I had the privilege of hearing Bill Swing, former Bishop of the California Episcopal Church, speak on Tuesday night. He now heads a group called the United Religions Initiative. Their mission to get all the world religions to talk to each other and to work for non-violent resolution of conflict.

Essentially he said religions don't work with each other, are not held accountable for their preaching and do not truly express love. Like almost all power- driven organizations, they are primarily concerned about protecting their turf and their organization's economic base.

I believe it would be fair to say that Swing's comments are hardly novel. What is novel is that he has taken the lead in getting the world's religions to begin to actually talk and work together, and to eschew violence. That is remarkable.

It is beyond sad that we learn of the death/injury of 3 of the 7 authors of this article. What is rarely mentioned (because we might offend the Iraqi clerics) is that the religious leaders in Iraq have the audacity and effrontery to claim that support of the war and killing is God's will. And that President Bush claims to be a devout Christian. And where does the Catholic church stand? Should we consider it surprising that violence is so widespread when virtually every important religious institution implicitly or explicitly supports war and violence?

What's love got to do with it? The answer: everything. What we love we protect and nurture and care for. No loving person injures the child he cares for. No loving person despoils the ground he walks on or the air he breathes. No loving person kills those with whom he disagrees.

Clearly our world is ill, for we don't have the sense to understand that it is love that makes life worth living and death worth grieving over, and to act accordingly.

We should mourn the deaths of all those injured, killed and maimed in this senseless war - regardless of nationality, ethnic or religious background. We should also take ourselves to task over our willingness to use violence and killing when we cannot get our way. If the United States really wanted to lead the world we'd embrace and express love in all of our endeavors.

I know, I know, you think this wish is too Utopian or idealistic. Tell me: how does the current paradigm stack up?

I'm a business coach and it's my job to help my clients change. Now you'd think that my clients would be quite willing; after all changing means more satisfaction and more money. Yet they have a really tough time.

One reason is that change, or taking a new path, is actually more complicated than it looks. There are generally more moving parts in taking action than you might think. Just take a simple example: painting a room. Is painting actually hard? No - but just think of how many different steps you have to take to do a good job.

Now let's take a look at politics. We all know the usual activities; vote, give money , volunteer, write letters, march, hold fund raisers, and most of all educate yourself on the issue at hand. I don't think any of these steps is beyond our capacity, yet it takes a tremendous amount of energy.

I myself get tired even though I am more active than most. I think the final straw is the sense of futility of changing direction on whatever the issue happens to be.

Just look at our elected officials. They spend full time on these issues and they are often confused. We live in a fiendishly complicated world with lots of vested interests. If we can't agree on even basic issues( such as global warming or overconsumption) then it's easy to see why political involvement is such a frustrating activity, and why so many people stay away.

This term came from Woodward's and Bernstein's description of the Nixon administration's responses during Watergate. Essentially W&B said all they got was bullshit, but no real denial of the basic facts. In fact the non denial denials proved that Woodward and Bernstein were right. (Which they were.)

Here we go again. The test isn't how you feel about the environment or how you feel about environmentalists. It's not about Jared Diamond or Al Gore or Michael Crichton. It not about whether you think the earth is sacred or it is here just for our use.

What it is about is actually fairly simple and straightforward: is our current behavior going to allow continued human existence or is our behavior going to lead to our extinction. Or at least to the death of billions of human beings due to lack of resources.

The particulars vary, but the bottom line seems to be the same.

We can't continue our current behavior( birthrates, resource consumption and global warming) without some really, really serious shit coming down.

Assuming this is true, and I do assume it's true, then the plan of attack is pretty obvious. I don't need to list the details;they are easy enough to come by.

Paul Erlich put it very well: we only look at the foreground, and assume the background is unchanging and unchangeable. Well the scientists (in nearly 1000 reports) tell us the background is changing. It's inconvenient to admit the background is changing; that means we have to make some dramatic changes.

If we don't change the only question is how many of us will die. When it was only "them", we didn't pay much attention. Now it's us. I guess that makes it a little different.

Nordhaus's and Shellenberger's non denial denials can't change the facts, so we might as well start being a little smarter about how we manage the earth. I'm at heart a utilitarian; I don't care why you change, so long as you do change.