He’s taking flak for saying in the same interview that Iraqi insurgents are patriots motivated by natural loathing for the occupier, which may be true for some of the non-AQ rank and file but would come as news to the Shiites and Kurds with respect to the “patriotic” Baathist dregs in charge. As for the looming catastrophe, there’s a reason the HuffPo Readers of Tomorrow are banging on your door when they see a light on in the window, my friends. It’s because they don’t want to have to eat your brain 30 years from now:

TED TURNER: Not doing it will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hottest in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable. The droughts will be so bad there’ll be no more corn grown. Not doing it is suicide. Just like dropping bombs on each other, nuclear weapons is suicide. We’ve got to stop doing the suicidal two things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons and after that we’ve got to stabilize the population. When I was born-

CHARLIE ROSE: So what’s wrong with the population?

TURNER: We’re too many people. That’s why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff. If there were less people, they’d be using less stuff.

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Exit question: What’s the first step to solving the “too many people” problem? Imprisoning the skeptics? Taxing reproduction? Mandatory abortions? Or do we do the irresponsible thing and wait until they’ve finally figured out how to do climate modeling?

Update: Here’s the man himself, commanding as always with that vaguely slurred way of speaking of his.