(Cross posted from Docudharma)
This is not a criticism - it’s a plea.
We are at a time unlike any other in the 250,000-year history of our species. What we do now will determine the fate of our kind. We may soon know whether or not we deserve the name we have given ourselves, homo sapiens sapiens – wise or knowing human.
NASA warming scientist: 'This is the last chance'
WASHINGTON - Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.
James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.
"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."
(SNIP)
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would."
Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.
Longtime global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., citing a recent poll, said in a statement, "Hansen, (former Vice President) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it."
But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., committee chairman, said, "Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet."
Source
This diary is not about global warming or any of the other crises that threaten our existence, it’s about the leadership we must have for there to be any hope at all of diverting these disasters.
We are running out of time, and more of the same is a recipe for failure. We need change, and not just change we can believe in – we need change we can count on.
What we don’t need is just another politician. What we don’t need is vacillating, triangulating, pandering and yet one more boatload of political horseshit. What we don’t need is a long-awaited leader from the left moving to the right. What we don’t need is another poll-driven, flip-floppin’, flag-wavin’ hypocrite tragically entrusted with the levers of power.
We need leadership, integrity and vision. We need a person of unyielding principle - someone who will stand their ground – and all the political consultants in the world be damned.
We need a leader who will do the right thing in all circumstances and be unafraid of any criticism it may bring.
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein
We need a leader unafraid to buck the conventional wisdom.
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer
We need a leader with the courage of his or her convictions.
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
Herbert B. Swope
We need a leader who knows when to say no to bad advice.
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.
James Callaghan
We need a leader who is not afraid to take risks.
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
Susan B. Anthony
We need a statesman, not just another politician.
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Benjamin Disraeli
And while it is fine and good to love our leaders, we should be critical of them as well.
Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.
John Gardner
It is not just our right to criticize our leaders, it is our obligation.
It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.
Noam Chomsky
We must have a leader who will take us to a new place.
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.
Rosalynn Carter
And above all, we must have a leader who possesses integrity.
Integrity is the essence of everything successful.
R. Buckminster Fuller
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
Chinua Achebe
Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.
John D. MacDonald
This is a time unlike any other. We have no time left for the old distractions. We must act swiftly and decisively to face up to the great challenge of our time – to preserve the biosphere for future generations.
Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do
Gian Carlo Menotti