"Problems such as global warming do not result merely from ignorance or lack of expertise. At root they are due to humankind's moral disorder that leads to consumptive and tyrannical vice... Niebuhr would remind us that reason and technology only serve imperfect human beings who are by nature selfish and self-centred. This disordered orientation multiplies human ills with the rejection of our spiritual and transcendent origin. What is produced is a modern agnostic kiasu* that actually accelerates consumption in spite of the looming spectre of a global environmental meltdown. Thus, it is not surprising that in spite of the increased politcal rhetoric surrounding global warming, no leading industrial nation has actually cut carbon emissions. Politicians are perfectly aware that their constituents want it all: steadily improved living standards, enjoyment of increasing liberty and motility even as carbon emissions are radically reduced. The current contenders for the presidency of the USA as of May 2008 have all vowed to cut greenhouse emissions, yet at the same time promise cash-strapped Americans that they will lower gas prices to ensure that Americans can drive and produce emissions at record levels."

- Thomas Harvey, in his essay on Global Warming and Inconvenient Truths: The Problem of Evil and Global Warming.

*Kiasu is a word from the Hokkien dialect of Chinese that means the "fear of being left out". It is a very useful term in that it captures our competitive and anxious drive to grasp at commodities and pleasures with little thought of others or the greater common good. Its complimentary term in Hokkien is kiasi, which refers to the "fear of death." The two are related in that they call attention to the fact that our life and all we seek to possess is slipping through our fingers.

Heh. Makes you wonder if politics can be a viable solution to this world's environmental problems. It must be. And yet, all the political discourse on the environment thus far still seems at best a temporary solution to what is at its root a universal problem of human greed.