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Humans Living Far Beyond Planet's Means

Old 10-24-06, 04:22 PM
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Humans Living Far Beyond Planet's Means

Humans Living Far Beyond Planet's Means



By Ben BlanchardTue Oct 24, 6:29 AM ET

Humans are stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and will need two planets' worth of natural resources every year by 2050 on current trends, the WWF conservation group said on Tuesday.

Populations of many species, from fish to mammals, had fallen by about a third from 1970 to 2003 largely because of human threats such as pollution, clearing of forests and overfishing, the group also said in a two-yearly report.

"For more than 20 years we have exceeded the earth's ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path," WWF Director-General James Leape said, launching the WWF's 2006 Living Planet Report.

"If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us," Leape, an American, said in Beijing.

People in the United Arab Emirates were placing most stress per capita on the planet ahead of those in the United States, Finland and Canada, the report said.

Australia was also living well beyond its means.

The average Australian used 6.6 "global" hectares to support their developed lifestyle, ranking behind the United States and Canada, but ahead of the United Kingdom, Russia, China and Japan.

"If the rest of the world led the kind of lifestyles we do here in Australia, we would require three-and-a-half planets to provide the resources we use and to absorb the waste," said Greg Bourne, WWF-Australia chief executive officer.

Everyone would have to change lifestyles -- cutting use of fossil fuels and improving management of everything from farming to fisheries.

"As countries work to improve the well-being of their people, they risk bypassing the goal of sustainability," said Leape, speaking in an energy-efficient building at Beijing's prestigous Tsinghua University.

"It is inevitable that this disconnect will eventually limit the abilities of poor countries to develop and rich countries to maintain their prosperity," he added.

The report said humans' "ecological footprint" -- the demand people place on the natural world -- was 25 percent greater than the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste in 2003.

In the previous report, the 2001 overshoot was 21 percent.

"On current projections humanity, will be using two planets' worth of natural resources by 2050 -- if those resources have not run out by then," the latest report said.

"People are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources."

RISING POPULATION

"Humanity's footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003," it said. Consumption has outpaced a surge in the world's population, to 6.5 billion from 3 billion in 1960. U.N. projections show a surge to 9 billion people around 2050.

It said that the footprint from use of fossil fuels, whose heat-trapping emissions are widely blamed for pushing up world temperatures, was the fastest-growing cause of strain.

Leape said China, home to a fifth of the world's population and whose economy is booming, was making the right move in pledging to reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five years.

"Much will depend on the decisions made by China, India and other rapidly developing countries," he added.

The WWF report also said that an index tracking 1,300 vetebrate species -- birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals -- showed that populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of factors including a loss of habitats to farms.

Among species most under pressure included the swordfish and the South African Cape vulture. Those bucking the trend included rising populations of the Javan rhinoceros and the northern hairy-nosed wombat in Australia.
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Old 10-24-06, 09:44 PM
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I Seen this on Yahoo and came here for ideas.

I am curious is there any other web sites that are dedicated to minmizing our Biolgoical footprint ?

Being car free or car light helps but I also seen somewhere that it takes like 200 gallons of water and 1000lbs of corn to get 1 lb of steak meat. Some site had that Beef consumption take a huge toll on other resources. ANy body else got an idea on that ?


Thanks

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Old 10-24-06, 10:06 PM
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Yeah, meat production takes a huge amount of resources.
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Old 10-24-06, 10:10 PM
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I pass gas for free . . .
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Old 10-24-06, 10:30 PM
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Originally Posted by jayhuse
I am curious is there any other web sites that are dedicated to minmizing our Biolgoical footprint ?

Being car free or car light helps but I also seen somewhere that it takes like 200 gallons of water and 1000lbs of corn to get 1 lb of steak meat. Some site had that Beef consumption take a huge toll on other resources. ANy body else got an idea on that ?


Thanks

jay
The concept is "sustainability". Just google or otherwise search on that word. The problem, of course, is that if we as individuals live sustainably, we accomplish next to nothing. We have to get the rest of the population to buy into it too, and there's a huge resistance due to denial, misinformation, laziness, greed and other factors to combat.
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Old 10-25-06, 05:52 AM
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I'm actually rather scared about this... I'll be alive in 2050 (if I don't get killed by a car first), and the thought of what the world will be like then is disturbing. I really wish that all the people running the world's governments would take some time to meditate on this, maybe catch a few films on the subject (inconvenient truth, heck even soylent green or blade runner would do). But I suppose people like us have been wishing for that to happen for a long time, haven't we?
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Old 10-25-06, 12:38 PM
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Yes indeed, the sky is falling. And almost all of the earth scientists agree with chicken little this time. 2050 is widely seen as the "tipping point" for planet earth. Greenhouse gases are the most pressing concern, and the one current "leaders" are least willing to deal with. We the people must be the leaders in this battle, because the politicians won't look past the quarterly profit sheets and the politically convenient war on terrorism.
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Old 10-25-06, 02:12 PM
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I happen to believe we over produce certain staples like milk and pay farmers not to grow crops so there is some savings there. The real problem is energy and what the world will have to use for fuel in the not too distant future. It doesn't take much food to keep a human alive but telling Americans to give up their motorcars is a different story!

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Old 10-25-06, 02:28 PM
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Originally Posted by Dahon.Steve
...It doesn't take much food to keep a human alive but telling Americans to give up their motorcars is a different story!
At 30 miles per gallon, driving a car 3 miles uses as much chemical energy as a person needs to eat in one day.

Not really an ethical problem I guess, until you start talking about running cars on biodiesel and ethanol made from food crops. If you do that, you are in some sense depriving someone, somewhere, of a day's worth of food for every three miles you drive.
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Old 10-25-06, 02:40 PM
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Originally Posted by Platy
At 30 miles per gallon, driving a car 3 miles uses as much chemical energy as a person needs to eat in one day.

Not really an ethical problem I guess, until you start talking about running cars on biodiesel and ethanol made from food crops. If you do that, you are in some sense depriving someone, somewhere, of a day's worth of food for every three miles you drive.
Maybe. With all the food we produce, it's more likely that we're taking wildlife habitat when we run our vehicles on food, than that someone would be eating EXCEPT for the fact that we're producing fuel with that food. I once saw an American official say that there is plenty of food to go around in the world, but the problem is we need paying customers.

As for biodiesel, much of it is currently made out of recycled vegetable oil, and that isn't taking food from anybody. If we shift a larger percentage of our fuel production to biodiesel, that could change, i suppose.
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Old 10-25-06, 02:45 PM
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Originally Posted by lancerob
So I guess the sky really is falling.
Well unless we all live in mud huts and in communal mud hut villages, grow our own crops in order to eat raw vegan (theres plenty of dirt to eat for our daily dose of Vitamin B12 right?). Don't know what were going to do to heat those mud huts though...can we still cut down trees and burn the wood? I wouldn't want to go and hurt a tree to sustain my life now would I? Yeah...the sky is falling. Anything we do ends up expending the earths resources. What to do...what to do. I don't know...as long as we still have beer...somehow...someway...things will all work out.
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Old 10-25-06, 02:46 PM
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Originally Posted by cooker
The concept is "sustainability". Just google or otherwise search on that word. The problem, of course, is that if we as individuals live sustainably, we accomplish next to nothing. We have to get the rest of the population to buy into it too, and there's a huge resistance due to denial, misinformation, laziness, greed and other factors to combat.

The main problem is not greed, etc., but the government's refusal to treat this as the emergency it is & act accordingly, educating the public about the need for sacrifices as during WW2 & putting the necessary regulations in place. (Ironically, Bush's Texas retreat is powered by alternative energy but he lets the rest of the nation stick the oil needle in its arm.)

Re ethanol, that does not have to be made from food crops, it can be made from the waste of food crops such as sugar cane leaves & stalks.
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Old 10-25-06, 03:42 PM
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Originally Posted by Blue Order
With all the food we produce, it's more likely that we're taking wildlife habitat when we run our vehicles on food, than that someone would be eating EXCEPT for the fact that we're producing fuel with that food. I once saw an American official say that there is plenty of food to go around in the world, but the problem is we need paying customers.
It's actually more complicated, and much scarier than you think. Right now we can easily feed the world, but "all the food we produce" is actually produced using massive input from the oilfields. In the 1950s and 60s the world population of around 3 billion was reaching the point where food production couldn't keep up, and widespread famine was imminently expected. Fortunately, agricultural scientists were able to make astonishing breakthroughs in yields, the so-called "green revolution", solving the problem (for a time) and allowing the population to continue to grow.

Unfortunately, while we bought some time, we may have greatly worsened the long term prospects. High yield crops rapidly deplete the soil of natural nutrients, and are heavily reliant on fertilizer derived from natural gas, and pesticides derived in part from oil. A lot of crops are now grown in areas of unreliable rainfall using irrigation water drawn from both surface and underground sources, some of which requires energy input, and which eventually salinates (salts) the soil. The work of planting, tending, harvesting, and distributing food on a global scale, and the refridgeration needed to get the more perishable foods to market, are also heavily dependent on oil. Crops are increasingly grown in marginal farmland, like cleared rainforest, that rapidly erodes once the tree cover is gone.

So when oil starts to get less available there will be a huge drop in food production capacity, making it even more unrealistic to think there will be any cropland available for personal biodiesel. Any biodiesel that is produced will have to be dedicated to farm equipment and food delivery. The farmland will be much in worse shape than it was before the green revolution - nutrient depleted, or paved over, or eroded away, and a lot of the irrigated areas will no longer be useable due to salination.

And the world population will be 9 billion.

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Old 10-25-06, 10:31 PM
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I guess that was a thread killer post....
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Old 10-25-06, 11:31 PM
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Originally Posted by cooker
I guess that was a thread killer post....
Maybe so, but it's a pretty good picture of what the future may hold if current trends continue. Sort of like what the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed to Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Fortunately, like Scrooge we can wake up and find ourselves in the present, where we still have choices to make and actions to take. Maybe it can be avoided somehow.
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Old 10-26-06, 06:00 AM
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To expand on cooker's comments, may I suggest this article:
https://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html

I think it's an important read, because most people just think of transportation when they think about oil availability. It goes far beyond that. We depend on fossil fuels for just about everything that sustains our lives. As we pass peak oil and natural gas, I'm afraid that we will be totally unprepared for the implications. I'd love to see us making choices and taking actions to avoid a catastrophic collapse, but I don't see that happening.
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Old 10-26-06, 06:23 AM
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I remember one of the usual Coyote and Road-runner routines where the Coyote would run off a cliff above a deep canyon. His legs would still be in motion for awhile even though there was nothing beneath him but air. Then, it would suddenly dawn on him that all was not right, and he would pause in mid-air as he glanced down at the river flowing far below. Then he would drop like a rock and there would be a small puff of dust as he missed even the river. I think that as a society, we are just discovering that all is not right.

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Old 10-26-06, 02:04 PM
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So what can we do?
  1. Insist that our political "leaders" address global warming and peak oil.
  2. Keep ourselves informed on the issues.
  3. Lead by example--live our own lives in the cleanest and most sustainable ways possible.
  4. Network and organize with others who are concerned about these issues--like the people on this forum.
  5. Keep on riding our bikes!
  6. **********????
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Old 10-26-06, 08:13 PM
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Originally Posted by INTP
...I'd love to see us making choices and taking actions to avoid a catastrophic collapse, but I don't see that happening.
There may be some helpful ideas that work out. Carfree living is an example that all of us here are familiar with. No-till or conservation farming is another example.

Also terra preta soils - there are some highly fertile self-sustaining patches of unique soil in South America that seem to have been artificially constructed by the indigeneous people 500-2000 years ago. If we can figure out what is going on there, we may be able to hit a bases loaded ecological home run producing biomass energy, increasing the fertility of soils, and sequestering carbon all at the same time.

Harder to say what could be done about increasing human population, water shortages and soil salinization, though.
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Old 10-26-06, 08:21 PM
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Perhaps I should have been more clear. I don't mean to say that nobody is doing things like going carfree, or attempting more sustainable ways of raising food. I just don't see anything like this happening at anywhere near the scale that it needs to. At the rate we're going, I'm afraid that a reduction of human population will be forced upon us, and not in the way we'd like it to happen.
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Old 10-27-06, 10:52 AM
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Originally Posted by Will P
I remember one of the usual Coyote and Road-runner routines where the Coyote would run off a cliff above a deep canyon. His legs would still be in motion for awhile even though there was nothing beneath him but air. Then, it would suddenly dawn on him that all was not right, and he would pause in mid-air as he glanced down at the river flowing far below. Then he would drop like a rock and there would be a small puff of dust as he missed even the river. I think that as a society, we are just discovering that all is not right.

W.P.
You should read Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn if you haven't already.
There's a similiar analogy in the book...
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Old 10-27-06, 11:35 AM
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Originally Posted by INTP
Perhaps I should have been more clear. I don't mean to say that nobody is doing things like going carfree, or attempting more sustainable ways of raising food. I just don't see anything like this happening at anywhere near the scale that it needs to. At the rate we're going, I'm afraid that a reduction of human population will be forced upon us, and not in the way we'd like it to happen.
Nobody knows what will happen in the future. It's important not to get too discouraged. Do as much as you can to be part of the solution. Then, no matter what happens, you will not be blamed.
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Old 10-27-06, 11:40 AM
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Originally Posted by Platy
Harder to say what could be done about increasing human population, water shortages and soil salinization, though.
Many parts of the developed world (Italy, Scandinavia) are already experiencing negative population growth. Most upper-middle class families in the US have only one or two children, resulting in negative growth. The key to acheiving negative population growth, IMO, is the education of girls and women. When women can make good money in satisfying careers, they will put off having children, and will have fewer children.

The long-term danger of fundamentalist religions (especially Muslim and Christian) is that they devalue women and relegate them to being baby factories. If you want to help the environment long-term, struggle for schools for girls all over the world.
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Old 10-27-06, 04:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Roody
The long-term danger of fundamentalist religions (especially Muslim and Christian) is that they devalue women and relegate them to being baby factories.
Hey, let's not let fundamentalists of other religions off the hook.
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Old 10-27-06, 05:16 PM
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Originally Posted by Roody
Nobody knows what will happen in the future. It's important not to get too discouraged. Do as much as you can to be part of the solution. Then, no matter what happens, you will not be blamed.
Certainly, nobody knows the future, but that does not make prediction a completely futile exercise. It is important to be honest and realistic, as well. I would never discourage anyone from doing what they can to make a difference. At the same time, I still hold that the most effective efforts of a tiny minority is likely to be insufficient. If there were a way to increase the number of people doing these things, then I would be much more optimistic. But if optimism within the current situation means that nearly everyone can continue with business-as-usual, then I think that optimism becomes destructive. Acknowledging the problem is the first step, and we're not even doing that.

I realize that I sound pessimistic to some. At one point not long ago, I would have agreed. After looking further into things, I've become quite concerned. This idea of 9 Billion people is a horrific thought, which will lead to immense suffering. In fact, it's pretty clear to me that without fossil fuels, this planet cannot support anywhere near the 6.5 Billion that are already alive.

As far as blame, I hardly think that's even worth considering, in the context of what we're facing.
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