I nevertheless have a complaint about the accompanying picture. Good gracious but I am tired of seeing, whenever there's a bit of a human body to be shown, especially the lips, it's always a woman's that you see. Especially here, with the "blowing" aspect being shown, seems like a sad and desperate attempt at a naughty pun, and of course with, pardon me for my crudity, porn-star lips to boot. Why not show a man's lips doing the same action? Too gay, perhaps?

What with the editor being female I would hope more thought would be taken to such considerations, even if they seem trivial. It also seems strange to see such a picture where there is another major article highlighted on the "front page" about Erica Jong and feminism. I understand that many newspapers, magazines etc. feature titillating pictures to draw (male) interest. It seems to me, however, that the average Salon reader might be drawn to an article for reasons other than a suggestive picture: the content.

Not to plunder the thunder, but a climate of hope ignores which way the wind blows. The US (ignoring China, India, and Europe)isn't ready to hear about hope for change when most think the climate is just fine. And most political leaders from city mayors to most governors don't have a clue about how to lead on this issue.

And since most americans are frantically trying to pay off the mortgage on an oversized suburban home, they have little time or inclination to read (let alone, understand) the key concepts delineated by Tim Flannery in "Weather Makers". To make a signicicant impact on CO2 emissions the suburban, auto-dominated, central electral power-generation paradigm will most likely need to be abandoned. Who do you think is going to be first to jettison there Hummer and big-screen TV? The middle-class? Dick Cheney and his "non-negotiable" life style?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a proponent for change. I've been advocating and implementing environmental design and solar planning (as a Landscape Architect) for over twenty-five years; to no avail. Practically all clients say they want to implement good environmental design, until they see that it costs a little more to implement and MAY involve some lifestyle adaptations. Few make the effort. My experience with the small scale does not portend grand accomplishment at the large scale.

I've come to believe Jared Diamond's premise in "Collapse": civilizations just hurtle forward until environmental collapse makes them no longer viable. The human pain and suffering will be substantial (if not complete). And evolution continues.

This sounds like a job for the man from hope! Where's bubba?

I am one of those sent into a spiral of pessimism and depression by Elizabeth Kolbert's series of articles and the mounting effects of climate change. I would like to have hope but find it very hard not to agree with geoman that we are hurtling to our destruction. Still this article is the first I've seen that offers any option of hope for the future and hey, it's worth trying what little we can if only so we can tell our children we did our best.

...just how exactly are you going to bring about this lovely fairy tale? Our government is practically owned by the oil companies these days, what with our King...excuse me, President...being a scion of oil folk and most of his cronies in bed with huge corporations. Our dependence on fossil fuels isn't just a whim - every single aspect of American life is tied in to the use of fossil fuels. The situation only gets worse each year because we keep adding and adding and adding to the population that uses those fuels. And on it goes.

Are Americans supposed to stop living in cities (the existence of which is linked to fossil fuels) and go off and be farmers? Where? There's going to be precious little room left to farm, especially once the ice caps really start melting, and the more prosperous nations are inundated with all the climate refugees that are going to appear.

What are we going to do about all the politicians running this country, who have flatly refused to do anything to minimize the hold that fossil fuels have on us? Just toss them into the street? You'll find that a bit difficult, given their propensity for waving irrelevant issues in the faces of apathetic voters in order to distract them from issues that will have real impact on their lives. Like, say, climate change.

And that's not even to mention the fact that nobody, NOBODY, will raise the issue of population control, one of, if not the most important, step we can make to slow down the coming crisis. (Notice I didn't say "stop".) More people means more fuel usage means more emissions means more global warming. It's simple math. We can buy hybrid cars and solar panels all we like. It's not going to change the fact that in 10 years the population will have increased hugely, and 10 years after that, even more. Just try telling people the best way they can help is not to have kids. Just try it. (On second thought, don't. Not if you don't want to listen to an hour-long screed about how "selfish" you are, from some SUV-driving soccer mom.)

The real challenge here does not lie in technology. Sure, we can come up with all kinds of techno solutions. The problem lies in our attitudes towards the issues surrounding global climate change, and those are way more intractable than plain ol' physics. You're talking about an entire population culturally conditioned to believe that our way of life is somehow sacrosanct, that sacrifice and simplicity are for other people. Not us, we're Murrikins! Let everybody else clean the house while we sit in the living room eating all the food and farting into the sofa cushions. And while you're up, get us a beer, wouldya?

We've made our bed, and now we have to lie in it. It's not that I devalue hope - it's a nice thing. But there's a vast difference between surmounting the challenge to put a couple of guys on the moon, and getting every person in this country to make enormous changes in their lives, most of which they simply won't WANT to make. And if you try to put those changes into law, you'll have a seriously pissed-off populace on your hands. You think threatening to take people's guns away gets them mad? Try threatening to take away their pickup trucks.

Face it, we as Americans have become almost unbearably selfish, expecting that if we want something, we should have it, simply because we want it. Getting us as a country to grow up and act like adults...I don't know. If you can figure out a way to do that, hey, I'm there. But if we can't even convince people to drive 55 miles per hour (cuts gas use, reduces emissions, reduces accidents, makes life more pleasant), how in the WORLD are you going to convince them to do far, far more?

Emily Dickinson said that hope is the thing with feathers. A nice thought. Doves and songbirds have feathers. But then again, so do vultures.