The Kyoto protocol on climate Change becomes international law on February 16, 2005. The debate is currently raging on whether the Canadian Governement strategy on voluntary agreements, demonstration projects, and advertising” will achieve the goals of reducing GHG emissions or will regulations be necessary. Under Kyoto, Canada agrees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. This would represent a 26% reduction from projected 2012 levels. Two years ago, Canada had surpassed its 1990 levels by close to 20%.
weblink: Kyoto facts • in detail XlnkS6C5

Thought provoking and enormously important, read! this book by E.O. Wilson, the father of Sociobiology. BOOK PREFACE Can there be a more important subject than human nature? If the subject can be truly fathomed, then our species will be more precisely defined, and our actions perhaps more wisely guided. When On Hu_man Nature was written, in the 1970’s, two conceptions of the human condition dominated Western thought. Theologians, plus all but the most liberal followers of the Abrahamic religions, saw human beings as dark angels in animal bodies awaiting redemption and eternal life. Human nature, in their view, is a mix of good and evil propensities, which we must sort out with the aid of writings by ancient Middle Eastern prophets. In contrast, most intellectuals, whether religiously inclined or not, doubted that a human nature exists at all. To them the brain is a blank slate, an engine driven by a few elementary passions but other_wise an all-purpose computer that creates the mind wholly from in_dividual experience and learning. Culture, the intellectual majority in the 1970’s believed, is the cumulative learned response to environ_ment and historical contingency. Meanwhile, an alternative, naturalistic view was gaining strength. Still embryonic in form, it held that the brain and mind are entirely biological in origin and have been highly structured through evolu_tion by natural selection. Human nature exists, composed of the complex biases of passion and learning propensities often loosely re_ferred to as instincts. The instincts were created over millions of years, when human beings were Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. As a consequence, they still bear the archaic imprint of our species’ bio_logical heritage. Human nature can thus be ultimately understood only with the aid of the scientific method. Culture evolves in re_sponse to environmental and historical contingencies, as common, sense suggests, but its trajectories are powerfully guided by the in_born biases of human nature. This view was encapsulated in the new discipline of sociobiology, which in its human applications was later re-christened evolutionary psychology (but remains sociobiology nonetheless).
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The study of the biological basis of social behaviour. Much of the study concerns non-human organisms, e.g. ants and bees, but some sociobiologists also attempt to (1) explain human social phenomena by processes of natural se_lection; (2) reduce cultural and social theory to biological theory; (3) establish a kind of ethical naturalism. It attracted attention through the writings of E. O. Wilson: Socio_biology 1975; On Human Nature 1978; Genes, Mind and Culture 1981. These writings provoked a lively debate about the alleged or actual moral and political implications of the theory. Sociobiology has been critized by sociologists, anthropologists and feminists, who argue that human behavior varies considerably between cultures and cannot be reduced to biological determinism.
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A principle in ecology, which states that maximum competition is to be found between those species with identical needs.
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A convergent principle in political science, which states that income in a society is distributed to the benefit of the class that controls the government. In our society, it is the middle class. All kinds of institutions, from corporations to churches, evolve in a way that promotes the best interest of those who control them. On Human Nature – Edward O. Wilson.
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