as feasible salty water imitating the conditions of salt bogs, or in dry, deep layers of ground, covered with clay or silty soil) to minimize decomposition; the organic material may be stored in very cold or very dry environments (protected from precipitation). Other ways of sequestering carbon are to be developed (enormous amounts of carbon must be sequestered to revers global warming⁵). Many such changes, if combined, will minimize greenhouse-gas releases, safely sequester much carbon and start decreasing atmospheric CO2 within years, not after several decades.
• Since greenhouse gas releases have been approximately proportionate to the world population, cultures must emphasize the need for small families (with contraception and abortions everywhere readily available), leading to a rather steep decline in the world population; and the need for more equal distribution of resources, (incomes, wealth) since wealthy people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas releases. The concerns about lacking younger people to take care of the old is wrong for two reasons: raising children is much more time consuming and expensive than caring for the old – with much less children, the working population needs less resources for children and the old; with much less focus on consumerism, industries can focus on robotics and the use of artificial intelligence for high quality care of the old and disabled and also help with child care.
• The  people should also learn that proposed changes will enhance people’s health and happiness, as they will live more naturally and with more interpersonal connectedness. These changes should go along with worldwide education efforts that teach how happiness, health, and peace are fostered by living ethically (learning that we do better forgiving and giving, being cooperative, and being compassionate, considering people worldwide and future generations, without us-against-them thinking). Caring ethical attitudes are contagious and lead to caring communities.
• We need to be clear about how to finance the restructuring of industries, transportation systems, and land management: governments must create and rely on public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises, and they must limit financial institutions’ activities. If bank lending is severely restricted, which curbs consumerism, governments can create new money (instead of borrowing) without causing inflation.
• Governments need to take care of people’s needs; we recommend a guaranteed income for everybody and a comprehensive safety net.
• Credit and investment activities must be severely restricted, halting lending that stimulate consumerism and investments that are rather worsening the climate crisis (if banks cannot multiply the circulating newly deposited money, if they can no longer increase the circulating money supply by lending deposited money to many borrowers, governments do not need to borrow and can significantly expand the money supply for climate related projects without causing inflation). Securities’ transactions should be taxed comparable to the taxation of the sale of other valuables which may have investment value.
• We may compare the situation with WWII when most civilian industries had to work for the military without any guarantee that the war would be winnable within a few years – America was in it open-endedly. Cooperation between public and private institutions also led to the rapid development and mass production of Covid vaccines, at reasonable costs.

Activists, science journalists, scientists, NGOs, and the people must spread relevant information and cooperate in demanding effective radical actions by governments without delay – no more corrupt protection of profits, helping the rich become richer, no more ‘climate action light’ and ‘politically correct climate denial.’ We must not ask “How is the economy doing?” but “What is the economy doing?” – presently it is destroying our civilizations.
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1 Biodiversity loss is not primarily due to changes in climate, it is the combination of changes in climate and the fractioning of habitats, which makes it impossible for animals to move to more suitable climates when for instance an area becomes hotter and dryer. Naturally, with climate conditions having frequently and rather rapidly changed for millions of years, animals and humans kept moving to places that were more livable. For this reason, biologists not only advise that natural habitat areas are expanded, Edward O. Wilson advises that 50 % of land should be maintained or returned to a natural state, but natural land areas must be connected, not separated by wide bands of agricultural land and metropolitan areas.

2 According to a 2021 study published in Bloomberg, heat-related deaths globally have increased by 30% over the past two decades, with an estimated 489,000 excess deaths per year between 2000 and 2019. This includes over 70,000 deaths in Europe during the 2003 heat wave. The study also found that 45% of heat-related deaths occurred in Asia and 36% in Europe – this statistic sounds absurd: it should be obvious that Asia would have many times more heat-related deaths than Europe (with less than 600,000 inhabitants)and that this statistic only shows how dramatically underreported heat-related deaths are in poorer countries.

3 Concerning continued global warming, some scientists claim that according to our best understanding “… if we bring CO2 [emissions] down to net zero (presumably somewhen after 2050), the warming will level off. The climate will stabilize within a decade or two. There will be very little or no additional warming. …” Paul Hawken, author of Draw Down-the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming 2017, and of Regeneration – Ending the climate crisis in one generation 2021, describes the above statement as a remarkable change in scientific consensus, apparently making the future look much better than previously describe.
Michael, E. Mann, in Our Fragile Moment 2023, p. 233, makes essentially the same point; the delay in ocean warming (committed warming) is cancelled by the oceans absorbing more CO2 and bringing levels down.
The problem is: Global warming is not caused by the greenhouse gases that are being released by human activities at the time, but by the greenhouse effect of the present level of CO2, other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and other physical factors such as the earth’s changing albedo. Forests and other vegetations burn and dry up more than growing or expanding (even though CO2 fosters plant growth); there has been continued slow global warming; the warming of oceans lags; when oceans become warmer, the air above will absorb more moisture which is a powerful greenhouse gas, leading to further warming of the oceans, and with oceans becoming warmer, they will be less able to hold gases, such as O2 and CO2 – the saturation point decreases; the areas of permafrost that is melting is likely to keep increasing; sun-reflecting snow and ice fields are rapidly decreasing, etc. While oceans appear to be able to absorb more CO2 than previously thought, this added absorption of CO2 leads to acidification that is devastating to oceanic life and ecosystems; and the added absorption of CO2 will hardly be adequate to compensate for all the factors that further global warming. Given present CO2 levels and albedo of the earth, we must assume that all arctic, glacial and in permafrost stored ice will gradually melt, and multiple vicious cycles will continue. Areas previously covered much of the cool seasons with snow fields will be mostly green, and the sea will be larger, absorbing much sun light. Only Antarctica would stay ice covered due to its distance from the tropics and the high altitude (there are many mountains of  3,000-4,500m height and one over 4,800m high).

4 Re. wood: People have been concerned that building with wood requires the cutting of far too many trees, however, with good forest management and replanting of valuable trees, that should not be a problem. In the small country Austria, forests produce about a cubic meter, close to  a metric ton, of usable wood per second, or approximately enough wood per minute to build 1,00sqft in a multi-story 100% wood building. Austrian forests produce much more high quality wood than is used in construction.
Re. trees dying due to droughts, forest management has to, as much as feasible, replace dead trees first with rapidly growing understory to keep the ground cool and then with trees that may be better adapted to heatwaves and drought conditions.
Re. steel and concrete: it is now possible to create synthetic limestone and concrete that is carbon negative, creating useful building materials of calcium-containing materials and CO2. Obviously, it is good to use carbon-negative concrete where it can replace conventional concrete or concrete that can is produced with lower CO2 releases. Some steel is now being produced without the burning of fossil fuels. However, it will take a long time to scale up such approaches.

5 Approximate CO2 levels in 1850 were 285ppm (parts per million), in the late 1980s 350, in 2023 424; the Harvard educated environmentalist Bill McKibben and founder of 350.org advocates that our goal should be decreasing levels back to 350ppm. Approximately 1,200 billion tons of CO2 were emitted 1850-1980 and about the same amount from 1980 to 2023. We should find ways to absorb and sequester at least about 2,000 billion tons of CO2. It is estimated that 2001-2019, the world’s forests absorbed about 7.6 billion tons of CO2 annually (twice as much as they emit), but the amount of by forests absorbed CO2 has been decreasing. For some time, plants (trees, bamboo, fast growing aquatic plants) may remain the best way for societies to greatly increase CO2 absorption – obviously, much more plants are needed, dying plants must be prevented from burning or rapidly decomposing and releasing greenhouse gases, particularly methane and CO2 emissions, must be radically lowered.  

Short description of the near future, according to HCW proposals

• Governmental policies efficiently enact decisive changes with high taxation of any greenhouse gas releases and taxation of wealth. The federal government establishes and funds public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises to reform industries and land management, it creates a comprehensive safety net, and it addresses income-wealth disparities and all forms of waste.
• Beef, pork, chicken, and egg production are very much reduced; the milk-cheese production rapidly moves towards the use lab-produced synthetic milk. Instead of using land for grazing and animal feed production, many people are employed planting trees for lumber and other industrial purposes and to reforest areas; there are efforts to save and protect wetlands, expand mangrove forests along seashores, and expand kelp forests in oceans. There is also much planting of bamboo, aquaculture with algae farming, and cultivating other fast-growing plants.
• Improved agriculture provides low-cost organic nutrition; soy and other legumes provide high quality protein and enrich the soil with nitrogen that is needed by grains, root vegetables, and other crops. Food industries create excellent vegetarian and vegan dishes, imitation meat products, and lab-grown meat, bringing down costs of healthy nutrition that omnivores will appreciate. There is significant investment in wide availability of synthetic (lab-grown bovine) milk.
• Everywhere, rail lines are built for all types and sizes of trains, many narrow track, 100cm and less, mostly built on existing roads. In cities, electric buses, in mountainous areas aerial lifts complement trains. Workshops build kits to convert conventional busses, vans, delivery trucks, and pick-up trucks to electric, for limited in-city use. Ship traffic is saving energy by going slower and adding new technologies.
• Small industries build human-powered, electric hybrid, and electric ultra-light vehicles, most with aerodynamic bodies, up to the size of narrow subcompact vans (may be built with bamboo frames and plexiglass, canvas and/or double, waterproofed corrugated cardboard). Train cars and light vehicles are built with wood and possibly bamboo as much as feasible. Most streets and roads have extra lanes for bicycles and larger ultra-light vehicles, and/or there are low speed limits (20mph or less, for trucks lower than for cars).
• New buildings are relatively small, more compact, and built of wood (cross-laminated timber); mostly modular and rarely higher than 10-15 stories (units may be industrially produced).
• Efforts also focus on building healthy communities (neighborhoods, settlements) that produce many goods locally. Parks, playgrounds, libraries, adult education classes and interest groups, coffee shops and restaurants, and public transportation promote healthy interactions among community members of all ages.
• Many energy-saving products are further developed, mass-produced and made available worldwide, such as highly reflective, infra-red radiating cooling materials (paints, films, fabrics), highly efficient building climatization systems that mainly heat or cool most used areas, etc. In many places, split work hours with afternoon siesta may be re-introduced.
• Energy saving inventions and renewable, possibly also nuclear energy are further developed.
• To minimize the decomposition of not commercially usable organic material, including wood collected from forests to minimize the spreading of wild fires and most landfill trash, the material may be buried in anoxic environments: soil that is soaked with stagnant water, imitating the anoxic acidic condition of wetland, or salt bogs – much salt may be added to minimize bacterial decomposition; or it may be kept in dry deep layers of ground covered with clay or silty soil, stored dried in desert or on mountains (covered with roofs with wide overhangs); it may also be deposited in dead areas of lakes or the sea, or kept in areas with continuously subfreezing temperatures. Other approaches are developed to prevent the decomposition of organic material, avoiding the release of greenhouse gases. CO2 may also be sequestered by pyrolysis or by processing CO2 with powdered basalt. Utilizing wood, bamboo and other organic materials generally sequesters the contained carbon for long times. Other forms of sequestration are further developed.
•  Education addresses broad ethics, healthy lifestyles, and basic happiness research data – living ethically, pursuing health and happiness, and considering ecological responsibility largely coincide [‘ethics’ meaning broad science-base ethics, addressing what is good for individuals and society and considers human nature]. 

Description of problem areas, feedback loops (vicious cycles), loss of balances

Present plans to halt the disastrous consequences of rapid global warming are grossly inadequate, and they hardly consider the compounding feedback loops and vicious cycles that accelerate global warming. Since alternative, much more effective ways to address the climate crisis exist, ways forward which would also make people healthier and happier, we must ask: will real progress be prevented by addictive consumerism, corrupt policies, near-universal short-sighted planning, and industry leaders’ addiction to wealth and power? It is incredible that some people are reluctant to look at needed changes because some scientists express optimism, ill-founded or based on some scientific data. If only one in ten engineers would declare that a new plane is prone to fail in critical situations, what airline would buy it – who would want to fly in it? What reasonable person will gamble about the world’s future?
Scientists and organizations that are concerned with ecology and climate change still acquiesce to leaders of industries and financial institutions; they hold on to the deceiving notion that the significant progress in renewable energy warrants optimism, that our profit-driven corporations will eventually solve the problems and/or that we are doing “the best we can.” There are still “scientists” and science journalists that express not only optimism, but even hold on to conspiracy lies. In the early 2020s, atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising at the highest rate ever; CO2 levels are already like millions of years ago, long before the ice ages that formed much of today’s countrysides. The people must learn that present plans would move us rapidly towards worst-case scenarios, and that recent progress at best slows the deterioration of climates. Why are people not realizing that our thinking must change, NOW!
Climate change also adds to the problem of worsening food crises; extreme climate events destroy more and more crops. This point must concern us since, according to the studies of Greenland ice cores and lake sediments, the 200,000 years prior to the last 11,000 years showed extremely unstable weather conditions, large, abrupt spikes of warm and cold periods, wet and dry periods, and much more frequent disastrous floods, droughts, and windstorms – these conditions made the development of agriculture virtually impossible. Are we moving back towards such instability of weather conditions?
Regarding the still unacceptably high levels of chronic malnutrition (in the 10% range), main issues are income distribution and intermittent spikes in food prices (which often lead to violent riots and contributed to the “Arab Spring” uprisings). As Joel K. Bourne Jr. describes in  the End of Plenty, the Race to Feed a Crowded World 2015, many factors work against adequate production of food in the future; and additional problem consisted in competition between farmland for people’s food, versus the exorbitant need of land for animal feed, and for biofuel. There has been decreased research, and problems with pollution, toxicity in foods and water, etc. There is a profound lack of realism – the world population must not indulge in cravings for meat, and milk and milk products should be, as soon as feasible, produced synthetically; instead, people must start to consume healthier, mainly plant-based foods. We also must use less liquid fuels, not produce bio fuels from corn, sugar cane, palm oil, etc. Taxation of unsustainable use of agricultural land and ground water must redirect production and consumption habits.
As the climate crisis is rapidly getting worse, we have reason to be terrified about the near future – a world-wide movement must compel people to face reality. The more people are well informed and appropriately terrified about present developments, the better the chance that people, thinking about options more broadly, will accept and demand major changes. We believe that scientists,  journalists, pundits, educators, activists, politicians, and organizations that are concerned with ecology and climate have a responsibility, an ethical obligation, to inform and educate. Informed people have reason to be extremely concerned, but they need access to knowledge about alternatives to present developments. They need to know that we must not focus on energy transition and ‘carbon neutrality’; we must focus on restoring our climate by bringing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels down to where thy were at the beginning of the industrial revolution. If our governments are compelled to work in “emergency mode,” as if getting involved in a world war, it is possible to halt spewing out greenhouse gases and sequestering much carbon within years; we do not need decades. However, only if a critical number of people is informed and scared, reaching a ‘tipping point,’ can we expect that a nationwide movement will succeed in the demands for immediate, effective climate actions by their governments, actions that will, within years, start to actually decrease atmospheric CO2 and methane levels and possibly reverse global warming, while improving people’s quality of life. (Even starting to sequester much more carbon than is released may not immediately reverse climate change effects since there are vicious cycles that greatly add to global warming.).
Our institutions have been failing, we must work to reform them – we must not focus on and blame individuals. Even if most individuals work to greatly decrease their ‘carbon footprint,’ this will be far from adequate.

Feedback loops and compounding vicious cycles significantly accelerate global warming and are probably already the main drivers:
– Polar ice caps and glaciers are rapidly melting, there are also less snow fields, and there is an increase in open water; these factors lead to a decrease of sunlight reflection from the earth’s surface; more energy from sunlight is absorbed. This is the reason why arctic and mountainous areas, such as the Alps, are warming much more rapidly than the world average. (According to recent reports,  snow-ice covered areas have been decreasing about 5% annually; the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice has been more rapid than projected.)
– During the temperature changes, warming and cooling of the earth between the height of glaciation periods and interglacial periods, increased and decreased absorption of CO2 according to ocean temperature changes was a significant feedback loop; and this is important today as oceans become rapidly warmer.
– The melting permafrost and damaged peatlands and wetlands release much CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide (peatlands and  wetlands are damaged by prolonged droughts and by human activities). The areas where permafrost melts will probably increase for many decades as global temperatures rise, many wetlands will disappear.
– The warming air’s water content increases; humidity, suspended water vapor, is a powerful greenhouse gas.
– Clouds during day time may decrease, letting more sunlight reach the earth’s surface, while clouds at night block infrared (heat) radiation from the earth’s surface into the universe. Normal rain patterns will become more unpredictable and we must expect more and longer dry periods and more extreme precipitation with flooding in areas that cannot be predicted.
– With rising sea levels, heavy rain, and higher storm waves, there will be more widespread flooding that adds to high humidity in coastal areas.
– Warmer oceans promote the development of extremely damaging cyclones and cyclone-related rain and tornadoes.
– Increased absorption of CO2 by the oceans due to high atmospheric CO2 levels leads to acidification that is destroying major ecosystems. Sea animals, such as corals and mollusks, which sequester carbon by synthesizing calcium carbonate, will die as their skeletons dissolve. At the same time, warming of oceans, particularly in cooler areas, decreases oceans’ ability to absorb atmospheric CO2. There are multiple ways in which oceans absorb and sequester carbon; the role of the different processes are not well understood but they are greatly influenced by oceans’ acidity and rising temperatures.
– Unprecedented forest and brush fires, even in arctic areas and rain forests, directly raise CO2 in the atmosphere and decrease living plants that absorb CO2 – this counteracts the increase of plant growth with increased CO2 levels. above areas of wild fires, there is less cloud cover – usually forests are covered with clouds that reflect sunlight. In addition, the black burned plants and dirt absorb much sunlight. There is much natural vegetation that is in increasing danger of being destroyed by wildfires, and areas affected by wildfires at any time appear to be increasing.
– Projections indicate that more and more forests will release more CO2 than they absorb; present developments make it likely that the Amazon rain forest area will become savanna with first much CO2 being released and later much less CO2 being absorbed by the plants of the area.
– Global warming appears to destabilize critical equilibriums; patterns of air movements and ocean currents, etc. (The cold Jet Streams that circle around the Arctic start dipping more often into subtropical areas, causing major cold spells which damage crops and kill animals and humans. The Gulf Stream is weakening and may later no longer warm Europe.) Flooding, temporary droughts, and storms are apparently becoming more intense and much more damaging. As more plants are destroyed or damaged, the earth’s vegetation will be less able to absorb much CO2.
– Droughts and desertification that are worsened by overgrazing and bad land management practices decrease the plant cover of land and contribute to heating the ground and the atmosphere above it, worsening progressive desertification.
– The changing ocean currents, wind, and weather patterns have unpredictable consequences that will require much time for natural vegetation and fauna to adapt.
– With oceans warming, there may be a significant danger that sea-beds will release much methane.
– All these factors will likely lead to many ecosystems dying, which will have severe consequences for the balances that allowed human civilizations to evolve with agriculture feeding the world population.
To summarize, many feedback loops lead to changes in the carbon cycles with much less CO2 being absorbed in natural ways. Additionally, there is much more release of methane that has been held in the ground. Thus atmospheric greenhouse gases are rising even if human activities no longer release CO2 or methane. At the same time, the earth reflects less sunlight – the sun is more effective in heating the earth’s surface.
Additional vicious cycles include human responses to global warming. Increased use of air conditioning and sometimes heating with fossil fuels and electricity add to greenhouse gas releases. The planned replacing of conventional vehicles with over a billion electric cars and trucks, along with a sophisticated electric infrastructure, requires much steel production and mining of multiple metals; these activities result in enormous greenhouse gas releases and are polluting; particularly the mining of cobalt has also lead to political conflicts and human rights violations. Middle class people buy cheap air conditioners, hundreds every minute, which add to the local heat and require much electricity. Significant leaks of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, which are extremely powerful greenhouse gases, are very probable. Nuclear and geothermal powerplants directly heat the large amounts of cooling water that are released into the ocean. Solar farms heat the air locally which may lead to a hot air updraft that prevents cloud formation (clouds in these places would reflect sunlight), but carry much humidity, which is a greenhouse gas. Industries, computing centers and any places where electricity is used, there is significant local release of heat that warms air and/or water ways and coastal sea. In many places, human activities damage forests, peatlands, and wetlands that are important in the sequestration of carbon. Increased production of ‘bio fuels’ (particularly ethanol from corn and sugar cane, and palm oil as biodiesel) will compete with other needs for fresh water, and with land for food crops and the cultivation of fast-growing plants needed for carbon sequestration. As economies grow with expanding consumerism and the planned ‘energy transition,’ wealth and the middle class of poor countries grow. More people feel they can afford to eat like wealthy Westerners and they may want meat, particularly more beef. Cattle increase the agricultural release of methane; pasture land and crops to feed animals compete with food crops, and with reforestation and the cultivation fast-growing plants for carbon sequestration.

As natural balances are lost; climate unpredictability will make it impossible to adapt.
Some scientists have asserted that “if we bring down CO2 emissions to net zero, the warming will level off”. (12/2020 at IPCC, statement by Dr. Joeri Rogelj of the Grantham Institute in London). Natural vicious cycles are due to earlier released greenhouse gases, not the greenhouse gases humans release at the time: How could the vicious cycles halt before either atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are much reduced, to below 350 or even 300 ppm, or before all ice in permafrost and glaciers melted, and/or before the continued loss of green plants due to fires, droughts, and other weather catastrophes ends? As long as CO2 levels continue to be higher than before the ice ages, we must assume that all snow fields and ice will melt completely, except for the ice cover of Antarctica, which is mountainous with many peaks in the 3,000-4,500m (10,000-15,000 foot) range. At this point we also do not know about other factors such as the possible release of enormous amounts of methane from sea beds, as ocean temperatures rise.

Today’s ‘most progressive’ plans are not rational and grossly inhumane.
If an isolated island country would see some vital resource running out – who would ‘budget’ how long they can use and waste it at present levels? Would not any reasonable person, without delay, start saving it in any way possible while learning to live without it, seeking ways to replace its function? Planet earth is an isolated island in the universe but our wasteful lives destroy the equilibriums that vital ecosystems need and that have kept our climate relatively stable and livable for 5-10 billion humans.
Is there a reasonable alternative to decisive, highly effective government action?
Governments must, within years, stop most greenhouse gas releases and sequester vast amounts of carbon, while improving ways to meet people’s needs. ‘Business as usual,’ piecemeal work involving many enterprises (mostly for-profit corporations) with some incentives and government subsidies has not and will not work. We are destroying ecosystems, biodiversity will dramatically decrease, tropical diseases will spread into temperate zones, there will be frequent crop failures and a need to adjust what can be grown where, etc. Leaders in government, corporations, and nonprofit enterprises must stop pretending that we are doing everything possible: People must learn about the dire situation and about a feasible vision of the near future that includes people living healthier, more naturally, and happier while greatly decreasing production, consumption, transportation of goods, and waste of fresh water. Scientists and engineers should also participate in showing a positive vision of how necessary changes should and will be enacted, and how they will benefit us as individuals.
We may remind ourselves of the decisive rapid revamping of industrial production during WWII –  this is not like the Cold War; the climate crisis is worse than WWII.
As people generally ignore distant places and the future more than a few years ahead, many believe that only a cataclysmic event would move people to radical actions, allowing the government to act decisively and halt people’s consumption patterns and wasteful lives. We must keep reminding people not focus only on their little ones’ growing up but about the world they will live in when in their 40s and 50s! And remember that, during WWII, Americans reacted with radical changes even though the war hardly affected them directly. Hawaii was not yet part of the U.S. and neither the Japanese nor the Germans could have possibly invaded the U.S. – Japan’s troops were stretched thin in East Asia, and Germany’s from Eastern Europe to North Africa. The people of the U.S. did not respond with resolve to an immediate major danger, their homeland was not threatened; they responded to a rather distant future of conflicts with hostile empires in Europe and East Asia as well as the loss of the U.S.’ dominant position in the world. Compassion for Europeans was probably a factor. With climate change we are looking at major worldwide problems in most people’s life time, with already heightened dangers from weather catastrophes but much worse to come.
We must also consider: living today, compared with a few decades ago, is in may ways better because of higher levels of scientific knowledge, much better health care and pain relief, improved human rights, and less warfare; the material living standard and all modern gadgets hardly improve people’s well-being and happiness. In fact, some ‘progress’ led to a deterioration of people’s mental health. Abuses of the internet aided by artificial intelligence: highly sophisticated games, forms of gambling, misleading advertisements, and the social media have overall a negative effect on people’s mental health, particularly in young people – there is not adequate screening of actual and potential abuses. Laws to protect people are grossly inadequate. Because of the abuses, people tend to be more isolated with less personal connectedness, and there is mor irresponsible buying. The increase in personal debt, credit-consumerism, has profound negative effects on many people; severe indebtedness interferes with cognitive functions, causes anxiety and depression, etc. Overall, the U.S. population is not a happy people, our economic system is not serving us well. While having done fairly well in reducing accidental injuries and deaths, there is much violence and the suicide rate is high with even many adolescents contemplating and committing suicide. An additional growing problem is ‘eco-anxiety’ which has similar effects as severe indebtedness; it should be addressed by people doing what they can to work towards radical changes – meditation alone, doing something positive related to ‘carbon footprint,’ or prayers are not a good response. By some assessments, even a poor country like Costa Rica offers a higher quality of life than the U.S.
Recognizing these realities, the people must form a nationwide movement and demand that governments take decisive, radical actions, curbing and redirecting present economic developments without delay. Plans we propose are described below.  _

Much of what we describe may not be original ideas, but this is a unique effort to put much knowledge into a fairly comprehensive, realistic proposal for action. A few ideas are our invention, or ‘re-invented’ by us. 

Causes of the climate crisis: human nature, culture, mental health, laws

The direct causes of the climate crisis are two centuries of accelerating use of fossil fuels and the destruction of natural carbon sinks: destructions of forests, prairies, and wetlands to create more land for animal grazing and crops (today half of all crops are for animal feed and biofuels and most of the agricultural land is used for beef production).

Three factors that led to the climate crisis include how cultures shape human predispositions (or instincts), psychological-behavioral addictions, and legal interpretations of free speech laws.
Human nature and cultures: issues include:
• Multiple inherent factors that made humans well adapted to small group living hinder our progressing rapidly. Humans are very culture-bound and largely follow traditions, elders, peers, and seductive advertisements; this makes it hard for average people to think of radical changes.
• People have not gained relevant insights about the state of nature and the world. Broad compassion rarely influences decision-making. People have not been working towards a sustainable future. That
• A propensity to consumerism that was much exacerbated by the profit-driven, credit-based economic institutions and made worse by artificial intelligence-driven, targeted internet advertising.
• An ideology that prioritizes economic growth above considering ecology, people’s quality of life, and ethics. This ideology also strives to largely maintain the status quo, maintaining jobs that should not even exist and protecting the investments of the wealthy.
• The reliance on profit-driven corporations and financial institutions, suppression of relevant information, widespread misinformation, and corruption in governments. U.S. representatives and senators are responsible for the whole country, not for priorities and economic benefits of lobbying groups and their constituents (they have to watch out for their constituents’ interests but without harming the rest of the country and/or destroying ecosystems).
• Regarding the role of individuals: we must recognize that while many people may feel good doing something that appears ethical, most people assume that their actions are basically irrelevant, that individuals’ actions will never add up to measurably alter developments. To change most people’s behaviors, major changes in the economy and powerful institutional factors are needed, such as very high taxation of any greenhouse gas releases, hopefully combined with educational efforts that explain economic-political decisions.
• Unchecked unethical data gathering, storing, and analyzing: corporations and political groups pay for the use of artificial intelligence algorithms to guide people’s use of cell phones and computers and to consequently indoctrinate or ‘brain wash’ them to become ‘super consumers’ who also incorporate false and biased ‘opinions’ into their thinking.
• A culture of overspecialization in academia and agencies without ethical leadership – nobody is responsible to evaluate the totality of data, draw relevant conclusions, and help prevent foreseeable catastrophes.
• The idea that what one country does is hardly relevant. Actually America can lead, other countries are likely to follow. A large part of the climate crisis is due to China, India, and other emerging countries following our misguided development with people valuing private cars more than good public transportation, beef being preferred by middle-class people over their own excellent vegetarian dishes, seeking opportunities to buy on credit rather than fist save, then buy and actually own products they enjoy, etc. If we lead, governments and the middle-class of poor countries will understand that they have to pursue a new approach, not follow our present disastrous growth model.
• There has also been a profound failure of our institutions, particularly in the teaching of ethics, (‘ethics’ meaning broad science-base ethics, addressing what is good for individuals and society while considering human nature): most important are an understanding that ethical living brings more happiness than material possessions and power. The core issues of broad ethics are: generously forgiving is and feels better than vengeance, giving than receiving, cooperation than competition, compassion than callousness – these attitudes are contagious and lead to good relationships. We naturally expect reciprocal relationships: being kind, honest, helpful, and reliable is practicing what we expect from others. It is ethical and feels good to make efforts to be compassionately empathetic without us-against-them thinking, being considerate of present and future people (and to a lesser degree all sentient beings) in all parts of the world. We must work on being compassionate towards others when there is us-versus-them thinking, when a group of others seem so different that being empathetic is difficult (for instance teenage boys not understanding girls’ emotions, fears, etc., wealthy privileged people not trying to empathize with poor minority or immigrant people). People must also learn that engaging in thoughts of unethical actions is unethical and dangerous –  in extraneous circumstances unethical thoughts are readily acted out.
Issues in mental health that affect, among many things, the climate crisis:
Health professionals and their organizations need to publicize this most relevant information: how specific mental disturbances that are not even acknowledged as disorders, are a root cause of the climate crisis and much of the suffering related to our distorted cultural and political values. The following are not “normal expressions of people’s “free will”; and they must not be part of our political rights and freedoms. Regarding freedom as a right, we must focus more on freedom from abuses, exploitation, preventable suffering, versus freedom to exploit nature, people and animals, deprive and abuse others, ignore their needs that we should assume to be a responsibility of society.
Can, for instance, people going into severe debt by credit buying be considered mentally healthy or normal? We humans usually use our rational mind to 1. help us find ways to fulfill emotion-driven goals, and 2. scan if what we are pursuing is not too problematic and/or dangerous, that is, whether benefits do outweigh the costs or “side effects.” These checks are more and more overruled when people become addicted, when they have a ‘use disorder.’ As substance misuse becomes an abuse disorder, patients create major problems for loved ones, themselves, and others; but even worse problems are created in some psychological-behavioral abuse-addictions. Particularly problematic examples include:
• When interests in some conspiracies becomes abusive conspiracy theorizing, and an obsession with conspiracies that are based on lies and are relevant for the present (being fascinated with long past conspiracies is not necessarily very harmful).
• When advertisement guided and/or by peers influenced credit buying becomes too rewarding to resists, even if, one cannot afford what is ordered and it will hardly increase one’s happiness. People may have a sense that their growing indebtedness interferes with thinking rationally, diminishes their self-respect, makes them very anxious and depressed, maybe leads to substance abuse and/or suicide, but they cannot stop buying and rationally plan to gradually pay off their debts. This addiction may be combined with and fostered by an addiction to unethical fantasies.
• When a person becomes fascinated with unethical fantasies and spends increasing amounts of time enjoying them, the fantasies will interfere with human relationships and may be acted out in extraneous circumstances such as being intoxicated, extremely angry and tired, in a law-less area of a poor country, in a war zone, or when suicidal.
• When the attraction of wealth and power (maybe also fame), and their pursuit leads people to more and more outrageous acts.
These are, in our opinion, psychological-behavioral abuses-addictions that must be considered pathological, mental disorders, since they
– severely harm the persons, their loved ones, and directly or indirectly many others,
– often lead to irrational thinking, including delusions,
– lead people to overstep more and more of their own principles, such as being basically ethical, honest, and compassionate; people tend to give up efforts of living with integrity, and following laws in order to avoid legal consequences to their actions
– may lead people to commit major crimes: some start a criminal career, maybe participate in organized crimes, join extremist political movements movements that intend to disenfranchise certain people, plan terrorist acts, seek wars, etc.
Addiction to wealth and power is partly based on young people not learning to incorporating basic ethical principals in their personal culture; principles that lead to a simple life with giving and forgiving generously, cooperating, being compassionate, and being ecologically minded due to concerns for everybody’s future. Addiction to wealth and power is a central issue in most crimes and a root cause of all wars.
People often blame alcohol or other factors on crimes like child abuse and rape; however, it is the combination of ‘addiction to unethical fantasies’ combined with inhibition lowering circumstances. Alcohol does not make a person drive recklessly; many people drive slowly and cautiously like a very old person when intoxicated. People do not invent crimes while intoxicated.
Is it not obvious that people with ‘psychological-behavioral addictions’ must be 1. diagnosed as having a disorder, 2. treated, 3. considered ineligible for any leadership positions, including teachers. The untreated ‘psychological-behavioral addictions’ of credit buying, conspiracy theorizing, and pursuit of wealth and power constitute a national emergency.
Examples regarding credit buying, and unethical fantasies:
NYT 1/1/2025, p 4, 5 The most surprising, intriguing, fascinating facts of the year includes: In the United States, more than 60% of the work force lives paycheck to paycheck. The average American is in five to six-figure debt and often has only cursory knowledge how they got there. (The fallacy of people defining wealth more by their credit ratings than their savings has become part of our cultural thinking and our values.)
Issues regarding freedom of speech:
The people must demand that “free speech” will be defined and limited in a minor, but very significant way:
Persons of authority: politicians, teachers, preachers,  journalists, etc. have an ethical and theoretically also a legal obligation to be truthful, essentially talk as if under oath when addressing the public.
Is it not theoretically illegal to influence elections by knowingly propagating falsehoods as facts when addressing a large audience and/or the public, for instance by defaming candidates by propagating lies about them? Lying about scientific data with intent to earn profits while harming people has been considered illegal: In 2006, the American Cancer Society and other plaintiffs won a major court case against Big Tobacco. Judge Gladys Kessler found tobacco companies guilty of lying to the American public about the deadly effects of cigarettes and secondhand smoke. Is the lying about climate change not similar as people suffer more from uncomfortable and dangerous weather conditions and a much increased rate of property destroying, deadly weather catastrophes? Obviously, many people are not (yet) much affected by climate change, but it is equally true that many smokers do not die of cigarette-related conditions and many non-smokers die from lung cancer, heart disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Tragically, our legal system is far too clumsy to enforce laws that concern global warming or the offering of unreasonable credit. There should not be major problems to sue and punish the offenders; profit-driven illegal activities that affect billions should be a highest priority, and these are not particularly complex cases, at least if judges recognize common sense, the well-being of the people, and the intent of laws to be more important than convoluted legal arguments.
It must also be illegal to propagate information (or misinformation) without the person or agency that publishes it identifying itself.
People who lied under oath and then became appointed officials should be removed from office temporarily until their apparently false statements are proven not to be false beyond reasonable doubt. If they did lie, they have to be reevaluated and reconfirmed to regain their position.
In all ‘public’ statements free speech laws allow us to say anything we want. However, we must clearly state what is a fact or truth according to science, a well founded but unproven opinion, an impression (that may be like a ‘gut-level’ feeling), a religious or quasi-religious belief that is unrelated to scientific truth, a joke or funny falsehood, etc. Truth and reality are to mean a description or a model of aspects of the world that is broadly understood and is considered valid for explaining observations and making predictions; at least, new observers must be able to verify and agree with reports of actual events. For example: physics can predict how a mechanical, optical, acoustic, or electric, device will work when manipulated or used. In contrast, a religious belief in a certain described afterlife cannot be validated – different religious teachings cannot be tested, scientists cannot know which if any religious teaching is ‘true.’

PLANS AND PROPOSALS: Summary of basic goals and recommendations for actions

Governments must establish and fund Public-Private Partnership Nonprofit Enterprises that have to restructure the economy. Summary of tasks and projects:
• Building comprehensive rail systems, including high-speed trains and light-rail lines, mostly small narrow track (70-100cm) trains that reach all neighborhoods, settlements and points of interest, many built on present roads.
• Developing and mass-producing many types of ultra-light 2-4 wheel human-powered and electric vehicles, most with rain-sun protection. Complement trains with aerial lifts and energy-efficient ships.
• Reforming agriculture and land management, plant/cultivate trees (2-4 trillion worldwide), bamboo, kelp, and other fast-growing plants (much for carbon sequestration); protect, restore, and extend natural forests and wetlands – in some places, trees that are more adapted to droughts, rather than trees that are common in the area, have to be planted.
• Re. land management, reforestation, bamboo plantations, etc.: there are about 9,000km2 of suitable land that is not used by humans, but more importantly, much of the 38,000km2 agricultural land used for animal grazing and animal feed production should be restored as natural forests, prairies, wetlands, etc. – we must move to mostly plant-based diets.
• Land management: restricting water use by agriculture, particularly well water from aquifers that are being depleted. It must be a first priority that all populations have ready access to safe water for consumption and cleanliness.
• Moving rapidly to mostly plant-based diets. Legumes contain high quality proteins, need little water, and enrich soils with nitrogen, which is needed by other crops. At the same time there need to be great investments in the production of synthetic milk, and also some lab-grown meat products
• Preventing plant material from burning or rapidly decomposing, for instance by using wood and bamboo in durable buildings, vehicles, etc. If commercially useless, decomposition may be prevented by  storing it very dry or cold (maybe keeping it in places with most of the time freezing temperatures), or sinking it into deep lakes, or into anoxic lake or ocean areas (dead zones), or sinking it into ground that is up to the surface soaked in stagnant water (imitating the low oxygen acidic condition of wetland bogs; or possibly with high salinity). If organic material, possibly mixed with earth, is immersed in stagnant acidic water, the decomposition is further decreased if covered with plants: in cool areas mostly peat moss, in warm areas floating plants such as duck weed. If in water salinity serves to preserve organic material, the concentration has to be adequately high. Other forms of carbon sequestration must be pursued, including CO2 being absorbed by powdered basalt or other types of rock, producing synthetic limestone, and pyrolysis. (Many locally applicable approaches to prevent decomposition of organic material should be developed)
• Minimizing the use of conventional concrete, steel, aluminum, glass siding, and man-made fibers, replacing them with wood, bamboo, natural fibers, recycled materials and carbon-negative concrete, as feasible.
• Improving energy efficiency of buildings in many ways, including utilizing highly reflective, infrared radiating paints that cool buildings. Adjust systems to cool and heat mainly most-used parts of buildings.
• As feasible, utilizing all approaches that can have significant impact, investing in research, and accelerating broad application of valuable inventions.

While there has been much progress in sciences and technologies, our institutions are not serving us well. There is much misery – anxiety and depressive disorders and addictions are frequent. Consumerism (particularly credit buying) and the overvaluation of property and wealth are basic problems and root causes of climate change, they also may promote unethical thinking and corruption, and being indebted has major negative consequences for individuals. We must address these societal ills. Intuitively people sense: with simpler, healthier lives we would feel better and be more content.  

Specific PLANS AND PROPOSALS, including proposals that are our invention or re-invention and experimental (this includes the central issue of carbon sequestration) – a fairly detailed, comprehensive list.  Also included are notes regarding weather and climate, what may influence local climates and possible actions that may improve problems.

To halt and start reversing global warming within years rather than decades, government must enact radical changes, probably needing emergency executive powers, a response similar to the U.S.’s response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The people, activist groups, scientists, and NGOs must pressure the government to act.
To halt catastrophic developments, we must 1. save energy and resources in every way possible while expanding the generation of wind and other renewable sources of energy, and 2. sequester huge amounts of CO2 to rapidly lower atmospheric CO2 levels mainly by planting 2-4 trillions trees and many more fast-growing land and aquatic plants, and by preventing the rapid decomposing or burning of dead plants and organic trash – this most important aspect of climate action has so far hardly been discussed; see below (re. trees: today many forestss are stressed by droughts – newly planted trees and other vegetation may need to be better adapted to lower humidity and heatwaves). Also important are continued efforts to develope and improve methods of direct capture and sequestration of atmopheric CO2; Climeworks has been a pioneer in this field but more effective, cheaper methods are being developed.
Scientists, activists, journalists, and NGOs, with the participation of many informed individuals, must launch a broad education campaign, educating people about how frightening and misdirected present developments are and, equally important, that 1. decisive, far-reaching government actions may be able to save our civilizations and the world as we know it, 2. a dramatic shift in our misguided economc devlopments would greatly improve people’s mental and physical health and their quality of life.
The needed initial step, broad education, must describe and clarify:
• The climate crisis is extremely serious; following present plans will result in densely populated areas becoming unlivable in coming decades, which will lead to mass migrations and world-wide violence.
• People must also know that there is an effective way to start reversing global warming within years, not decades.
• Governments must enact radical changes, probably needing emergency executive powers, a response similar to the U.S.’s response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• Broad education must describe specific proposals that can end global warming and start reversing it within years
• We must spread the knowledge that living more simply, ecologically minded and ethical coincides with being healthier and happier – teaching principles of ethical, ecological living will help address the widespread anxiety and depressive disorders, particularly in young people.
• We must fight a development model of ‘business-as-usual-with-incentives.’
• Addictive consumerism with credit buying, pursuit of wealth and power, pursuit of unethical fantasies, and conspiracy theorizing are mental disorders that damage human relationships and are harmful to all involved people; they need treatment. We must work to preclude many of these patients from holding leadership positions. Major debts lead to cognitive impairments, anxiety, depressive and substance use disorders, sometimes crimes and suicides.
• Since greenhouse gas releases have been approximately proportionate to the world population, cultures must emphasize the need for small families; contraception and abortions must be readily available everywhere. Raising children is expensive and consumes more resources than caring for the old, thus, with small families, the working population will need less combined resources for the care of the old and of children. Also, with much less focus on consumerism, industries can focus on robotics and the use of artificial intelligence for high quality care of the old and disabled, and also help for child care.

The role of the government:
• Governments must halt the present profit-driven and largely credit-based consumption economy by severely restricting activities of financial institutions, particularly bank lending. (A major part of economic growth consists in “marketing,” spreading discontent and then selling goods that clearly do not improve peoples health and happiness.
• Governments must establish, fund and work with public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises (PPPNE). The enterprises that do contract work for governments must reinvest all profits into research and development, expansion, education, and/or other non-profit enterprises. The big majority of well-trained scientists and engineers must not work for investors; they are to work for the ‘common good,’ guided by scientific knowledge concerning human’s well-being and needs. (Engineers who are employed with a purpose will do their work, be that in a for-profit corporation of America, in government contract work in Sweden, or in a state agency of China – today much of the most valuable research wok is done by nonprofit or public universities.
• Government must take care of people’s needs, particularly during this transition period. People need a basic income, health care and a good safety net. While most of the civilian industrial production has to be halted, PPPNEs and government contracts will create millions of jobs.
As a civilization, we must acknowledge that profits distort the goals of a project (for instance, selling an energy-saving product to the wealthy at a high price is more profitable than making it broadly available by selling it with a very low profit margin). – more about the government’s role in transition below.
The U.S. has been the main driver of economic developments that led to the climate crisis, and we may be in a unique position to reverse them. Other major economies almost certainly would soon follow our example. Alternately, India or China may recognize the urgency of the situation and lead, which would be great but would also be shameful for the U.S.
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1 At the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2020,
Dr. Joeri Rogelj reportedly stated “It is our best understanding that, if we bring CO2 [emissions] down to net zero, the warming will level off, …” This statement is hardly the consensus opinion of scientists. The warming is due to the high levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, feedback loops, and vicious cycles, not primarily newly released CO2. Oceans’ absorption of CO2 is influenced by many factors and we cannot expect that enough CO2 will be absorbed to compensate for all that drives up atmospheric greenhouse gases; in addition, the warming and acidification of oceans decreases its ability to absorb more CO2 than it releases. Global warming is also driven by changes in the world’s albedo particularly with snow fields and glaciers melting and with much vegetation impacted by droughts.
According to my review of data, the relatively rapid warming at the end of glaciation periods appears to have been largely driven by a feedback loop of warming oceans releasing much CO2 that, as a greenhouse gas, led to further warming. Cold water being able to absorb more CO2 than warm water was a primary factor in the large swings of atmospheric CO2 and temperatures during the ice age.
Also: the temperature rise with increased CO2 levels is delayed, decades, maybe centuries.
The physicist and author Peter Fiekowsky is one of few authors-scientists who describes why we must strive to rapidly decrease atmospheric greenhouse gases to levels of the mid 19th century.

Governments must restructure industries, transportation systems, agriculture and land management, working with public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises (PPPNEs):

Goals must include avoiding waste and saving energy and resources in every way possible, particularly in industries and transportation, and halt most methane releases that result from humans activities. Expanding renewable energy sources must mostly be used to address humans’ basic needs, providing clean water and healthy nutrition everywhere, keeping buildings adequately heated and cooled, etc. Indoor temperatures and clothing should be adjusted to seasonal outdoor temperatures.
Government-directed PPPNEs are to lead the necessary changes.
Reforms are to utilize approaches we describe here (our conclusions about effectively addressing this crisis), and many other approaches that are likely to have a significant impact towards reversing global warming; they must also speed up the development and broad application of valuable inventions.1
• PPPNEs must plant hundreds of billions of trees (worldwide 2-4 trillion)2, in reforestation efforts, for commercial use, nutrition, and shade; plant and cultivate other fast-growing plants, particularly bamboo and aquatic plants such as kelp and duck weed. While there is much suitable unused land, much land presently used for farm animals and animal feed (about 38,000km2), mostly beef production, could and should be returned to a natural state, making those lands valuable carbon sinks. Where trees are planted for reforestation and after forest fires, trees should initially be planted very densely or fast-growing shrubs can be planted between trees – excess trees, shrubs, and for sequestration cultivated and harvested plants must not be allowed to decompose or burn (description below). Where previously plants decomposed or burned, minerals may have to be replaced to keep the ground fertilized. Obviously, stressed exisitng forests may need human interference, irrigation with water from local creeks and rivers, replanting of understory plants and maybe adding trees that are more drought resistant than the trees that are dying. In reforestation, the plants must be adapted to local climates which may be dryer and hotter; consideration of diversity of vegetation is also important.
• PPPNEs must use primarily wood and bamboo particularly for buildings, but also for bridges and in other contruction3 Industries must largely avoid the use of concrete, steel, glass, plastics and synthetic fiber, etc. as feasible.
• PPPNEs must address today’s wasteful transportation systems and other wasteful industries. As an intermediary stage public transportation must be greatly expanded with fuel-efficient buses, and increased use of existing rail lines. We must stop building cars, trucks, airplanes, roads, parking lots, etc. As cars, trucks, and buses will stay in use for some time, they must be, as feasible, modified to minimize fossil fuels consumption (usually sacrificing power of engines). PPPNEs have to rapidly build a comprehensive rail system that includes high-speed and freight trains, subways, street cars, and a dense network of light-rail lines that reach all neighborhoods, settlements, and places of interest. Airplanes should rarely be used, except for some intercontinental travel. Rail lines must be complemented by ships and, in mountainous and metropolitan areas, gondola lifts.
• Light-rail lines are to include standard gauge and small narrow track (70-100cm)4. Development of cheap, easy to build trains, using known technologies, is a high priority. Many lines of small, very light trains may be built on existing roads and highways without deep foundation. We believe that rails may be built of wood or bamboo, with metal edges, like skis of the 1950s and 1960s – such rails may need less ties than regular metal rails. Driven wheels may be steel with rubber bands to allow steeper grades. Rubber-banded wheels may be used in some areas to reduce noise.
• PPPNEs must develop and mass-produce many types of 2-4 wheel ultra-light human-powered, hybrid, and electric vehicles, based on bicycle technology, most with light-weight protective bodies, (up to the size of golf carts or narrow subcompact vans). Bodies to protect from sun and precipitation and improve aerodynamics may be built with bamboo frames, clear plastics, canvas, double, waterproofed corrugated cardboard, or thin plywood. Laws must address safety of slow, small vehicles and be changed to allow such 4-wheel vehicles on streets. Generally, and particularly where steel and light vehicles mix, speed limits must be lowered.
• Where electricity is needed for long-distance transportation, trains, buses, and trucks may use a few standard size batteries that can be exchanged at former gas filling stations and train stops,. Heavy vehicles and particularly trains may pull small iron battery cars which can be rapidly detached and replaced at reasonable intervals; trains may push them in front of the engine.
• For safety reasons, a very light rail car with excellent breaking ability may run ahead of a trains to ascertain that the rail line is clear. For the safety and comfort of passengers, trains should always be able to stop relatively gently, even in an emergency.
• For a transition period, public transportation should be expanded while fuel prices rise and conventional vehicles are used much less. Simple approaches could greatly decrease vehicle fuel consumption: Public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises may develop kits that workshops can install locally, to
– make locally used vehicles electric, including buses, delivery vehicles, mail trucks, trucks of workmen, and other vehicles that are used only locally. (Gas or diesel engines should be removed for metal recycling). Battery packs should be adjusted to the area where the vehicle is used each day;
– modify conventional vehicles to become hybrids; in front-wheel drive vehicles, an independent electric drive with regenerative braking may be installed on rear wheels;
– improve gas mileage of cars by adding a highly efficient overdrive, by modifying the car’s engine improving fuel efficiency at the cost of power, and possibly making the body more aerodynamic;
– lower speed limits, particularly for all types of trucks and heavy SUVs to improve fuel efficiency and traffic safety.
– solar panels may be installed on roofs of vehicles.
As feasible, lanes for slow electric and human powered vehicles must be built. Where cars and ultralight vehicles mix, there must be very low speed limits;
• Industries should refurbish or build slow ships with high fuel efficiency, for transportation on rivers, in canals and lakes, and across the sea.
• PPPNEs must further develop regenerative braking that can be used in all types of trains and ultra-light vehicles.
• Governments and PPPNEs must greatly decrease the building of new electric steel cars. Planners must consider that the increased mining of minerals for vehicles, batteries, and other electronic and electric equipment often leads to much pollution that is very toxic for local populations. Profits of many mines subsidize militias and/or authoritarian, corrupt governments. The recycling of all needed metals must be rapidly expanded, even if expensive, to minimize the need for new mining.
• Iron-air batteries may be much more broadly used along with other types of batteries that can be produced with minimal impact on environments.
• As feasible, PPNEs must work to significantly decrease greenhouse gas releases at factories that build machinery and steel parts for vehicles.
• Hydrogen production by electrolysis may be further developed, to store energy from excess electricity production and to be used in transportation, industrial applications, and pyrolysis.
• It is important to minimize the use of concrete, steel, and glass: producing them creates much greenhouse gases, while the carbon of wood and bamboo that replaces these material is sequestered for extended times. Cross-laminated timber and bamboo can replace concrete and metals in the construction of buildings (up to/over 20 stories high), for light vehicles, and rail cars, etc. (cross-laminated timber and bamboo are, by weight, similarly strong as steel). We suggest that particularly bamboo may also be used to build bridges, overpasses, and maybe wind-turbine towers. Bamboo combined with clay may be used for dikes and small dams. Large barges and ships may again be built of wood, and large wooden sail ships may be re-developed.
We imagine that large and high gravity dams may be built without concrete by piling up large crystalline rocks with rough surfaces, spaces between them filled with stones of different sizes, gravel, and sand, and the inside of the dam sealed with asphalt. To build such a dam, a layer of large rocks forms the foundation, spaces between the rocks filled in with smaller rocks, gravel, and sand; the dam is then built of layers that are built like the foundation. A thick layer of asphalt inside the dam may be used to prevent water seeping into the dam and washing out sand and gravel; some asphalt may also be used inside the dam, however, water that seeps through should be able to seep to the base of the dam without damaging it.
Regarding asphalt, its use in dikes and dams: in cool water, asphalt appears safe, hardly releasing toxic organic substances; however asphalt surfaces on streets, paved areas and roofs do release more or less toxic organic substances, particularly when hot. Top layers of asphalt of paved areas and roofs should use very light-colored rocks that reflect most sunlight. Streets and roads may also be hard-pressed rocks, without asphalt to support light-rail lines (mostly narrow track, 70-100cm).
• Highly reflective, infrared radiating, ‘cooling,’ ‘extreme white’ paints and other highly reflective and heat radiating materials must be broadly applied, where the cooling of buildings is important; air conditioning may be much decreased or avoided, These reflective and infra-red radiating surfaces lower the temperature of the painted surfaces and building insides. (up to 4-10°C, 8-19° F below the ambient temperatures). It may be possible that white roof surfaces can be covered with dark tarps in winter.
• Selective black fabrics for out-door conditions (tarps) should be developed – black material that absorbs sunlight while emitting little infra-red radiation (commercially available black surfaces are generally coated metal sheets built for uses such as solar collector).
• Building habitable housing: Improved insulation, passive solar principles, shade trees, and application of basic geothermal principles should help to minimize energy use in buildings. Delay of heat penetration must be considered: for instance: in typical thick walls or sod roofs. about 30 cm (one foot) leads to a delay in transfer of heat of about 12 hours (inside coolest in late afternoon, warmest in early morning, however, the material of a wall or roof is important. Roof gardens may postpone heat transfer and dampen day-night differences, keeping in-door temperatures relatively stable and, due to natural evaporative cooling effect of the garden, cooler than ambient average temperatures.. A few meters below ground, temperatures are constant all year at the annual average temperature of the top layer of soil. Much deeper, the ground becomes very hot.
• Dwellings should be relatively small and “cozy” – exposed wood, and areas with low ceiling are probably better than large high spaces with steel, glass, and concrete everywhere. Passive solar principles are valuable (solar orientation of windows – warming room in winter but shaded by roof overhang when the sun is high in the sky, windows or shuttered ventilation openings that catch prevalent winds during hot season, etc.). While pursuing highly efficient heating and cooling, climatization may be designed to mostly heat and cool small most used areas: comfortable corner areas with lowered ceiling, workspace and dining area in ‘booths,’ or alcoves (naturally people are drawn to and feel comfortable in such spaces). Clothing must be adjusted to the season; indoor temperatures should not be the same during hot and cold seasons. For children’s development of three-dimensional thinking and for daily exercise, multistory units are recommended.

• Land management must be reformed according to modern research and experiences from indigenous cultures. It must minimize erosion of top soil and use techniques of regenerative agriculture. Planning must consider that fertilizers may release nitrous oxide that adds to global warming and pollutes water in the areas. Legumes can enrich soils with nitrogen that is needed by other crops; crop rotation or mixed crop planting may be beneficial.
• Managing the use of water; providing regular access to fresh water for drinking and washing, must be a first priority in all parts of the world. Particularly the pumping of water from most aquifers must be limited. In many areas, there needs to be more effective ways of saving water, particularly in agriculture, and of reclaiming water by treating sewage.
• Diets must become mostly plant based with legumes serving as high quality sources of protein. Lab-produced ‘synthetic’ milk and also meat must largely replace cattle breeding.
Pursuing mostly plant-based nutrition is an ecological and an ethical issue. The treatment of most chickens and large farm animals is strictly efficiency-based and/or profit driven and often cruel; in contacts with most animals, particularly animals that are considered ‘pests’ or food, people rarely are compassionate. There are major ethical issues concerning whaling, and to a lesser degree fishing, and the processing of seafood – it is hard to find out how much sentience and pain sensation octopus, fish, other aquatic animals have; and what amphibians and reptiles perceive (they cannot scream). Regarding chicken and other farm animals for human nutrition: it is likely that with global warming future heat waves will kill most or all chicken in affected areas; cattle may also have difficulties tolerating higher temperatures,.particularly if nights are not cooling down much and if the humidity is high; and infectious disease epidemics in farm animals may become more likely – animal diseases may be more likely to mutate, adapt to humans and become epidemics in people.

• Carbon sequestration: PPPNEs must sequester huge quantities of carbon, primarily by growing plants and by preventing the burning or decomposing of for these purposes grown plants as well as other organic materials without commercial value. Specifics about our proposals are described in the following section. Today no broadly-propagated form of carbon sequestration is widely applicable and/or used, and industries want to use them to compensate for their continued CO2 releases, not to actually lower atmospheric CO2 levels. Some techniques’ applications, like direct air capture by the Swiss company Climeworks, are not more widely used due to their cost; however, newer, more efficient and cheaper technologies are being devloped and may play a more important role in the future. Some approaches are exclusively focusing on reaching ‘carbon neutrality,’ for instance capturing CO2 from industry flues and finding ways of sequestering it.
Plants sequester carbon for some time, but most trees grow slowly, some release greenhouse gases from their bark, and when they rot or burn, the carbon that was sequestered as the trees grew, is released back into the atmosphere. Consequently some forests may release more CO2 than they absorb. Growing trillions of trees may not be enough to halt the feedback loops that drive global warming. Forestry research will be important; bamboo and many other plants may be more important that conventional tree panting efforts.

• The production of weaponry and rockets must be halted – we need alternatives to warfare and end launching rockets for space exploration or ‘space tourism.’
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1 Comprehensive plans must consider works such as Paul Hawkins’,
Drawdown (drawdown.org) – description of many projects. and
Regeneration (regeneration.org) -description of many projects.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (ipbes.net) – (The thematic assessment report on Intelinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – Landmark Assessment 12/17/2024).
Peter Fiekowsy‘s, Climate Restoration 2022, peterfiekowsky.com foundationforclimaterestoration.org
Regarding Fiekowsy’s data on increasing kelp and other marine plants: these plants may absorb CO2 comparable to the most CO2 absorbing land plants, but they have short lifespans and when sinking in the ocean, most material is eaten by fish, octopus, and other marine animals, or they decomposes, thus most absorbed CO2 is soon released back into the atmosphere. Increasing the total amount of phytoplankton does hold much carbon, but most of it only temporarily. Much of what he proposes is valuable but takes time we do not have; harvesting the rapid growing plants, then preventing their decomposition as described, is important; if dead plants sink into the deep ocean 50-95% will be decomposed by bacteria, particularly in warmer ocean water. The idea of iron fertilization of areas in the ocean to stimulate the growth of algae has had mixed reviews in the literature. If there is too much growth with many plants dying, dead zones may develop that kill fish and other life in the sea.
Regarding other inventions, new possibly very significant new technologies are continuously developed, for instance the MIT invention of using aluminum, treated with gallium-indium alloy, saltwater, and caffeine to produce hydrogen should be rapidly developed as it may replace some forms of fossil fuel uses. See – energy.mit.edu/news/using-aluminum-and-water-to-make-clean-hydrogen-fuel-when-and-where-its-needed/ (However, we must consider that it takes much energy to produce aluminum; this energy then produces the energy-rich hydrogen – recycling the aluminum is generally preferable.).
2 According to a study on climate change by the ETH university, Zurich, there is enough land in the world that is not used by humans and suited for reforestation to plant 1.2 trillion trees (0.9 billion hectars or 9 million km2); we should add much land that is today used for cattle grazing and to produce feed for farm animals. Once matured, new forests of 1.2 trillion trees could store 205 billion tones of carbon, about 2/3 of the 300 billions that has been released as a result of human activities since 1850 (these numbers have been questioned, much more trees may be needed). Regarding good forest management and regular harvesting of trees for commercial use, some countries, for instance Austria, have a long, successful tradition.
3 Regarding concerns about deforestation due to much use of wood. The well maintained forests of Austria produce about on cubic meter (close to a metric ton) of usable wood every second, enough to build about 1,000sqft in a 100% wood building. The wood needed for the large Hoho wood building (65,000 sqft) in Vienna reportedly grows in about 77 minutes.
However, heat waves and longer droughts have been damaging forests and efforts are needed to maintain them: irrigating forests with water from local creeks and rivers, planting bushes and more droughtresistant trees where trees have been dying, etc. It is most important that the ground stays cool with shade plants and, as feasible, adequate humidity. When the ground heats up, there is a high likelihood that there is more humidity without cloud formation – humidity is a greenhouse gas, clouds reflect sunlight.
4 Re. train sizes, all passenger cars having aisles, we imagine standard size trains seating 2+2 people per row with possibly two levels, 100cm track light rail cars seating 2+1 persons per row or 3 on one side of the aisle (with 6 person compartments), 60-75cm track cars usually seating 1+1 persons or 2 persons besides an aisle (with 4 person compartments).

Carbon sequestration and other thoughts and proposals. (some are our inventions, or re-invented, and experimental approaches):
Regarding carbon sequestration by growing trees and other fast-growing plants in all parts of the world: Plants use atmospheric carbondioxyde (CO2) to grow, and we should plant as much vegetation as feasible; but, what is not eaten by animals, should be prevented from burning or rapidly decomposing (rotting) in order to keep carbon sequestered for centuries or millennia.
• While research has to further evaluate and develop ways of preventing the rapid decomposition of plants and dead animals, we believe that there already are many simple, readily available ways to effectively sequestering carbon for extended times
• Observations show that decomposition is minimal if organic material is kept in very dry condition or very cold (maybe year-round covered with snow); decomposition is very slow in anoxic water (dead zones of lakes and the sea or water with high salinity), or in with stagnant water inundated ground that is essentially without oxygen and acid as in bogs – adding adequate amounts of salt may further decrease microbial decomposition of organic material (salt has been widely used as effective food preservative). Prehistoric pile dwellings around lakes North of the Alps (pile dwellings or ‘Pfahlbauten’ at the lakes of Constance and of Zurich, where covered with sediment have been well preserved. Trees deep under water of man-made lakes, where the water is cold and essentially without oxygen, and long ago cut trees observed in cold rivers of northern Canada hardly show signs of decomposition, Decomposition is also very slow if material is buried deeply where it is dry, covered by clay or other soil the prevents oxygen reaching it as gas or dissolved in water (a 3,775 year old well preserved log of red cedar was found in Quebec where a study evaluated the feasibility of burying wood to sequester carbon). Preserving wood in this way for carbon sequestration has been called vaulting.
• Below we describe proposed ways of very much slowing decomposition of organic material (primarily plant material, some other natural organic materials including animal carcasses) – however, research is needed.
• To minimize the need for composting to fertilizer land, regenerative agriculture-land management must prevent soil erosion by avoiding tilling, by planting perennials, and by cultivating diverse plants that include legumes, etc.
• In place of ‘controlled burning,’ forest and brush fires may be prevented by removing most dead trees, wood on the ground and dry shrubs; that material may then be prepared for carbon sequestration along with trash lumber and other commercially worthless organic material, including landfill trash that is mostly organic material, and plants that are grown for carbon sequestration. Regarding dead wood in forests, some dead tree and brush are needed for ecological equilibriums).
• To sequester rapidly increasing amounts of carbon, broad efforts are needed to increase the world’s vegetation: planting-cultivating 2-4 trillion trees and many fast-growing plants, bamboo and other grasses, kelp and other aquatic plants, etc. Some plants will hold carbon for centuries or at least decades, other plants need to be frequently ‘harvested’ and their decomposition slowed as much as feasible as described below. Where fast growing plants are removed for sequestration, nitrogen and minerals are not returned to the soil; nitrogen fertilization is probably best accomplished by planting legumes; other minerals may have to be added to the soil, or in case of aquatic plants, to the water.
• Trees, bushes, shrubs, and grasses should also be planted for restoration of natural vegetation, and for shade or commercial uses (lumber, food, fiber, etc.). With agriculture needing less land when moving to plant-based diets rich in legumes, much forest land may be reestablished in temperate zones all over the globe. Up-to-date forest management science is to be applied. Expansion and newly planted mangrove forests should help protect coastal areas from flooding and support local ecosystems. Bamboo is valuable because it is fast-growing and it grows in most climates and soils with little water; in addition, bamboo has significant commercial value. We also must reestablish natural prairies, and grow other grasses, reeds, Miscanthus (elephant grass), etc. Valuable, fast-growing land plants include oaks and many temperate zone forest trees, arunda donax (giant reed), millettia pinnata (pongame oiltreea a legume), and paulownia tomentosa (empress tree). Many aquatic plants grow rapidly, some have commercial uses; examples include duck weed, azolla, kelp and other algae. Some water plants can be frequently ‘harvested’ when washed up to shores and from the surface waters of large ponds, lakes and the sea (particularly sargasso) for sequestration as described below. Methods were developed to grow much kelp where the sea is too deep and/or the water is too warm, building frames that kelp can grow from and pumping colder, nutrient-rich water from deeper in the ocean.
• The goal is to keep much carbon sequestered for at least centuries if not millennia. Peatland, wetlands, mangrove forests, and the forests of different climate zones are important ecosystems that should be protected and expanded. Reforestation needs to consider what naturally grew in the area and restores or expands natural ecosystems. (What to plant where must be determined by biologists and agronomists, with ecological considerations, availability of water, etc. being considered.)
• Protected wildlife areas should be connected so that wildlife can move freely and safely in large areas.
• The world should aim to a state of half the land areas being protected and restored natural areas; and oceans are as much as feasible free of trash and toxic substances.

Our specific proposals for readily available ways to minimize the decomposition of organic material (some not tried and proven – RESEARCH NEEDED):
• A most readily available approach of sequestering the carbon of wood and dry shrubs for centuries consists in simply burying it in trenches: it will decompose very slowly according to a 2008 paper by Ning Zeng (https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0680-3-1). The type of soil that covers the wood appears important, clay may be best in preventing air and water with dissolved oxygen reaching it.
• It has also been shown that dry organic material may be buried deep underground, covered with clay or similar soil to keep it dry, without microbes or fungi, and without oxygen. Sequestering wood in that way has been called ‘vaulting.’
• We propose inundating organic material in stagnant, anoxic water, that is covered with earth, possibly with wetland plants growing on the surface; organic material may include landfill trash, wet plant material such as seaweed collected from beaches, weeds, cut grass, leaves, harvested fast-growing plants that are cultivated for carbon sequestration, possibly sewage, and dead animals. Decomposition by microorganisms essentially stops where fermentation of dying plants rapidly leads to oxygen depletion and acidification; adding adequate amounts of salt may decrease decomposition even further. The goal is to create conditions like natural bogs; organic green material may first resemble sauerkraut or silage feed. Re, salt, high concentrations further decrease decomposition (up to a certain level, the higher the concentration the better), low concentration may actually promote decomposition.
• Ponds with stagnant water may be filled starting on one side and gradually filling the whole pond; then new layers may be added.
• Close to the sea, artificial bogs may be created by filling pits with organic material and sea water, however, these have to be covered to prevent precipitation that reduces the salt concentration. Instead, evaporated water is replaced with more sea water to gradually increase the salinity.
• Artificial bogs may be made very salty by adding much salt to the stagnant water, but if precipitation dilutes the stagnant water’s salinity, more salt has to be added.
• For many areas, we suggest deep artificial ponds of stagnant water (mostly filled by precipitation) filled with organic material that is quickly immersed; the mix then rapidly becomes acidic. The surface may be covered with plants: algae, other rapidly-growing water plants, particularly sphagnum moss that may be anchored by sedges, imitating natural bogs – the types of plants are determined by salinity and climate). Surfaces may also hold down floating wood by covering it with burlap-type fabric, rocks, and earth, and by new layers of organic material. These ponds may be created or enlarged by building dikes around them; the dikes may be constructed with bamboo, rocks, and earth, lined with clay and/or asphalt, however, the dikes should have many drainage holes just above the pond surface level to allow rainwater to drain off the surface and not mix much with the stagnant water below; precipitation should not bring much fresh oxygen into the ‘bog.’ Organic material in the pond includes wet plant material, mostly organic trash, and dry wooden material such as brush and branches of trees which gets waterlogged when submerged. Shade trees, e.g. cypress in and around such ‘artificial bogs may help decrease evaporation.
• Where there now is landfill trash piled in large heaps, the trash area may be enclosed by dikes. Within the dike, the trash can be flattened and then immersed in stagnant water and covered with plants such as duck weed in warm, peat moss in cool areas. The water will quickly become essentially anoxic and acidic; dikes can be built higher as new layers of organic material and landfill trash are added. Rough burlap fabric covered with rocks, dirt, and added dead plants and organic trash may hod material down that would float up.
• Another way of greatly slowing decomposition of organic material consists in sinking it deep into cold lakes. Possibly best are cold ’dead zones’ that are essentially anoxic parts of lakes and oceans. Where the water is not very deep, the material may be covered with rough burlap sheets, rocks, sand, and clay to minimize fresh oxygen reaching it and minimizing the likelihood of toxic material floating up. Critical factors are that no flowing water brings fresh oxygen to the material, and that water movements do not move polluting substances into the body of water.
• Particularly trees and other dead wood can easily be sequestered very dry in desert or mountain areas, covered by roofing with wide overhangs.
• Highly effective is moving some organic material in ships to arctic islands, or transport it by trains and trucks into cold areas in the mountains, piling it high, and, possible, covering it year-round with snow (whenever it is cold enough, wind-powered snow making machines should be used to maintain the snow cover). If summers are warm, the ground around the piles may be kept cold – thick layers of plants may insulate and prevent sunlight to reach the ground; adequate amounts of artificial snow may last through much of the summer.
• Trees, and branches, sun-dried aquatic plants and other dried plant material may be kept very dry (maybe shortly exposed to temperatures that kill most micro-organisms), piled on a surface of bare rock, possibly with some places asphalt covered, building rapidly growing mounds and covered with dark roofs that have wide overhangs (dark roofs will keep the space below it dry). Piles of dried organic material may also be covered with dry wood that is protected from rotting by coatings of bitumen, creosote, or other natural preservative substances (research needed?). Dry storing works best in hot, dry areas and cold places, where if some humidity reaches the material, decomposition would still be very slow until the material dries out again.
• Lose plant material may be air dried at the places of long-term storage: hot or cold dry places, protected from precipitation but with good air circulation.
• Cultures should allow that dead animals that are not commercially useful and human bodies are buried along with plant material in earth that is inundated with stagnant, anoxic and possibly very salty earth; or deposited in other places where organic material hardly decomposes.

•  Carbon is also sequestered when wood and bamboo are used in durable products, and also if crude oil is used for products such as asphalt; uses of products that sequester carbon for extended times need to be developed and expanded. Example: textiles products should be made to last, and when no longer useful, the fiber material should be recycled rather than trashed and allowed to decompose or be burned; for dikes and dams, constructed of bamboo and clay, with or without asphalt-cover. From fossil fuel synthesized materials that are no longer useful, particularly plastics and synthetic fibers, may be pressed into bricks rather than burned or decomposed by microbes that are able to ‘digest’ plastics; this includes plastic trash retrieved from rivers and the sea.
•  Techniques of ‘regenerative farming’ increase the carbon content of soil for extended times. Many indigenous cultures developed farming techniques that increase soil carbon. When adding pulverized dust of fungal spores to soil where there are crops, carbon appears to be kept much longer in the ground than in normal carbon cycle (Loam Bio markets fungal spores; New York Times 8/14/2024: A Quest to Clean the Climate By Using Dirt to Capture Carbon [in Australia]).
•  Research may develop solar energy use for pyrolysis, producing biochar (charcoal) that can be used to improve soils.
•  Other forms of safe permanent carbon sequestration must be pursued and further developed, as feasible in tandem with the further devlopment of technologies to capture atmospheric carbon:
Exposing and breaking up rocks that absorb CO2, particularly powdered basalt and other volcanic rock, pumping CO2 into orphaned oil wells can lead to the CO2 being absorbed by surrounding rock.
Synthetic limestone may be created in a process that imitates natural ooid rock formation and the ways corals synthesize their skeletons (Blue Planet Systems produces/markets synthetic limestone in the U.S.)

• Regarding “heat bubbles” and effects on local climate in and around metropolitan areas: We must address local heat production in populated areas that lead to ‘heat bubbles’: nuclear, fossil fuel, and geothermal power plants produce considerably more heat than electricity, cooling them with water leads to much increased humidity and damages ecosystems in the heated bodies of water. While clouds would block sunlight, hot humid air allows sunlight to pass through and it traps heat. Uninhabited cities and ruins are cooler than their environments; there is much shade and cold air accumulates between walls while warm air does not sink down. However, all energy use in cities creates heat, particularly air-conditioners, cooking and also computing. Solar panels produce also much more heat than electricity. Solar panels and condensers of air conditioners and refrigerators should be cooled by producing hot water that may be stored in large, isolated underground tanks, some of it to be used for heating in cold season. Most man-made surfaces, particularly roofs and roads, become very hot, unless there are special heat radiating and sun-reflecting surfaces. Hot air rising from cities and power stations may prevent the formation of shading clouds and increase evaporation; the humidity is a local greenhouse gas that further heats the metropolitan areas. It would be best to paint many surfaces extreme white which reflects sunlight while radiating heat from the inside of buildings or ground below roads and walk ways (asphalt that cannot be painted should have sun-reflecting white gravel on the surface. Shading trees, sun-reflecting, heat-radiating surfaces, roof gardens, and the application of simple solar principles can keep inhabited areas relatively cool with minimal air-conditioning.
• Influence of surfaces on local heat gain and indirect effects: Dry land surfaces and also solar collectors may reflect sunlight better than open water and forests; however they become extremely hot. When sunlight hits water and forests, much material becomes slightly warmer during the day, but temperature differences between day and night are minor. Dry surfaces, and solar collectors become very hot which leads to evaporation of water in the area and heating of the atmosphere above them. The hot air rises and, as with sea breezes, cooler, possibly more humid, air is drawn to the hot areas. This air then also heats up, rises and cools down some, however we often observe that cooling to the point of condensation and cloud formation only starts in the late evening or during the night. During the day, clouds reflect sunlight but water vapor (humidity) is a greenhouse gas; at night, clouds block heat radiation from the earth’s surface into space.
How clouds affect climate is complex; there does not appear to be adequate data. The world is warming faster than projected and a likely factor is that there is generally less cloud cover that reflects sunlight compared to the recent past – many areas, including rain forests, are dryer (deforestation is a contributing factor but global warming is probably the main reason) and where it is dryer there are less likely cloud formation.
It is hard to find data as to what time of the days there is cloud cover in different parts of the world, and whether there are significant changes in patterns of cloud formation. Theoretically, hot humid air rises and when rising cools off which should lead to cloud formation – this may typically occur over oceans; however clouds often do not form until wind leads to the mixing of colder and warmer humid air, or the air cools off at night. For instance, sea breezes often bring humid air far into the interior of Texas but there is rarely cloud formation before the warm air ‘collides’ with a cooler wind or, sometimes, the air cools enough at night to form clouds.
• Heating the surface of large areas of the earth: Relatively small changes in solar radiation reaching the earth significantly influence the climates in part of the earth; for instance changes due to volcanic activity blocking solar radiation, reduced solar activity, and increased reflection of sun light due to extended snow cover in winter appear to have lead to or contributed to the “little ice age” of the northern hemisphere in recent centuries. Human activities are doing the opposite. On sunny days, human created surfaces become hot rather than mildly warmed alike vegetation. The hot surfaces create rising hot air that may prevent cloud formation. Nuclear energy, fossil fuel use, and even all forms of renewable energy create heat where the energy is used and in most cases also where it is produced: solar collectors become very hot and geothermal power plants draw heat from the lower levels of the earth’s crust to the surface. Do climate scientists know how much these factors add up to influencing local climates? Should we not minimize activities that heat the ground and surface water where there is high population density?
• Heating and cooling buildings: For psychological and ecological reasons, dwellings should be rather small and population density should be fairly high. Exposed wood and areas with low ceiling may give a ‘cozy,’ inviting feeling. Passive solar principles are valuable . As feasible, walls are to be designed to have a 12-hour delay for warmth to penetrate so that the wall is warmest inside in the early morning and coolest in the late afternoon. Roof gardens may postpone heat transfer and dampen day-night differences, keeping in-door temperatures relatively stable. Deciduous trees may shade homes during hot season but not during winter. Evaporative cooling with heat exchangers may widely be used to produce cool, dry air. Research may further develop simple ways to utilize geothermal principles for heating and cooling. At some places there are hot springs, and/or the temperature of rocks is very high relatively close to the surface. Almost everywhere, a few meters below ground, the temperature is essentially stable year-round at the annual average of the ground’s surface temperature (in areas where there is at times snow cover, the temperature of the earth’s surface is often much higher, sometimes lower, than the air temperature). Such principles have been used in some cultures since antiquity, creating fairly comfortable indoor environments.
• While pursuing highly efficient heating and cooling, temperature control should mostly heat and cool most used areas, particularly corner sitting areas and workspace and dining areas in ‘booths’ or alcoves with lowered ceiling. Basements should be built to create naturally cooler relaxation or sleep areas. In many places, split work-waking hours may be introduced or re-introduced with people sleeping during hottest part of day in coolest part of dwelling, maybe on a cool stone floor with a light mattress in a downstairs or basement room.
• Further developments in energy-efficient temperature control of buildings may use hot water from any power station, industry, or other installation that creates excess heat. Hot water may be gained from cooling solar panels and from condensers of air conditioners and refrigerators.
• Hot water and ice may be stored in large, insulated underground tanks. Ice may be stored in cold areas where it is produced and in summer shipped to hot places. During cold times, ice can be produced by pumping lake water from beneath a layer of ice to the surface where it will quickly freeze (the ice insulates the lake water from the cold air and it generally takes considerable time to naturally form thick ice layers.).
• Not recyclable plastics, plastic removed from rivers and oceans may be pressed into blocks or tiles that may then be used for paths, maybe even as building material for structures that are not intended for human habitation. Some plastics may be safely transformed into fuel. There are also efforts to find or breed bacteria that will decompose, “metabolize” many useless plastics, however, if decomposed by microbes, the carbon in the plastics is not sequestered.
• To save coral reefs, can icebergs be moved into the area, upstream from the reefs, to cool the water enough for corals to flourish? Efforts to save coral species that are in danger of extinction in cool tanks and expecting that they will flourish some-when in the future will hardly save all the diverse plants and animals that are part of the reef ecosystem. (Although they cover less than 0.1% of the earth’s surface, coral reefs are the most biodiverse marine ecosystem in the world. Coral reefs reportedly are home to: 4,000 species of reef fish 840 species of corals, and over a million species of other animals).
• To save forests, such as the Amazon rain forest, can the remaining water of the rivers be used to irrigate the drying areas? Forests should contain lush under-stories that help keep the ground relatively cool and moist.
• To save glaciers, snow and ice cover: Glaciers in Greenland, Antarctica, and high mountains are retreating; much pack ice in the Arctic, seasonal ice cover of lakes and the sea and usual seasonal snow cover of ground are being lost. We believe it is possible to build snow-making machines that work directly with wind generators rather than electricity. Where global warming has been decreasing ice and snow, wind-powered snow making machines should be widely used to maintain reflectivity (normal albedo) of areas and to slow warming of the ground by the sun. Whenever it is cold enough, available water should be used to add artificial snow where ice and snow have been diminishing – snow-making machines should be broadly used worldwide. Loss of glaciers that feed large, important rivers, and loss of seasonal snow cover is very widespread. The melting of permafrost in polar areas and high mountains is very disturbing.
• To cool hot deseertous land surfaces with its negative influences on local climates, and to halt and reverse desertification, at the edges of steppe, savanna, and oasis, mounds or ditches, several feet high/deep and wide, running East-West, will decrease the earth’s heating up during daytime; we expect that rainwater will not evaporate before reaching the ground as is common when the ground is hot. The cooler ground decreases an up-draft of heated air, possibly allowing cloud formation and rain. (It is our understanding that forests and oases are more likely to get rain than dry land because there is not the updraft of hot air that dries up humidity and may dissolve clouds.) Particularly if there is an incline, the ditches should have frequent dams that, when there is rain, prevent the water from flowing East or West in the ditch. Any rain should collect in the ditches and may then allow the growth of drought-resistant plants.
• Since alcohol use is a worldwide problem and research now shows that even small amounts of alcohol are damaging to people’s health, it is proposed to tax alcohol, encouraging a rapid move towards alcoholic beverages with greatly decreased alcohol content that taste the same as real beer, wine and liquors. (People who like the effect of alcohol will get some effects as conditioned reflex, and/or learn to appreciate the very subtle effect of very low alcohol levels; they should be able to enjoy the taste.) The alcohol that is distilled from these beverages can be used as liquid fuel.
• Water desalination in small quantities: an infrared radiating sheet of metal or other material (dark color), slightly tilted towards North, will get very cold when exposed to the night sky; if located above the ocean’s relatively warm water, there will be much condensation – distilled water will run down the sheet on both sides and can be collected in gutters. With cooling extreme white that radiates infrared into the sky, condensation occurs day and night.

Further proposed tasks of governments
• Regarding financing projects and the money supply needed for the reforming of the economy, we propose that the federal government must create new money for government contract work and severely restrict financial institutions’ activities. In this way we end financial institutions’ power to create, own, and allocate much of the circulating money supply; instead, most circulating money will be owned by government agencies, enterprises, and the people that work with it. The proposed changes will essentially stop institutional factors that promote addictive consumerism, greed, and personal indebtedness with its detrimental emotional consequences. Governments must revise their flawed ideology that focuses on economic growth – we need reforms that focus on creating a sustainable economy and fulfilling people’s needs. Financial institutions have been a root cause of the climate crisis.
(Governments should create, not borrow, money to fund the PPPNE projects and subsidize other climate-related projects; such newly created money will not cause inflation, if bank lending is restricted. Inflation is largely caused by irresponsible fractional reserve banking, increasing the functional money supply by lending limited bank reserves to many individuals and corporations with the goal of promoting consumerism and misguided economic growth. Lending money is particularly inflationary when more money is invested in marketing than in increasing productivity. Because of fear of inflation, the government did not create new money during the depression; instead the government encouraged traveling salesmen to sell durable goods offering credit. Since then, money lending has been greatly increased – anything can be bought with credit. A significant part of the circulating money supply is now owned by the credit lending financial institutions, and people, enterprises, and governments have to pay interests that is like a taxation for the convenience of having circulating a money supply.)
• Governments must buy patents of products and production processes that are broadly needed in its efforts to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases, for instance patents for extreme white infrared radiating (cooling) white paint, films, and radiative cooling paper (with tunable stiffness, usable for garments) developed at Purdue and Northeastern University, USA, and Beijing Jiaotong University. Additionally government must buy patents for newer reflective and heat radiating materials that are being developed. Such paints and materials must become cheaply available worldwide. – It is in everybody’s interests for tropical poor countries to receive and use these paints instead of installing more air conditioners and building new power plants. Use of radiative cooling garments may greatly decrease heat exhaustion, heat related organ damage, and heat strokes.
• Governments must direct public universities to develop products that are valuable for decreasing energy use and sequester carbon.
• Governments must highly tax all greenhouse gas releases, including methane releases; particularly leaks where there was/is drilling for fossil fuels and from methane belching of cattle. All energy use should carry a taxation. (Energy corporations that today produce fossil fuel and wind energy in places like West Texas should be held responsible for stopping methane leaks from orphaned oil wells that belonged to corporations that no longer exist.)
• Taxation must also address income inequality – wealth itself must be highly taxed (according to OXFAM studies, the 10% richest people create an estimated 50% of emissions; if they would live at average European standards, global emissions would be 35% less).
• Governments must tax advertisements by big corporations (advertisements should simply inform, not promote consumerism). Since advertisement income is important for the media, non-partisan reporting in papers, radio, and TV needs government subsidies.
• Governments must also tax the trade of securities.
• Governments must subsidize many approaches that save energy, decrease waste, add renewable energy, and sequester carbon. Incentives (mainly subsidies) and disincentives (mainly taxation) must guide developments in the private sector, and lead to greatly decreased waste and decreased use of materials, such as cement, steel, aluminum, synthetic fibers, glass for siding of buildings, etc. Virtually all economic activities must aim to 1. save resources and energy, and minimize waste, 2. create more renewable energy and possibly nuclear power in small dispersed units, and 3. sequester much carbon.
• Governments must particularly discourage (with high taxation) or outlaw the misallocation of computing resources, uses of computing that are unethical and waste much energy and water that is needed for cooling; examples include bitcoin (which is like a Ponzi Scheme – its value is exclusively derived from new investments); data gathering, storing, and analyzing (without computer users’ clear understanding and consent); and abuses of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence applications that are trying to “think for us” should be considered abuses. Artificial intelligence should primarily serve the improvement of people’s happiness and health, physical and mental; help in ethical research, in the care of elderly and disabled people, in preventing any form of violence, etc. We still must be very careful with A I “helping” professionals or basically doing their jobs, particularly if the goals of a job are ethically questionable (example market research to help influencing people in inappropriate ways).
• Governments must establish, as human rights: guaranteed incomes and comprehensive safety nets, free health care (including unrestricted access to all forms of birth control and abortions. and to palliative care), and free education.
• Public education must include broad education concerning ethics and also life skills. This is particularly important as there will be major economic disruptions.
• Cultures must also promotes small families to reach a decreased world population of maybe four billion people.

Further thoughts concerning the problems and looking towards solutions

The jig-saw puzzle comparison:
The answer to the climate crisis is not extremely complex; we may look at it as if it were a jig-saw puzzle. Why do we not see people identify the pieces that we find in different fields of study, put them together, and look at the emerging picture? As a vision becomes clear, everybody has an ethical obligation to work on moving public opinion towards real progress – developments must be redirected in a comprehensive way, as soon as possible.
Here a few puzzle pieces of readily available knowledge:
• We apparently are moving full-speed into a very dangerous zone of accelerating global warming, unpredictable vicious cycles with probable points-of-no-return. Global warming may ‘spin out of control’ before carbon neutrality is reached. We believe that without radical changes, unimaginable suffering is all but certain.
• Politicians and most climate scientists have been focusing on small steps in the pursuit of elusive, arbitrary goals, such as global warming not to surpass 1.5° or 2.0°C above pre-industrial levels, rather than stating that present goals present an absolutely unacceptable risk. Why?
• There is no agreement as to what is “acceptable” global warming versus absolutely catastrophic. Previously warming over 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels was considered catastrophic; then scientists and authors acted optimistic about halting global warming but stated, temperatures would probably reach 2-2.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Bill Gates, writer of the book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster still acts rather optimistic but reportedly described  at the COP28 “anything below 3°C as a “fortunate” outcome.
• Scientists broadly agree that following planned and promised actions will not prevent significant worsening of the vicious cycles we already observe, creating compounding effects and climate instability, which computer models cannot predict.
• Our leaders could look at more effective ways of changing developments; but they don’t – why? CO2 levels are already like millions of years ago and they have been rising at the most rapid rate ever. Obviously there is no place for complacency and optimism. Renewable energy and batteries now being much cheaper than anticipated is no consolation – rather than replacing fossil fuels, civilizations simply add renewable energy to conventional fossil fuel use.
• Global warming is already significant because of high greenhouse gas levels; but we also know that temperature changes due to changes in the levels of CO2 and methane are delayed decades to centuries; even if no greenhouse gases are released, it will get much warmer and weather events much worse.
• Presently the production of renewable energy is almost as much as all energy consumption worldwide in 2000. However, fossil fuel use is now much more than twice the use two decades ago.
• Needed technologies to lower atmospheric greenhouse gases exist: Technologies for much more efficient transportation systems, more ecological land management, heating and cooling buildings with minimal energy use and other changes that will slow greenhouse gas releases. And there are also, according to our studies technologies to sequester huge amounts of carbon, technologies that are cheap, efficient, and applicable in all parts of the world.
• Profits will derail progress towards specific goals since for-profit enterprises have an obligation to maximize profits for the investors. However, even today, much research and development work is done in non-profit research institutions and small enterprises that have no investors; efficient research, development work, and production are possible without profits.
• News reporting regarding climate change is inadequate, it has been focusing mostly on progress in some areas and on specific disastrous consequences of global warming. Much of today’s news reporting still appears to imply that the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 is reasonable although it appears elusive, and that the present climate instability will mainly worsen after 2050, if we fail to reach promoted goals.
• Many authors and journalists mainly write about adjusting to major climate changes in rather disingenuous ways, focusing on middleclass people and the privileged, saying little about the most affected poor, and not even alluding to the fact that disastrous developments can be halted, but if left unchecked, will continue to worsen – there would beno “after climate change.” Honest reporting about the need for much more radical responses and about existing technologies is largely missing but very much needed.
• The people can (they definitely should) educate themselves and others, however, we must be careful since much information about possible actions have a strong optimistic bias that serves profit seeking corporations. Informed people should also contact activists, media, and organizations that deal with ecology and climate but appear to go along with “business as usual with incentives,” “gradual piecemeal approach to changes,” or “party line climate denial” (“climate actions light”).
• If people believe that change is meaningful and needed, they will adjust – most relevant for the present is the example of WWII: even though the country of USA was not directly threatened (Hawaii was not yet a state), people accepted that virtually all civilian production was halted and all industries worked for several years exclusively to fulfill government contracts – and nobody knew how long the war would last. Even more decisive changes are possible and necessary today.
• Our government can (and must) act decisively – it can (and must) ESTABLISH AND FUND PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP NONPROFIT ENTERPRISES to restructure industries and land management. History teaches us what was and is possible: A decision to ‘get a man on the moon’ and safely back led to efficient work and succeeded within about four years. Covid 19 vaccines were developed and mass-produced much more rapidly than considered possible, with public research institutions and private pharmaceutical industries cooperating.

If we continue to move towards unprecedented catastrophes, very young, ill, and old poor people will be most affected and die in large numbers – what are then all the well-intentioned NGOs and organizations expecting to accomplish? If there are no radical changes and people basically assume a major decrease in the world population will be unavoidable and needed: does it really make sense to save starving children, improve people’s education and offer improved healthcare? Why protect the habitats of most endangered species while there is an impending mass extinction?.
Progressive non-profit organizations, groups that pursue sustainability and the protection of ecosystems, and all the NGOs with humanitarian goals and/or concerned about the future of the earth may present as a united agency and support each other in order to have political impact. Concerned people may urge activists and organizations to be more forthcoming, opposing inadequate goals and publicize proposed actions that have a chance to halt most greenhouse gas releases withing years. It might help if people of many groups demonstrate together for radical change. Organizations that represent at best a few percent of the population will be essentially ignored by politicians.

At this time, most climate scientists and politicians do not appear to look at the whole picture: thus it may help if climate activists demonstrate with signs that are specific as to what has to change –. Signs may read:
– We must halt global warming within years, not decades – living, simpler, healthier and happier.
– Living simpler, with much less consumerism, and closer to nature, we all would be happier.
– Do we need a depression to halt irresponsible, misdirected economic growth?
– Most lending by financial institutions is unethical and major religions forbid charging interest; it must be severely limited.
– Governments must lead, working with public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises.
– Governments must tax all energy use, highly tax all greenhouse gas releases; establish guaranteed incomes and improved safety nets.
– We must highly tax wealth and luxurious consumption since the 10% richest people create and estimated 50% of world emissions.
– If the 10% riches people in the world would live at average European standards, global emissions would be 35% less).
– America is in the best position to lead the world – we cannot wait for China and India. 

Regarding problems in implementing necessary, radical changes (see also Causes of the climate crisis)

We are listing here many factors that work against making necessary changes in time. We often hear the opinion that people have great difficulties to adapt to major changes; this is only true when there is no good reason for a change. Humans have an inherent adaptability and can change habits and attitudes, if positively motivated, for instance when joining the Peace Corps, when signing up for military service as a perceived moral duty; if marrying and moving with the new spouse to a distant, different place, or when wanting to have or adopt a child. People adapt also readily if responding to powerful negative emotions, but then make an unambiguous decision. For example refugees pursuing an opportunity to migrate in uncomfortable and dangerous ways to start a ‘new life’ in a not very hospitable new place. Another example is Americans supporting the government-mandated ending of virtually all civilian production and rationing of food in response to WWII. People are also able to halt bad traditions, such as accepting sudden law changes regarding the previously common severe physical punishments of children, and they may make peace with historical enemies like France and Germany after WWII. They became core members of the European Economic Community, the precursor organization to the E. U.
Today, even many highly educated people do not yet recognize the severity and acuteness of the climate crisis with compounding vicious cycles speeding up global warming; few people understand that, if developments continue in the present course, weather catastrophes will be much worse and much more deadly within decades, even if carbon neutrality is reached. It will no longer be possible to adjust, and we must expect major migrations of climate refugees who seek to enter the E.U., the U.S., and other less directly affected countries. There will almost certainly be worldwide outbreaks of major violence.
Our conclusions concerning reducing resistance towards needed changes in short:
• Most people would welcome radical changes if they would comprehend how we are headed towards “climate hell.” CO2 levels, which are still rapidly rising, are now like millions of years ago, and compounding vicious cycles, natural and directly human induced, further accelerate global warming in unpredictable ways – at this point it appears unavoidable that all glaciers, pack ice in the Arctic and ice of permafrost will gradually melt, except for the ice cover of the high mountains of Antarctica.
• Is it not most urgent that scientists and well-informed activists propagate knowledge about the urgency of the problem and at the same time about feasible proposals that can halt the world’s rapid descent into disastrous, largely unpredictable, scenarios? – We, HCW, offer quite specific proposals regarding the implementation of needed changes.
• A comprehensive vision of radically changed industries and land management must be promoted without consideration as to how that goal may be reached. Then, to realize that vision as quickly as feasible, our thinking must be original and radical, “outside the box,” as the seriousness of the situation requires.
• An assumption that much that is needed would not be accepted by the people and blocked by politicians becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy with utterly disastrous consequences. In other words: if we only pursue what today’s progressive politicians may agree to and what most people may readily accept, there will be an unacceptable risk of unimaginable suffering with large, densely populated areas becoming unlivable.
• Humans have predispositions that became detrimental and hinder progress (more in ‘Regarding human nature’ below:
1. People’s thinking is primarily local and short-term oriented. If long-term goals are pursued, healthy people appear to inherently look past most that is bad in their future. Young women had to focus on the meaning and beauty of having their own children, not on first suffering severe pains and dangers; men focused on honors and people’s gratitude when returning from a war rather than the atrocities in warfare. Regarding the climate many try to look towards adjustments ‘after the climate change.’
2. Humans’ charitable thoughts naturally focus on people of inner circles and rarely consider the distant future; with us-versus-them thinking, compassion for the “them” is much decreased, and when there is “us-against-them” thinking, people can be extremely cruel.
3. As Homo sapiens moved into the continents outside Africa, they established local cultures of hunting that lead them to hunting almost all large animals to extinction; obviously nowhere did they think about what other sources of meat were readily available. Today’s treatment of resources is a similarly short-sighted way of blindly following our predispositions.
4. People are able to hold on to multiple ‘realities,’ including that their local culture must be good even if they also see how destructive it is; they may believe that their gods will provide while seeing how they themselves destroy their livelihood; they may act and think rationally but then switch into focusing on hope and prayers and believing quasi religious myths or absurd conspiracy lies.
These inherent propensities were important in our evolution, but they led to much misery. Jared Diamond shows how people’s thinking and attitudes led to the collapses of many civilizations as described in his book Collapse 2005.
Modern humans must fight these propensities and stop ignoring that present cultures rapidly move the world towards “climate hell” (term of the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres).
The following is needed but it is not yet happening widely – present efforts are not adequately affecting public opinion, and some propagated goals are not appropriate:
• Broadly informed and self-educated people, activists, science journalists, scientists and teachers (climate and ecology related, history, geography, philosophy, etc.), and particularly organizations that deal with issues of climate and environments all must cooperate in spreading knowledge:
1. regarding the extreme seriousness of the climate crisis – there is reason to be terrified,
2. that effective ways of decreasing CO2 levels in the coming years exist – and we have an ethical obligation to pursue them without delay. We must stop holding on to grossly inadequate proposals and plans that are endorsed and maintained by banks and industries to protect their profits.
• The people and our politicians must review and effectively work towards a rational, feasible, comprehensive vision of how economic activities and our lives have to change (HCW pre3sents a fairly comprehensive proposal). We must recognize that piecemeal approaches that have been led by for profit enterprises have not and will not work. Steering investments towards projects that decrease CO2 emissions will be marred by conflicts – the investors are after profits, and appearance of being socially responsible, not idealistic goals. Saving energy and resources is not in the interest of entrepreneurs.
• Hopefully most people will appreciate that we should enjoy healthier, happier lives by living simpler, with less complexity but more interpersonal connectedness.
• Scientists, climate activists, and NGOs. may start working with local and federal governments to enact effective, radial changes.
• The changes have to be enacted primarily by public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises that are established and funded by governments.
• We also need efforts to work with the United Nations. A worldwide movement is needed.
Observations and conclusions regarding the climate crisis and political will:
• A political will for radical changes is undermined by the media portraying events  as a “new normal,” even though the instability of climates is likely to keep worsening long after ‘carbon neutrality’ is reached. News media hide the fact that all present measures only slow changes a tiny bit. Without talking about it, we are to tacitly accept that, most likely, there will be rapidly increasing death tolls, crop failures and starvation, as much a billion climate refugees, widespread violence, and a dramatic decrease in biodiversity.
• Following natural inclinations, most people continue their routines (more on human nature below):
1. They completely ignore the acuteness of the climate crisis, believing that what is being planned and done is adequate and anyhow “the best we can do,” and they may assume that somehow, technologies will be found to prevent worst-case scenarios,
2. To calm their concerns they work on some specific issue that will, in the big picture, do virtually nothing to halt global warming
3. They may feel comforted by an insidious belief and trust in an almighty, compassionate God whom they can influence with prayers. – We humans must be compassionate, not trust in a God’s compassionate intervention while we destroy the world’s ecosystems and civilizations.
4. Most people want to be ‘good’ but their charitable actions mostly address hardships ‘close to home’; they hardly consider distant suffering people, the future, and future generations, even as they claim they care about and apparently love their children, their grandchildren and other young people.
• People are lulled into passivity by neither hearing serious discussions nor having a vision of effective, radical changes. Scientists, climate activists, science journalists, climate-related organizations and NGOs may describe the seriousness of specific consequences of climate change but do not give a comprehensive picture of the situation; and they do not show how to realistically address the global crisis, how to pay for needed actions, what adjustments and sacrifices will be required, and how our lives must change, now. There is still a widespread impression that governments and for-profit corporations are doing what is needed, which is basically to continue the failed policies of the last four decades. Thanks to incentives and some luck, there has been huge progress in renewable energy and a shift to ‘cleaner’ fossil fuels but there were/are no adequate incentives to minimize the still-increasing use of fossil fuels.
• There is a widespread misconception that the enacting of radical changes in the U.S. or Europe will not be very significant because of increasing greenhouse gas releases from China, India, and other poorer countries. Actually, if we lead, China has great incentives to quickly follow our example, and so do India and the rest of the world. The U.S. is probably in the best position to lead.
• There are obvious and subtle forms of corruption: It appears that scientists do not dare to “go off the party line” fearing retaliation; newspapers seem to print only reports about what is bad but not what radical changes are urgently needed, changes which their advertisers would not like. People in power are more concerned about our economy’s growth and people’s jobs than the livability of the planet, and industries want to continue earning big profits from the planned transition to an all-electric, luxurious future. The most problematic consequence is that when people see scientists and climate activist organizations acquiesce to industries and applaud small, largely meaningless steps towards ‘carbon neutrality,’ they feel encouraged to continue their ‘normal’ lives as if climate change were a problem of the distant future.
• People, including many or most scientists and politicians, do not have (or are not promoting) a comprehensive vision of good alternative development goals. It is obvious that, to phase out cars, much resources must be invested in quickly designing and building alternate, more-rational, transportation systems; to minimize air conditioner use, we need to mass-produce and widely distribute cooling white paint and other radiative and reflective materials, along with planting shade trees and the wide use of fans and other low-cost/low-energy measures to keep indoor spaces livable.
• Rarely mentioned is that, to keep people safe, guaranteed incomes and comprehensive safety nets are needed, particularly while the required restructuring of industries and land management replaces many jobs with very different ones.
• We obviously must not focus on moving towards an “all-electric future”; instead we must focus on reducing waste and consumerism, and address un-ecological nutrition and food waste, inefficient transportation systems, building climatization that wastes energy; also use of steel and concrete in construction, marketing of trendy clothes and gadgets, abuses of internet and artificial intelligence, weapons production, and the space program.
• We need a way to finance the changes without waiting for profit-seeking investors. The approach of small steps led by for-profit enterprises fails because profits always interfere with making the common good the first priority. PROGRESS MUST BE ADVANCED BY PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP NONPROFIT ENTERPRISES (PPPNE) that will be able to radically reform the economy: transportation systems, land management, manufacturing, etc. And bank lending must be restricted to prevent or curb inflation and to decrease consumerism and problems that are due to individuals’ indebtedness.
• People have only a vague sense that, due to our bad institutions, many inhabitants of the U.S. are far from happy; according to researchers, in metrics, the U.S. has even been consistently below the poor country Costa Rica. Most people sense that living more simply with much less consumerism, closer to nature, and with more interpersonal connectedness, we would be a happier people.   

Regarding human nature and  basic ethical principles

Humans appear to be very culture and tradition bound, suspicious of novelty, and readily following leaders. Like the few animal species which humans domesticated and often exploited, humans are docile and easily enslaved, eating and reproducing even in most unnatural and abusive environments. Humans mostly adapt to changes when leader figures and/or peers adopt them, when the novelty is very enticing, if not addicting, and/or when it is associated with a perceived rise in rank. (Even the great apes show little intelligence unless we test them: for instance, There is an area where chimpanzees traditionally crack nuts with rocks, we may speculate that a matriarch coincidentally invented the technique, so it was adopted, while, if any young ape would have done it, it would probably have been ignored by the others; apparently chimpanzees in other areas hardly thought about cracking and eating the tasty nuts.)
Humans lived in gathering-hunting groups until a few thousand years ago. We believe that here were two sets of moral-ethical instincts:
– At the periphery, immediate vindication, aggression to compete and defend territories, and powerful ‘us-against-them’ thinking prevailed.
– Within groups, there was some competing for rank and/or in the pursuit of partners, but people mostly preferred making and enjoying peace, a relative stability. It is generally preferable to be at a relatively low rank and not having access to a preferred ‘girl or boy partner’ than to continuously fights.
(While gathering-hunting groups often appear very peaceful, there was, according to Steven Pinker, a high homicide rate. Females usually transferred to neighboring groups (avoiding inbreeding), consequently neighboring groups were connected by family relations while possibly competing in border areas; relationships were complex.).
– A third factor that supports moral thinking is a probably inherent wish to be ‘good,’ perceived as ‘good,’ or at least ‘right’ according to one’s culture. Problems with this propensity include: ‘right’ often refers to following cultural traditions but many of these are ethically unacceptable. Cultures invented ‘virtues’ that may or may not be ethical: patriotism is only good if one is a citizen of a country with ethical values and ethical leadership; the same applies to ‘loyalty.’ Efforts to act ‘right’ may lead to conflicts if the orders are clearly not ethical and obeying them would be unethical. Another issue is that people may believe and claim to be right and consequently rationalize actions that are hardly “right” by any standard; they will not admit uncertainly and/or they ignore indication that what is rationalized is hardly ethical. There may be a lack of knowledge to judge what would be compassionate and best for involved beings, good for the future, etc.
Summary of principles of science-based ethics that considers human nature:
Humans may want to follow impulses that are vindictive or violent, they prefer, at least after a short review of information, being generous, forgiving, cooperative and compassionate; these behaviors and attitudes are contagious and lead to the supportive social networks that humans feel happy in and that promote health and even longevity. While humans generally want to be ‘good’ or at least, according to their culture, ‘right,’ cooperation and compassion is mostly limited to one’s inner circles, people who are known or maybe known about, and considerations that focus mainly on the near future. In addition, compassion is much diminished with humans’ inborn ‘us-versus-them’ thinking (boys versus girls, wealthy versus poor, etc.); and, if there is ‘us-against-them’ thinking, people can be very cruel towards enemies and even competitors.
Today, we should be able to consider the world community as part of our group, however, cultures tend to teach children to follow the instincts of the group periphery: compete more than cooperate, vindicate to give a message of “leave me alone” or to “deliver justice,”and even to sometimes fight physically, threaten or wage war between nations, when negotiating fails and giving in does not seem acceptable or ‘honorable.’ We should have world peace, not always getting what we want, but preferring peace to progressing from failed negotiations to warfare.
Inherently, humans tend to pursue instinct and culture-based goals and in the process hardly consider pain, dangers, and other negative consequences before and after reaching a goal; usual ethical considerations may also be much weakened. While pursuing a goal, people tend to work as if with ‘tunnel-vision.’
Humans have a strong propensity towards abuse-addiction patterns. If something makes people feel better or relives some tension, but they have knowledge that it is ‘bad,’ people tend to rationalize repeating it, which often leads to an abuse pattern and possibly an addiction. That includes substance abuse and psychological-behavioral abuse-addiction behaviors that are not yet acknowledged as mental disorders; examples: food abuse, abusive sex, addictive shopping and acquiring goods that are hardly used and enjoyed (that typically includes accepting credit), computer misuse and gambling, conspiracy theorizing, enjoying unethical fantasies, and pursuing wealth and power. The rationalizing of addiction patterns often leads to, illogical, and even delusional thinking. Becoming severely indebted may also lead to cognitive impairments, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, crimes, and suicides.
Humans have the ability to simultaneously hold contradictory moral systems and multiple realities, and to move between them. For instance deeply ethical thinking that focuses on being broadly loving, forgiving, and compassionate, versus conventional, on Roman law based, vindictive juris prudence, versus religiosity that focuses on odd outlier moral beliefs. Many religious traditions and beliefs are neither ethical nor part of the religion’s original teachings, such as sex-related taboos, dangerous and very painful rituals, prohibition of contraception, or an assumption that ‘believing in Jesus’ guarantees that all sins will be forgiven. People may believe in broad conspiracy theories, denying much of what the big majority of people consider truths, and demonizing progressive politicians and scientists, but they rely in most instances on what sciences and technologies offer. For most people, local and family tradition or conventional job cultures are like “truths” – “behaviors that work and must be considered morally acceptable,” even if what is done is obviously detrimental and/or cruel.
Abuse-addiction thinking often becomes a ‘false reality’: ‘wanting’ becomes ‘needing’ and abuse-related unethical behaviors become “normal” and “necessary.”
Particularly when distressed, but also when bored and lacking goals, people are vulnerable to psychological contagion. Examples of psychological contagion include risk-taking for “thrills,” abusable substances and psychological-behavioral abuse behaviors, eating disorders, chronic pain without clear major physiological basis, self-injurious behaviors, voluntary tattooing (getting more and more tattoos, many that will probably be regretted at a later time), extreme competitiveness, vindictiveness with violence, and militarism. Domestic violence may be part of family traditions and partly contagion as when a man’s peers respond with cruel violence to insults, particularly if their self-esteem is injured. Young people who are unhappy or otherwise in some ways vulnerable must be taught to keep psychological distance from people showing unusual behaviors and who take risks that are not clearly meaningful – this must not mean to avoid friendly contacts; hopefully mentally more stable person will be able to help more challenged people. Children must be taught that with all seemingly important decisions, a person must do a quick check as to whether a decision is ethical and that involved risks are justifiable (see below). Abuse behaviors that are considered “calculated risks” and enjoying thoughts of abuse behavior must be recognized as unethical – to be avoided and distracted from.
To screen if a considered action is ethical, one may take distance from the subjective here and now by thinking shortly – would I recommend this action to a loved peer in a very similar situation? Would I be comfortable to tell my intention to well-meaning friends and peers who understands my situation? What would a well-meaning, wise friend (or relative or therapist) recommend? In a panel of very different honest people, would some advise “absolutely not”?
Humans are intelligent but rarely inventive; much of the time they do not use their intelligence. Even in unusual situations, when challenged with difficult tasks, they may not think things through in an intelligent way. Intelligent calculating may be used in dealing with complex human relationships or when seeking ways to fulfill an instinct. Humans usually prefer avoiding changes, but, given certain circumstances, humans are very adaptable, even though major changes are stressful. Anxiety with changes is generally perceived as positive, if the goals are positively meaningful and there are no major conflicts. Anxiety feels bad when there are conflicts, when people are not ‘wholeheartedly’ pursuing their goals. If there is strong positive motivation, humans may change lifelong habits and attitudes, and they may halt addiction behaviors. People may voluntarily accept apparently uncomfortable situations and dangers, if these are meaningful and temporary, and people may accept lasting uncomfortable situations, for instance moving to a place with an inhospitable climate, if they have reason to believe that body and mind can adjust, that, after some time, they can feel comfortable in the new situation – people have a sense that physical comfort is not closely related to happiness. When compelled, people may survive very difficult environments and abuses without getting sick and/or becoming actively suicidal. Unlike most animals, humans  tend to continue eating and pursuing sex even in most miserable conditions.
Knowing that we know nothing, people must learn to look at science and science-based ethics as the only ‘truths,’ truths meaning reasonable, best models of reality, which explain things and have predictive value. We internalize ideas about external realities, our bodies, and our relationship with others, bot nothing constitutes ‘absolute truths,’ and scientific models of these ‘realities’ keep changing. Religions may have important social-cultural functions, but they must not try to teach ‘truths’ or (false)  ‘realities’; they must not support people maintaining unethical traditions and ‘morals.’ Conspiracy theories and purposeful lies that are propagated must be exposed as invalid and dangerous. Being loyal to a tradition or leader is not ethical unless one keeps verifying that the tradition and/or leaders are ethical. Changes, such as propagated attractive novelties, must be evaluated from the perspectives of sciences and ethics.

Regarding quality of life, peace, prevention of wars

Efforts towards worldwide improved quality of life and peace should start with leaders worldwide working on establishing universal goals of education, for children and adults, including as part of continued education of professionals. Probably most important are: learning ethics in a broad sense of the term, and basic data of happiness research. – The pursuits of health, happiness and a simple ethical life largely coincide; we do better with little consumerism, being close to nature, and much personal interconnectedness.
These understandings may be more important than ‘life skills’ as established at the end of the 20th century1.
The basic goals of happiness and health are achieved primarily by being ethical. The notion “contented” is not the same as happy and is problematic: in our economic system discontent is promoted in many ways (often utilizing artificial intelligence) in order to enhance all types of economic activities, consumption, and profits of industries and investors).
Main ethical principles include: at least after a short period, giving will feel better than receiving, forgiving than vindicating, and cooperating than competing; we also must learn being broadly compassionate, being as empathetic as feasible also towards people who are distant, and considering the distant future. People must learn to think ethically since humans are naturally hardly empathetic and broadly compassionate. Giving has to be sensible, since it may lower the receiver’s self-respect, and people may wish things that are not good for them.
Behaving ethically is contagious and helps create caring, supportive communities and good relationships with neighboring as well as with distant communities. Caring relationships are most important for people’s health and happiness.
Education must also emphasize that legitimate goals do not justify means that include violence and cruelties at any level. Cruel punishments and particularly warfare are probably never justifiable.
People must learn to avoid religious and quasi-religious deference to abstract notions and to leaders. That includes deference to a flag or country, ideology, political party, or a leader; to an idealistic ambiguous notion like “freedom,” “justice,” and “equality,” to an ethnic, racial, or religious group, etc. Regarding religions: religions must not teach “truths” that compete with sciences and ethics, or interpretations of ‘the will of God’ – nobody can claim to have access to knowledge that agnostics and people of other religions do not have – and we must be tolerant to the different religious-cultural ways of admiring nature and celebrating life transitions like births, maturity, weddings, the death of a family or group member, etc., as long as there are no significant ethics violations.

Everybody should learn:
•  For happiness most important is a sense of being part of a caring community, at least having considerable direct interactions with people even if in content trivial – NOT  (as schools often teach and focus on) good income, owning material goods, continuously raising one’s material living standard, ‘successes’ as in winning in conflicts, or rise in professional hierarchies. Environmental factors are of some importance, mainly having basic needs met, a reasonable political system, access to adequate health care; also living where there are plants in a reasonable, hopefully nice, dwelling.
•  Distracting self from initial impulses, giving will feel better than receiving; the generosity of forgiving feels better than revenge and leads to peace and may add to others’ appreciation of a person; revenge leads to bitterness and lasting hostilities. Cooperation feels better and leads to more progress than competing; competition may be mostly with oneself, improving own performance. Minor competitiveness is normal, for instance in games, but, particularly if the person is good in some special field, much time spent to get even better is likely to distort a healthy equilibrium in a young person’s developing multiple interests and potentials.
•  People must learn that in compromises we have to expect that no party feels satisfied; people misjudge what they give or give up versus what they gain. If one party keeps ‘winning’ in a series of conflicts, he may have acted as a bully,
• There are diminishing returns when acquiring material resources and financial wealth. Only if very deprived and below what is the standard range in a community, rising income and consumption may improve happiness; if above local standard and/or at a luxurious level, adding material resources hardly improve one’s happiness. There may be a temporary increase in perceived happiness when a materialistically inclined person rises to a living standard above his peers; particularly as peers catch up, that effect is quickly lost. In addition, people may perceive an increased sense of ‘contentedness’ when able to fulfill by advertisements and peers induced wishes and cravings; however, ‘contentedness’ is usually temporary and hardly increases happiness.
•  Ethically, it is our task to develop broad compassion and empathy, as feasible, without us-against-them thinking – we must seek peace and cooperation with traditional enemies and competitors. we must also learn to feel compassion across lines of us-versus-them thinking, ‘versus’ referring to people who are different but not enemies or competitors, for example, boys are likely to consider girls as “them,” too different to empathize with and their compassion for girls is consequently limited. Practicing compassionate empathy without judging others gives life meaning. Still, empathy, attempts to put self into others’ place, understanding others’ fears, suffering, aspirations, etc. is always limited, we cannot know enough about others to be fully empathetic. In addition, empathy, understanding what others appreciate and fear, can be abused when trying to sell something or wanting to hurt somebody. Compassion may be more important than empathy. Efforts to be compassionate and compassionately empathetic must be broader than short-term thinking that is limited to inner circles of known people; it must extend to people worldwide, to people who will live in the more distant future, and, to a lesser extent also towards other sentient beings, particularly the animals we humans interact with, animals that are sources of food, killed as sports, considered pests, used in research, or held as pets.
•  Compassion requires that we generally avoid risks; that we only take risks if the risk is very meaningful since, if things go wrong, our loved ones and whole communities are severely affected.
•  Unethical fantasies are unethical and dangerous because they harm human relationships – it is hard to have a close caring relationship with all community members while often having violent or inappropriate sexual fantasies towards some people. Also, fantasies may be acted out under extraneous circumstances, such as when very stressed, angry, and tired, being in a law-less place (rural very poor area or war zone), when intoxicated, and/or when suicidal.
•  Ethically, we must aim to be tolerant towards other cultures, their ways of fulfilling human needs, their ways of celebrating, and their rituals, except if rituals are inhumane; an extreme example of inhumane religious-cultural ritual is female genital cutting (circumcision, mutilation).
•  Ethics must never be taught as traditional-religious morality, and living ethically must not be based on promises of rewards and threats of punishments in an afterlife.
•  Naturally, humans are very tradition-bound and they have an ability and propensity to hold multiple ’realities’; we must learn to avoid believing in local, family, group, and job traditions as being “right and working for us humans” without evaluating anecdotal data and assessing whether they are ethical and corresponding with ‘common sense’ and scientific data. There are many other forms of false ‘realities’ that are dangerous and should be avoided. Religions must serve as cultural expressions, celebrating stages in life and organizing support for people in difficult situations, etc.; they must halt teaching ‘facts.’
•  Patriotism and loyalty to a person, group, company, or ideology are not virtues: before working with or for somebody, before supporting some group, abstract ideology, or ‘nation,’ we must examine if goals are truly ethical.
•  Abuse behaviors, unethical behaviors that feel in some way good, are very problematic: we must fight justifying, rationalizing, and repeating abuse behaviors; they can lead to addictions – in addiction, the abuse pattern continuously competes with all other first priorities. Addictions often lead to the person believing in a false “reality” – the ‘disease’ makes the unethical behaviors ‘normal,’ ‘necessary,’ and ‘right.’ Actually, evolving abuse patterns are not stopped because the person has no emotionally supported motivation that is powerful enough to counter a craving to keep repeating the behavior. Example: with a desired pregnancy, women are usually able quit smoking and more seriously addicting drugs; people may quit addicting behaviors because loved children do not like a parent or grandparent’s smoking or drinking.
•  Particularly important are the major psychological-behavioral ‘addictions’: frequent abuse patterns-’addictions’ include forms of gambling with significant resources involved, consumption of goods that do not enhance quality of life and particularly credit buying, conspiracy theorizing, elaborating and enjoying unethical fantasies, and the pursuit of wealth and power. These ‘addictions’ often lead to false “realities,” distorted and delusional thinking, mood and anxiety disorders, and crimes. However, they are not yet acknowledged as mental disorders.
•  Societies must make efforts to treat all abuse patterns and addictions, involuntarily if they seriously harm others. It is most important that people are not considered to have a right to pursue psychological-behavioral ‘addictions’ as a matter of freedom, since these mental disturbances harm many and lead often to irrational thinking and dangerous behaviors. A leader who is ‘addicted’ to the pursuit of wealth and power has to be treated with respect but must not be acknowledged as “normal,” a rational partner in negotiations and professional interactions. – ‘Addicted’ to wealth and power means that for a business CEO or an elected government executive the mission of the position, the common good, and/or the welfare of the represented people are clearly subordinated to the executive’s personal gains, specifically increasing his wealth and/or power.
•  People must learn to make efforts to see “the big picture” in all significant decision-making, “thinking things through,” often in unconventional ways, thinking “out-of-the-box.” Efforts to get a broad education and educating oneself broadly, is valuable. Creative and critical thinking are not very valuable if staying focused on narrow fields, ignoring ethics and the broad contexts.
•  People must work to overcome our propensity to follow traditions and cultural rules and practice thinking unconventionally, “out-of-the-box.” People who have a tradition of valuing both education and unconventional thinking probably contributed greatly to progress. Being multi-cultural or living where different cultures ‘touch,’ is also a factor that can help us be more open-minded and inventive. (We believe secular Jewish people are an example – they generally valued education while they lived outside the culture that surrounded them).
•  For progress towards world peace, people must learn to observe when leaders become mentally ill, ‘addicted’ to the pursuit of wealth and power, becoming dishonest in most important issues, no longer recognizing what is relevant for societies, almost or frankly delusional, and in many ways unethical. Broad education should lead people to unite in efforts to remove the person from power.
•  In major conflicts between countries, negotiations, usually with a mediator, must go on until a compromise is found. Both parties have to expect that the result is not satisfactory but preferable to an escalation of the conflict. Negotiators and mediators have to look at what is the underlying issue. Maybe in the war between Russia and Ukraine one major issue was simply that Russia did not want a Western-oriented country with plans to join NATO so close to Moscow; negotiations could have led to establishing a neutral zone West of Russia, from Turkey to Finland, with these countries open to economic interactions with Russia, the E.U. and most other countries.
•  People must scrutinize economic leaders, investors, money managers, etc., and improved institutions should diminish their power. People must observe: do they have goals that are destructive to society and the world’s future? Are they pursuing goals that are contradicting universal goals of health and happiness of persons that are affected by their decisions? Profits should always be seen with suspicion – most profits are ethically questionable because they compete with ethical and idealistic missions of a good corporation, with what is good for societies.
People should be taught to express what they recognize as ethically questionable, and clearly advocate that any unethical leaders be psychologically-psychiatrically treated. Leaders who plan or commit major crimes, such as serious human rights violations against the people of their own jurisdiction or use of force against foreign countries, must be internationally prosecuted and their assets outside their jurisdiction frozen; and, as soon as they leave their country, be arrested and stripped of powers. When working to remove seriously and dangerously unethical leaders, everybody should be clear, sacrifices must be accepted when instituting sanctions against a country; but more importantly, dealing with unethical leaders partly for one’s own material or political benefits is never worth it. We do best living more simply and humbly.
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1 The World Health Organization (WHO) categorizes life skills into the following
three components:
a) Critical thinking skills/Decision-making skills – include decision-making/problem solving skills and information gathering skills. The individual must also be skilled at evaluating the future consequences of their present actions and the actions of others. They need to be able to determine alternative solutions and to analyze the influence of their own values and the values of those around them.
b) Interpersonal/Communication skills – include verbal and non-verbal communication, active listening, and the ability to express feelings and give feed back. Also in this category, are negotiation/refusal skills and assertiveness skills that directly affect ones’ ability to manage conflict. Empathy, which is the ability to listen and understand others’ needs, is also a key interpersonal skill. Teamwork and the ability to cooperate include expressing respect for those around us. Development of this skill set enables the adolescent to be accepted in society. These skills result in the acceptance of social norms that provide the foundation for adult social behavior.
c) Coping and self-management skills refers to skills to increase the internal locus of control, so that the individual believes that they can make a difference in the world and affect change. Self esteem, self-awareness, self-evaluation skills and the ability to set goals are also part of the more general category of self-management skills. Anger, grief and anxiety must all be dealt with, and the individual learns to cope loss or trauma. Stress and time management are key, as are positive thinking and relaxation techniques.

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C E 1. Introduction.
C E 2. Relevant and new ideas of Humane Civilization Worldwide
Legislatures must address the structure and organization of our economies
A broad high-profile education campaign is needed
Some novel ideas included below. See also:  Greta Thunberg inspired letter to politicians, organization leaders and scientists and please review also earlier posted material.

C E 1. Introduction

Today we have a stark choice: Reform the economic system and effectively minimize greenhouse gas releases before there is irreversible damage, versus gradually decreasing global warming while our profit-driven, ill-conceived economic system lets much of the world become unlivable and a mass extinction progresses? Caring about people’s quality of life, versus adhering to an ideology that assumes continuous economic growth is most important?
All present proposals to deal with climate change appear flawed and grossly inadequate; we already are close to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial temperatures and the CO2 levels are now like 2,500,000 years ago. And vicious cycles are speeding up climate change.
The root cause of the climate crisis is an economic system that promotes profits at the cost of people’s well-being and the world’s ecosystems; and the most detrimental institutions are protected and subsidized by our government.

To reform our civilization, we need a model, a clear image, of a better economic system. Transitions have to be worked out; food production and relevant services must not be interrupted; what is newly built has to complement, then replace the old. As many new rail lines, human-powered and ultra-light electric vehicles are built, cars and buses will be used much less. Small interacting non-profit enterprises must efficiently fulfill government contracts that aim to make the economy sustainable. To be able to adapt to new goals in research and development, large corporations should break up into small, non-profit enterprises, that rely on government grants and low-interest loans rather than profit-seeking investors. It is urgent that there is cooperation between universities and enterprises worldwide in order to rapidly develop efficient greenhouse gas-saving transportation, food production, and land management systems, as well as in the constructive use of artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation.

We can stop global warming and create more hospitable, humane conditions, but in order to redirect ill-conceived, untenable developments, economic systems must be reformed. Governments must create and allocate money in ways that effectively address our foremost problems, and laws must severely limit activities of financial institutions. Disastrous climate changes are progressing much faster than anticipated, affecting all continents. Immediate far-reaching actions must decrease greenhouse gases much more rapidly than proposed gradual approaches permit. The alternative, working with present business models, will almost certainly lead to inconceivable catastrophes, famines, mass migrations, much more violence, wars, and mass extinctions.
Perceptions about what people need are broadly changing in light of the climate emergency with worsening weather disasters, living through a pandemic, worldwide demonstrations concerning racism and economic inequalities, concerns about the abuse of artificial intelligence and the internet, escalating government debts, business failures, and a recession that is likely to become the worst since the Great Depression. These events not only offer a rare opportunity for politicians to realize major reforms, they DEMAND responsible actions by all governments and the U.N. NOW! To effectively address this crisis, we must reform the dysfunctional, profit-driven, bigoted, extremely unstable financial institutions. Then we can effectively address the wasteful transportation infrastructures and food production , many other known factors that contribute to global warming, and also urgent humanitarian crises.

C E 2. Relevant and new ideas of Humane Civilization Worldwide:

Legislatures must address the structure and organization of our economies: give governments and their national banks the power to create new money (that is not based on loans and bond issues, not increasing the government debt), while strictly limiting the lending by financial institutions. The circulating money must belong mostly to the people, enterprises and government agencies that work with it, not to banks and investors. Government spending must not rely on taxation, and borrowing to do work that saves energy and resources and that increases beneficial productivity.
Governments must work with public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises, assuring that money is allocated to what is needed for our future. Governments must first issue newly created money to fund  contract work that will save energy, minimize the release of greenhouse gases, and improve the lives of people. A reformed economy, has to include a guaranteed income for all and include good safety nets. People must be able to save and to buy goods with savings, and during transitions, people must be able to live temporarily with much decreased incomes while feeling economically secure.  see below

A broad high-profile education campaign is needed, since most people and policy makers still do not understand how serious the climate emergency is and some continue to deny the reality of climate change¹. Thus present plans are grossly inadequate. An education campaign must emphasize that:

• We can redirect misguided developments and stop global warming much faster and more effectively than concerned politicians, activists, and scientists envision. This is urgent since the climate emergency is much more severe than broadly portrayed. However, most important is addressing economic institutions.
• Our response to the climate emergency must be as decisive as the US’ response to WWII and include sacrifices. The War Powers Act may be needed to enact changes. We must do everything humanly possible to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, by way of saving resources and energy particularly in transportation systems, by moving to mostly plant-based diets, and by making other known, relevant factors first priorities. (Plans for energy savings in transportation systems are described below.) While continuing to provide for basic needs, our industries must dramatically change their production programs and their goals for research and development, leading to major changes in many aspects of people’s lives. Many of these changes, rather than creating hardships, are likely to improve people’s lives.
• Present economic institutions must be reformed; present conditions prevent rapid, sweeping changes, and they are poorly adapted to what people and societies need. The present organization of our economy is dominated by for-profit corporations – profits, not people’s needs are their primary concern; and there is widespread reliance on credit. Without reforms, people will resist necessary changes, fearing they will lose income, housing, investments, and everything that has been bought with credit. Problems for small businesses are similar.
• Corporations abuse the internet and applications of artificial intelligence. Particularly objectionable are cryptocurrencies and the gathering, storing, analyzing and exploiting of personal data. These activities are unethical and an incredible waste of energy and of material and human resources; they must be outlawed. (Cryptocurrencies are also inflationary; they limit how much money governments can create without causing inflation.)
• Proposed changes, as Humane Civilization Worldwide promote, consider human nature and needs of societies; they are expected to improve people’s quality of life. Making life less stressful and attending to people’s physical and mental health are investments that save much resources; people will be happier, more cooperative, function better, and also be more productive. Some proposed changes may be seen as returning to what was better in the past. This is to a large extent what humans naturally prefer: by nature, humans are very tradition-bound and suspicious of anything new, unless novelty symbolizes higher rank, is imminently enticing, and/or is addicting.
• We know that people are very adaptable and readily change, if a critical number of people agree with the significance and meaning of needed changes, and if essentially all people have to participate².
• People must compel governments to act, disregarding industry and financial institution lobbyists. Lobbying by for-profit entities must be severely restricted.

Some novel ideas include:

• Sequestering carbon by preventing organic material from burning or rapidly decomposing by burying it in up to the surface water-soaked ground, sinking it into anoxic lakes or ocean areas (dead zones) including waters with very high salinity, or sinking it into open water and covering it with rocks, sand and clay. Plant material may include dead wood removed from forests to decrease the danger of fires, wood from torn-down buildings and other waste wood, and rapidly grown vegetation that was planted to absorb CO2, including bamboo, fast-growing trees, algae, and duck weed, etc.; carbon in dead animals may also be sequestered along with plant material. While wetlands and some trees release methane and other greenhouse gases [volatile organic compounds] that partly counter the benefits of carbon sequestration, they are a major net benefit. Much natural plant material eventually burns or rots, producing CO2 and methane, but some also sequesters carbon in the form of biochar that enriches the top soil with carbon.
• Stopping and reversing desertification by way of enlarging the surface of sun-exposed earth in deserts: building East-West running mounds or walls between ditches, several feet high/deep. This will lessen the soil’s heating up during daytime and decrease the updraft of hot air, allowing cloud formation and precipitation which does not evaporate before reaching the ground. Such efforts may be particularly valuable where there had been overgrazing, along rivers, around oasis, and at the edges of steppe and savanna.
• Using primarily wood and bamboo in construction is a form of carbon sequestration since the wood and bamboo will not rot. Building with wood and recycled material also reduces greenhouse gas release from concrete, aluminum, and steel production. (At Vancouver’s University of British Columbia, the Brock Commons Tallwood House is an 18-story wood building that was erected rapidly with prefabricated component, cheaper than comparable conventional buildings.) In many functions, bamboo may replace wood or steel; light vehicles, including light rail cars, and towers of wind turbines may be built partly with bamboo and bamboo.
• Transportation wastes much energy. We must design and build, in addition to standard gauge freight and high-speed trains, a dense light-rail network mostly narrow-track, 100cm and less (60, 70, and/or 80cm) that can be cheaply built on present roads and in very inhospitable, mountainous areas. Trains must be aerodynamic and most lines should have regular trains (close to three times as wide as the track and similarly high, some with two levels), and also much smaller aerodynamic trains that run frequently on the same tracks during low-use times. These small train cars may be the size of vans. Rail transportation is to be combined with human-powered and ultra-light electric vehicles. Trains are to be complemented by human powered, electro-assisted, and ultra-light electric vehicles, with or without aerodynamic bodies; these vehicles may use bicycle. Train cars and light vehicles should be built mostly using wood products and bamboo to sequester carbon and avoid greenhouse gas releases when being built.
• Waste heat should be stored for heating in winter and for hot water in households; particularly the heat produced by air conditioners should heat well isolated underground water tanks. Water may be cooled in winter and stored in isolated cold-water tanks to aid cooling in summer. Water may be cooled by running at night through ‘reverse solar collectors’ and from heating with heat pumps.
• Water desalination: A black or infrared radiating light colored sheet of metal, slightly tilted towards North, will get very cold when exposed to the night sky; if above the ocean’s relatively warm water, there will be plenty of condensation – distilled water – running down the metal sheet on both sides, to be collected in gutters.