What's going to happen?

Or the tidal wave from the Canaries collapsing; the super-volcano in Yellowstone/Indonesia wherever; perhaps catastrophic global warming, all coastal cities flooded, viable farmland only existing North of the Arctic Circle. When are the numbskull narrow financial interests in the US; the extremist Islamists; the petty squabblers over a few square inches of dried-out dust going to realise? The differences between us are not as thick as the fibres in a piece of fine paper. One way or another we're heading for huge challenges to our comfortable - at least for some in the West - "way of life". We live in an extraordinary time. Our Western dominated technological civilisation spans much less than 0.5% of the time since the retreat of glaciers in the last Ice Age. Our planet may be going through the most benign time in its 4.5 billion year history in terms of natural cycles. And it won't, can't last. The Americans reckon their polluting businesses and ours can't ...

If you read James Lovelock it becomes apparent. There's little point driving your car less, taking the train or avoiding long-haul holidays. Our life-support system has had it. In the next 10, 20 50 years, who knows? But with CO2 emission accelerating in the next few decades and no sign of an effective regime to control our pollution of the planet's mechanisms that make our extraordinary lives possible, who's going yto produce food in the Kent desert? Or provide drinking water to England? If we lived in a test-tube, we'd be careful of the rubbish we carelessly threw into the air we breathe and the water we drink. News. In cosmic terms we live in a very small test-tube.

The excesses of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution are ancient history. China is a country that embraces capitalism as a means to social justice. Extreme millionaires are being created in China, while political dissidents - including those who simply disagree with a particular government decision - are imprisoned indefinitely and made to work as slaves. When are the countries and world bodies that profess to believe in freedom of the individual and human rights going to stand up to the Communist Party of China and tell them that not only do they completely fail to progress to the goals set by Karl Marx, but that they fail to meet any common standards of behaviour in a free country? Google, be ashamed. After all, you don't need the money.