Wars must stop because they're preventing us from dealing with climate change!!

If you ever doubted that the carbon fetish has completely blinded climate change campaigners, then you must read Howard Friel's bizarre anti-war argument in The Guardian. Commenting on Bjørn Lomborg's new book Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Friel ended his article with this sublimely surreal paragraph:

"If Lomborg were really looking for smart solutions, he would push for an end to perpetual and brutal war, which diverts scarce resources and public focus from what Lomborg accurately says needs more money, including some of the research and policy projects recommended by the contributors to this volume. There might even be a few hundred billion dollars left to invest annually in new energy and mass transit economies, and science-mandated CO2 reductions. We're only two questions short of achieving those goals. Sounds pretty economical to me."

The real lesson of climate change: we can control the weather!

It has been staring us in the face all along, but nobody seems to have noticed. What is the real lesson of the climate change saga? Humanity is going to wipe itself out because of its greed? We're in for a long century of disasters, scarcities and upheaval? We have to reverse all the progress we've made since the industrial revolution and develop a non-growth based approach to economic and social organisation? None of the above actually, the real lesson is much more positive and encouraging.