Nikhuja he?

From Worldwatch Institute today, this summary of problems that a new pope needs to address. I wonder why we continue to not ask our own national and regional leadership about their handling of these matters. Is it possible that we are so unwilling to change our own way of life, that we hope that faith based solutions will become manifest across the planet, helping those that suffer immeasureably by our actions, to overcome their suffering, just so we don't have to suffer? Yes it is..

• We live in an era of mass extinction—the first in 65 million years, and the first ever caused by human activities. This is essentially the unraveling, in just a few decades, of billions of years of a creative, evolutionary process that made life as we know it possible.
  
  
• We are changing the planet’s climate and raising the level of the seven seas; unchecked, this will eventually eliminate whole low-lying island nations and permanently flood coastal ones, change patterns of rainfall and drought, further reduce some species populations and spread disease.
  
  
• We are apathetic in the face of mass poverty. Billions of people lack clean water and sanitation, for example, and one in eight are chronically hungry, despite ongoing food surpluses. This in a world of unprecedented wealth: the United Nations reported in 1998 that three individual persons—persons!—held as much wealth as the combined GDP of the world’s 48 poorest countries. Meanwhile, a generation of middle-age children in wealthy countries is on the cusp of the greatest transfer of wealth in history, as they inherit trillions of dollars from their parents. What is their responsibility in a world of mass deprivation?
  
  
• We increasingly seek salvation through consumption. Citizens of wealthy countries appear to have insatiable appetites: new houses in the United States are 38 percent larger than in 1975, the United States now has more cars than drivers, and two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. Our search for meaning seems increasingly to take place at the mall.

In another late story today, health scientists warn that staph bacteria are spreading in communities, particularly strains that are resistant to treatment. It is almost reassuring that nature will exact her revenges in the homes of those who continue to dismiss her as something to be dominated.