Wildfires are a result of temperature conditions, of soil moisture conditions; and, of course, something has to start it.

Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants’ destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world.

The e-mails are mainly about a controversy over a particular data set and the ways a particular small group of scientists have displayed that dataset.

We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.)

To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western countries to use laws to control excessive population growth, although there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.

Reliable and affordable energy is essential for meeting basic human needs and fueling economic growth, but many of the most difficult and dangerous environmental problems at every level of economic development arise from the harvesting, transport, processing, and conversion of energy