More vital news from Germany: besides the creation of a car free city (Vauban), Chancellor Merkel is holding Obama's feet to the fire to do more to halt greenhouse-gas emissions -- even as she faces domestic protest regarding sacrosanct coal power.
Germany's entire society enjoys a better quality of life than the U.S. thanks to generous vacations while using half the energy per capita used by U.S. citizens. But all is not well in Germany due to economic and demographic stress combined with unsustainable energy dependence.
Oil companies are salivating over the supply of black gold beneath Ecuador's rainforest. The South American country is pledging to keep the oil in the ground -- if the international community provides compensation. Now Germany has taken a leading role in raising the necessary cash.
The awareness that humans could alter the climate of Earth has dawned slowly on our consciousness. In 1896, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius deflected his anguish over a failed marriage into remarkably tedious and, as it turned out, accurate calculations about the effect of CO2 emissions on climate.
The clock is ticking, and we are not building life boats. As the population's options close and a harder ecological and socioeconomic fall is assured more each day, Barack Obama is leading the thumb twiddlers,
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