View Single Post
Old 01-19-12, 10:25 PM
  #1  
gerv 
In the right lane
 
gerv's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Des Moines
Posts: 9,565

Bikes: 1974 Huffy 3 speed

Mentioned: 4 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 44 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 7 Times in 6 Posts
The earth is full

So I'm reading Paul Gilding's "The Great Disruption" as I pointed out in another thread.

Found a Thomas Friedman article today in the NY Times and he had a piece on Gilding and his ideas that I thought might interest everyone who rides a bike to avoid wasting previous resources.

This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.

“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” writes Gilding. “If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the Earth’s CO2 blanket, the Earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation; this is high school science.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/op...8friedman.html

Is the earth really full? Are we running out of juice?

Last edited by gerv; 01-19-12 at 10:29 PM.
gerv is offline