great job, ken.
compelling read, compelling logic.
(and i only found one typo -last paragraph, first word)

I agree, this is an intriguing way of framing the problem -- I look forward to seeing more.

www.grist.org

James Hansen has made the same argument regarding  coal (we must not build vast numbers of coal plants, he said in 2005) and coal gasification (we must not convert vast deposits of tar sands to gas, which would emit vast amounts of addictional carbon burning, he pointed out this week).

Personally, I like this framing of the issue.

Ken wrote...

"Abrupt climate change and the host of other eco-catastrophes waiting in the wings will only be addressed when environmental values are adapted in a new definition of global citizenship, entailing conflict with current systems of belief and practice..."

Are environmental organizations prepared to defend GMOs? Just like an organic farmer might select some chemicals and reject others, an environmentalist can accept some GMOs and reject others.

Our species is rapidly approaching a crisis, and there will be enormous collateral damage. GMOs are not always safe. But, in the hands of someone whose primary concern is protecting the biosphere, they might be very useful.

Plants can be engineered to sequester more carbon.

We can increase yield per acre and dedicate more land to endangered ecosystems that will sequester carbon.

We can use GMOs to reclaim land destroyed by previous agricultural practices, allowing more land to return to a natural state

Plants can be engineered to fix their own nitrogen, reducing the energy-consuming demand for fertilizer. There is not enough manure in the world to sustain organic agriculture, especially if we become vegetarians.

Round-Up Ready plants -- or a safer version of this technology -- reduce the need for tilling the soil... reducing consumption of fossil fuel, reducing loss of carbon from the soil to the atmosphere, and preventing a host of other environmental problems.

If environmentalist cooperate, they can get biotechnology into the hands of the smallest farmers.

Where do GMOs fall on your list of fears?

Are you prepared to tell your children that you could have saved the biosphere, but were too lazy to sort the good GMOs from the bad... and just rejected the technology entirely?

Forward!

Build NO NEW coalfired plants worldwide: complete moratorium. Replace daytime electricity needs with solar installations. (Leave the current coalfired electricity in place to cover night time need only)

Saturate the south and our coal and oil states with a kind of Marshall Plan of wind turbine royalties offered to every farmer and enough solar power so the dirty fuel income is replaced, knocking out economicly based resistance.

Provide a similar incentive to car manufacturers to produce 100 mpg hybrids, coupled with a full ban on producing any vehicle getting under 20 mpg. We phased out CFC use. We can simply phase out gas guzzzlers.

We all use electricity. We all need cars to get to work. We must all take equal responsibility for switching our economy to clean fuels.

Frame this as similar to how we geared up in 3 years for WWII from having no airforce to having what we needed to win that war.

In my opinion, it is unrealistic to expect a growing human population and developing economies to so dramatically cut their greenhouse gas emission so fast as to avoid abrupt climate change.

Instead, I suggest we remove the greenhouse gases from the environment after they are emitted.  Nature already removes about half of mankind's CO2 emissions (although that reduce 30% by 2030).  I suggest using biosequestration to improve nature's ability to soak up CO2 and CH4.

Greenhouse gases maybe be the only thing standing in the way of a catastrophic deep freeze.

I will say this one more time

There are two observations that do not support the Global Warming concept, and they are drying air and heating seas.

Normally air water vapour content and sea water evaporation go hand in hand but by observation they have had a divorce.

This can not be caused by greenhouse gases because a hotter air will evaporate more sea, and a new equilibrium will be reached which will be a wetter climate, with more clouds.

What is observed can only be cause by a disruption to the Earth's hydrology cycle, the sea water has a reduced evaporation rate. This inhibition has been identified long ago and this inhibitor still remains today.

It is an oil film. It is totally man made, totally unnatural and totally fatal if left unchecked.

Oh you can switch to coal, dirty but not too bad, our industry does not have to grind to a halt, but you can't use oil anymore.

Eventually coal must be phased out as the oil slick is SLOWLY removed.

But we must start on the oil first. this is an imperative, if we want to maintain civilisation.

We are playing with a lot of unknowns in this problem.

To remove CO2 and leave the oil... not good.  To avert the impending ice age, we must have the science correct and we must do the undoing in the correct order.

As it is the consensus of proposed action will only make the Global Climate Change much much worse.  It may even swing the equilibrium into a totally new downward phase.

Stick to your greenhouse gases... I am only the messenger.  But in that case, please call me Cassandra.

I like the bright line concept as it provides opportunites to discuss limits and to reorient and expand the "envrionmental policy" discussion to demand side and issues of political economy.

In terms of stories for the public mind, I also appreciated inclusion of the notion of systemic collapse. This is key, not only because that is what we are faced with, but because that analogy  sahows that collapse can provide opportunity for positive change:

"The image of change we should carry in our minds is not Cape Wind or Toyota Prius, but the Berlin Wall crashing down."

Having just finished Kevin Phillips' latest book "American Theocracy", I'd offer another image for the public story that resonates strongly with current realities. Phillips traces the collapse of the British empire and its relation to coal. He makes links between that collapse and current US oil dependence and the political economy of the Bush NeoCon imperial ambition which is driving the US toward classic imperial over-reach and collapse. The British coal story is important because it shows that democracy can be chosen over empire, and that energy plays a major role in economic success and history.

Rarely is this kind of historical vision part of the environmental story.

I like this Bright Lines concept very much. It's so frustrating to know that major transformation is needed while environmentalists are still advocating switching light bulbs. In conversations I have with people, many express fear that if we come on too strong or advocate changes that might, gulp, force lifestyle changes, then we've lost people. No one, the thinking goes, will want to make sacrifices. Well, too bad, because if we don't sacrifice today we're doomed tomorrow. So a realistic plan is needed that goes way beyond a few simple bulleted to-do items.

Re: GMOs. My biggest concern with GMOs has to do with ecological considerations, not issues of human health. There may be human health issues, but there's human health issues with eating sugar, too. (Not to minimize people's real concerns here, just making a point).

However, and with all due respect to  Wiscidea, I fail to see why we need GMOs to restore spent agricultural lands or to create nitrogen-fixing crops. Legumes already do that and there are plenty of non-GMO plants capable of restoring degraded lands. Round-up Ready crops do not necessarily require fewer chemicals, and eventually crops will become resistant to Round-up and require even stronger chemicals to do the same job. If tilling the soil is a problem there are no-till practices that are completely compatible with organic agriculture, that work best with it in fact. Most of what I've read of these practices are small scale, however, but I'm sure they could be adapted to larger scale growing. Realistically speaking, I doubt we'll all become vegetarians, although we may (should) all eat much less meat. Even so, there will be plenty of manure, not to mention compost. It's amazing how much compost a family and a garden and a yard can generate. Okay Wiscidea, let me have it :)

I commend the farsighted article, but there is only one hope to avoid a severe runaway global warming episode like 55 million years ago (the PETM), or 250 million years ago (the "Great Dying"), and that is to remove the CO2 from the air after it has been emitted.

I beg you to do the math:  mankind is expected to double greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by mid-century, not cut them by much more than half.

Furthermore, nature is expected to reduce her ability to aborb CO2 by 30% by 2030.

That is on top of the warming earth starting to emit far more greenhouse gas than humans as carbon reserviors become carbon emitters.

Soon hydrates (that contain twice the carbon of all fossil fuel) will start to melt.  There is an estimated 400 billion tons of methane in permafrost hydrate, and 50% of the surface permafrost is expected to melt by 2050 (90% by 2100).  30 billion tons in the atmosphere would be like doubling the CO2.

If we don't find a way to remove the CO2 from the air (it lasts hundreds of years), there will probably be less than one billion people alive on earth by the end of the century.