Read full paper: A Global Strategy for Addressing Climate Change (2008)
Summary: Simplistic and counter intuitive as it may be the fate of civilization today hangs on two
slender threads – the correct management of livestock and the rapid development of
benign energy to sustain cities and mass transport. Excessive emissions of carbon and
other gases from fossil fuels are not the only causes of global climate change, nor are
they the greatest cause of climate change, as popularly espoused. Humans began to
change climate in ancient times through their actions that began to disrupt complex living
communities, diminishing biodiversity and replacing the role of large herbivores and
predators in the world’s savannas with fire. Ancient practices, continued to this day,
ensured land degradation (desertification) and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and
other gases from fires and soil breakdown. This process of environment destruction had
destroyed many civilizations before coal and oil were discovered or widely used.
