Earth On Course for Ecological "Credit Crunch"

[villager]

Source: BBC


Earth on course for eco 'crunch'

Reckless consumption comes at a high cost, the report warns

The planet is headed for an ecological "credit crunch", according to a report issued by conservation groups. The document contends that our demands on natural resources overreach what the Earth can sustain by almost a third.

The Living Planet Report is the work of WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network. It says that more than three quarters of the world's population lives in countries where consumption levels are outstripping environmental renewal.

This makes them "ecological debtors", meaning that they are drawing - and often overdrawing - on the agricultural land, forests, seas and resources of other countries to sustain them.

The report concludes that the reckless consumption of "natural capital" is endangering the world's future prosperity, with clear economic impacts including high costs for food, water and energy.

<snip>


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7696197.stm

[glinda]

1. Everyone needs to quit having so many kids.

I would personally like people to be rewarded for being reproductively responsible and have those in America pay for their kid's school out of their own pockets if they have more than two. Small discounts for everyone on all ecologically sound items also.

[Zhade]

2. HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT!

Don't you know Americans have a right to have as many bundles of joy they want using up five times the resources of developing-world adults???

:sarcasm:

As far as I'm concerned, anyone espousing that attitude is fucking selfish.

[glinda]

3. It is selfish. And ignorant.

[mike_c]

38. bingo! The most important thing any human can do for the environment...

...is to stop breeding. Garrett Hardin was right all along.

[Joe Bacon]

62. But the Bible has that "Be Fruitful and Multiply" stuff in it

And the goofball gang that runs the Southern Fried Baptists say YOU are going to HELL if you don't cultivate your own Cheaper by the Dozen gang!

[southpaw]

11. I would agree to incentives for having two or less children

But punishing people for having children?

Sorry, but the very idea is disturbing.

[Auggie]

12. No one wants to punish

But why should families with seven children get a tax break?

[southpaw]

13. They shouldn't

I would say that tax credits should stop at two children. If you choose to have more, you are free to do so, but you only get a tax break for the first two.

My thing about 'punishment' had to do with an earlier poster's suggestion that people with more than two children should have to pay for thier public education. That sounds like a republican/libertarian idea to me.

[Auggie]

30. It just seems responsibility has to start somewhere

[whopis01]

34. Stopping the tax credits at two children would be viewed exactly the same.

Giving everyone a tax break of $X for each child, and then taking away money for having more than two is effectively the same thing as just giving people a tax break of $X for the first two children.

You can try to spin it however you want, but the reality is that people with more than two children are going to look at it as a punishment. It will get the same treatment as the so-called "marriage penalty". People will start making the argument that it gives advantages to singles (i.e., a single man and a single woman could have 4 kids between them without penalty, but a married couple could only have 2).

[southpaw]

37. Grandfather all families that already get tax breaks for more than 2

Allow one year for new-born children before instituting the 2 child cutoff so that anyone already pregnant will not be effected.

Make it 2 children per household, married or not.

It's a complex issue with no simple solution.


My issue lies with penalizing those who choose to have more children. If they know in advance that their tax credits end with 2 kids, but choose to have more anyway... their choice.

Something about instituting penalties for reproduction gives me this shivers.

We should educate and encourage responsibility.

[whopis01]

58. Here is the problem

As you said:

But punishing people for having children?

Sorry, but the very idea is disturbing.

And yet the difference between your suggestion and the other suggestion is only a matter of semantics.

You suggest not giving additional tax breaks for couples that have more than 2 children.

The other poster suggests not giving additional free schooling for couples that have more than 2 children.

Either way, you are taking away something that people have. People wishing to have 3 children are going to view a lack of a tax break for their third child as a punishment. You may not think of it that way, but I am certain that they will. I don't disagree with your suggestion in general - I just disagree that it will not be seen as "instituting penalties for reproduction"

[glinda]

93. I think it would be in how it is presented.

If done in an educational and informative manner, then if they choose to have more, they just have to P{LAN it better. Responsibility starts at home. I mean, don't they charge something like 500-1000 per student per year in public schools anyways? Why can't they be billed for that? Just a thought.

[glinda]

92. Where did you get your spinning Ying Yang thingie. Just love it.

I am a hard core Dem. A green Dem also. Yes, I said that. I think they need to put money in the kittie to pay for their more than two kids. I also think it foolish that the Government assume that parents should PAY for a child's college. My parents were poor. I worked three jobs and still owe. The education system is screwed up in my opinion. Oh, my husband is a retired College Prof also so I get it.

[glinda]

91. I don't think they should. It is all wrong in my opinion.

The more they do the less our family has in money for food and bills.

[RaleighNCDUer]

27. As disturbing as mass starvation? nt

[glinda]

90. No, they would just have to suffer the consequences financially

I mean when my parents paid into the system, there were not as many little people, as there is now. When we are older, somehow they figure we must pay for three, four, five times the little people and their families. It is a matter of the calculating the dollar as well as the impact upon the planet's resources. There is no just way to MAKE someone stop having so many but there is a way to encourage people to plan, make choices and take responsibility. I want families that have more than two kids to help pay more out of their own pockets for this. No some may say the rich will then have more but if everything is proportionate, then it should not be so bad. If they do not believe in contraception than they must surely believe in ABSTINENCE. Right? LOL.

[cobalt1999]

23. Exactly.

Everything else pales in comparison. Way too many people for this planet to support right now.

[Crowman1979]

25. right on! I'm doing my part!

That and I hate kids. So that's another reason I don't want to be responsible for overpopulating the earth. Plus IMO if you can't have em' then adopt. I'm tired of this in-vitro/insemination BS!

[RoccoR5955]

47. Well thank me for not reproducing!

I am in my 50s, and saw this sort of thing coming, and vowed that I would not reproduce until things improved. That was back in the early 70s.

[Taverner]

50. EXactly!

[ryanmuegge]

55. Blame India and China, but the rest of the world should follow the example of France.

[freedomnorth]

4. Finally, on a language that economist understands

:sarcasm:

[debunkthelies]

5. An Inconvenient Truth

I finally got a copy and watched it tonight, it really is amazing how little we know about the world we live in and how fragile the balance is that we take for granted.
I live in the White Mountains of Arizona where we had maybe a week of actual spring, then went straight to monsoon for the entire summer, then 2 weeks of freezing weather. Now this week we have had high 70 to low 80 degree weather and the bees finally showed up this week. I was so excited to see them, but, it's October already????
I have lived here since 1984 and the weather gets stranger every year. we have even had tornadoes.:crazy:

[tama]

6. Ecological Credit Crunch

aka Harmageddon. :)

By destroying the carrying capacity of Earth by consumerist blind greed, we are destroying the livelihood of not only future generations, but also the current generations. The Credit Crunch time is this century, beginning this decade, next decade jumping into vortex - there is no Hell except between Earth and Sky. Repent, amend your ways, go and sin no more... :)

We can turn this planet into paradise, Garden Planet, by becoming "permaculture" gardeners. Nature/God has right to enjoy also the song and dance of humans. We owe that to Mother Nature, that is our deepest debt, to live, to live in beauty. Oh how beautifull we are, how beautifull we can be!

[Earth_First]

7. Bailout package is on the way...

oh wait. No it isn't.

[tinrobot]

8. It is... the Earth is going to bail us humans over the side.

Life on earth will continue... human life on earth is another matter.

[cobalt1999]

26. Some humans will make it.

We'll plow the last acre of rain forest and shoot the last wildebeest attempting to delay off global starvation though.

[anarch]

39. in what form? giant asteroid? supervolcano eruption?

yeah, Nature will take care of things eventually....

[glinda]

94. Nature already is

[bertman]

9. Zero Population Growth. That was the watchword of the 70's. But Ronnie Raygun

came into office and the fundamentalist religious right and the Pope became the policymakers who decided that we humans are supposed to procreate like rabbits regardless of the consequences. It's God's will, they said.

So, I guess it's God's will that we breed ourselves into oblivion. God's way of cleansing the planet?

When we elect Barack Obama by a landslide I hope it's not too late to start turning this juggernaut around.

[pitohui]

15. well here's the thing that we refuse to deal with

only the educated people, the caring people, the aware people, and the people who have the ability to think about the future and the consequences of their actions use family planning and control the size of their families

uneducated people, stupid people easily brainwashed by religious hysteria or racist propaganda, and mentally ill folks incapable of thinking clearly or planning for the future but who instead act on impulse -- these are the people who do not/cannot control the size of their families

therefore with each passing decade, we produce a higher percentage of people who have serious problems with their ability to reason clearly or to control their emotional problems

because the clear-headed sensible intelligent people have one child...or they have no child...because they know how to crunch the numbers AND they can take the simple steps needed to not have unwanted kids

therefore it is inevitable that we are being outbred by the stupid, the insane, and the hysterical, and those are the people raising and influencing a growing percentage of future generations

since we are unwilling to take steps to limit how many kids people can have -- instead relying on "choice" -- then we are going to create a world that will destroy itself because the people making the choices will be increasingly mentally ill or intellectually handicapped

we should have passed a one adult/one child and you're sterilized, rich or poor, many years ago, but since we can't go into the past, we should pass a law now

however the political reality is that we can't pass such a law, to think obama will take on the issue of overpopulation is unrealistic, it just can't happen for political reasons

some problems can't be solved, human nature being what it is

[GliderGuider]

33. "some problems can't be solved, human nature being what it is"

Exactly.

The converging crisis of civilization, especially in the areas of ecology, energy and economics is one of those problems.

The election debate has proved three things to me:

1. As long as we think the solution to environmental problems lies in technology, science, economics or political debates we will go nowhere.
2. As long as the only solutions we offer people is marginal green consumerism like change lights and recycle more we will go nowhere.
3. We now have a population convinced they don't have a role to play because the experts are fighting over Point 1. To the degree that people think they have a role to play we have told them it is Point 2.

It's time to Change the Dream.

[riverdeep]

72. Sounds exactly like the movie 'Idiocracy'.

I always wondered why that movie was never a smash hit. Maybe because it would hit too close to the bone for many movie-goers?

[customerserviceguy]

24. If only a President had that much power

I sincerely doubt that the breeders went into overdrive just because Raygun was President, and I have similar doubts about them shutting down the baby factory just because we have President Obama. Yes, we should stop tossing out tax breaks in unlimited amounts, but those were not a financial incentive to spawn, they were just a sop to the fundies who voted for Bush the last two elections, and even for Clinton before that, as the credits started during his Administration.

The one thing that has decreased family size more than anything in the history of the world is moving from an agricultural to a manufacturing economy. Extra children are extra mouths to feed, but on a farm, they're an extra pair of hands and feet, as well. Children are an expensive luxury in a society that is accustomed to having both members of a couple employed in either manufacturing or service work.

The dilemma here is that we need to structure the world towards more of a manufacturing/service economy (that uses more resources) and away from an agricultural economy if we are to acheive ZPG. That means we need sustainable ways of moving towards those economies, that do not do more damage than the previous agricultural-based model did. It's a tough challenge.

[bertman]

28. laptoprepairguy, you are overlooking one important element of the problem. In the 70's the U.S.

and United Nations began an international family planning drive to help teach people in third world countries how to control their birth rates. Those efforts were beginning to take effect when Reagan took office and have been systematically dismantled by successive Republican administrations with devastating effect.

The reality is that many people in developing countries no longer require large families to help them maintain a subsistence lifestyle because of the gains in food production that have been made due to the so-called Green Revolution and the movement toward industrialization.

Culture is one major factor in family size. Education can dispel the notion that large families must be maintained. That educational outreach has been curtailed due to religious influence at the national and international level. And the U.S. has been one of the major players in eliminating that outreach. Along with the Catholic church, of course.

[customerserviceguy]

32. All I can do is look at birthrates country by country

and see that the more industrialized a country, the smaller the family size. Part of the revolution in agriculture in the developed world is the use of machinery to replace human and animal labor in the fields. Of course, that has come at the cost of using fossil fuels, but there is no reason to think that solar energy cannot be part of the eventual solution to that problem.

With industrialization, reliance on agriculture-founded religions also declines, so this is a good thing. Family planning drives are indeed important, but without a compelling reason to adopt them, they just look like the West telling people in underdeveloped nations "what is best for them". And I don't blame them for being skeptical, given the history of relations between the US and Europe, and the peoples of Africa and Asia.

When those folks have access to some of the good life we've taken for granted in the First World, they will more readily give up the lifestyles of their ancestors. Yes, that means they will consume more, but we can help them to avoid the mistakes that the developed world made on the way up to that point. If they can leapfrog over the fossil fuel technologies to the next generation of solar, geothermal, and tidal power generation systems (I'd even throw nuclear into there, especially if we can get fusion energy) then we can have a sustainable world where the population has leveled off.

[bertman]

59. I see what you're saying, laptop. I have no reason to doubt what you are saying about the

industrialization helping to lower birth rates, but is it a foregone conclusion that citizens of developing nations will fail to see the positive aspects of having fewer people trying to live off of shrinking resources, regardless of whether they are in an industrial or agrarian society? Having spoken with individuals who were involved in efforts to spread the good word about contraceptives in the third world, I remember that they felt they were making solid progress before the "pro-lifers" put the squeeze on them. I don't know which countries they were in, but I believe they were primarily in Africa.

I agree that having a more comfortable and secure lifestyle will encourage them to give up their former practices. And I hope that we Americans will be able to offer them the help and technical/technological support to have better lives without sacrificing the natural world around them. That could happen if Obama is elected and our intellectual and technological capabilities are turned toward sustainable living as a primary goal for the U.S. and the planet.

The nuclear power option seems to be one that is more and more attractive as the technology improves and the ability to recycle spent fuels is enhanced. Unlike McCain, I don't think nuclear should be a cornerstone of our alternative energy policy, but it certainly deserves a place in the overall scheme.

[The2ndWheel]

31. Agriculture was built upon, not moved away from

[GliderGuider]

35. Food makes people.

To a first approximation, people are made out of food, so as long as there is enough food to permit the population to grow, we should expect the the population to grow.

One can argue that human population growth will drop as we educate people and empower women, and you would be correct, at least to some extent. In every other species on the planet, though, the primary control of population size is the food supply. Why do we think we're exempt from that rule?

Asking "How will we produce enough food to feed this growing population?" is like asking, "How will we find enough fuel to feed this growing fire?"

[The2ndWheel]

40. Because we think we can finally get there?

http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/text.php

Absolute control over all life, reaching a perfect state to existence?

[GliderGuider]

45. Not control, but surrender

That looks like a fantastic book, thank you. I dipped at random into one chapter, and found these excerpts:

The Convergence of Crises

For people immersed in the study of any of the crises that afflict our planet, it becomes abundantly obvious that we are doomed. Politics, finance, energy, education, health care, and most importantly the ecosystem are headed toward near-certain collapse. During the ten years I've spent writing this book, I have become familiar with each of these crises of civilization, enough to get some sense of their enormity and inevitability. Every year I would wonder whether this might be the last "normal" year of our era. I felt the dread of what a collapse might bring, and visited the despair of knowing that our best efforts to avert it are dwarfed by the forces driving us toward catastrophe.

One of the main purposes of this book is to speak to that despair. In answer, I offer a plausible and unexpected optimism. It is not a blind optimism that ignores the magnitude of our crisis, but a practical one that sees and integrates all the ugly facts of our world. It is optimism fully aware of the horror and suffering that are as old as civilization and that are approaching their feverish crescendo in the convergence of crises that is almost upon us.

It is not my purpose to persuade you that we indeed face an environmental, financial, political, energy, soil, medical, or water crisis. Others have done so far more compellingly than I could. Nor is it my aim to inspire you with hope that they may be averted. They cannot be, because the things that must happen to avert them will only happen as their consequence. All present proposals for changing course in time to avert a crash are wildly impractical. My optimism is based on knowing that the definition of "practical" and "possible" will soon change as we collectively hit bottom.

Another way to put it is that my optimism depends on a miracle. No, not a supernatural agency come to save us. What is a miracle? A miracle comes from a new sense of what is possible, born from a surrender of the attempt to manage and control life. The changes that need to happen to save the planet are the same. No mainstream politician is proposing them; few are even aware of just how deep the changes must go.

For many people, the convergence of crises has already happened, propelling them, like the hippies or Taoist Immortals, into a release of controlled, bounded, separate conceptions of self, away from the technologies of separation, and toward new systems of money, education, technology, medicine, and language. In various ways, they withdraw from the apparatus of the Machine. When crises converge, life as usual no longer makes sense, opening the way for a rebirth, a spiritual transformation. Mystics throughout the ages have recognized that heaven is not some distant, separate realm located at the end of life and time, but rather is available always, interpenetrating ordinary existence. (...) What is special about our age is that the fulfillment of processes of separation on the collective level are causing this personal convergence of crises, and the subsequent awakening to a new sense of self, to happen to many people all at once.

The author, Charles Eisenstein, gets it. This is precisely my perspective on our situation, formed from the same facts, driven by the same interpretations, arriving at the same conclusions.

[customerserviceguy]

42. And greater numbers of people make increased food production possible

for long stretches of history. More food has meant more people being able to do something besides direct agriculture, and their inventions and leadership have meant that better food production techniques could be developed.

But we've broken that cycle in the industrialized world, a relatively tiny fraction of the population of those nations is involved in food production. In the developing world, they're still stuck on the "more people leads to more food production leads to more people" and so on treadmill, only replacing the agricultural outlook of their societies gets them off that treadmill.

Our species is exempt from that rule only because we have the power to use scientific methods to limit our fertility. No non-human species can do that, they can only limit their numbers by starvation. If you provide a substitute economy that causes children to be a financial liability in the short term, you provide an incentive for the individuals in that society to toss off the old training from the 'holy books'. That's happened in Europe and Anglo-America, and it can happen in the rest of the world as well.

[riverdeep]

74. One of the problems is that culture has failed to develop at the same pace

as our powers. For millennia, the issue was how often how to cope with too little. Now, the issue is how to cope with too much. Our culture hasn't calibrated to the new reality. While 'go forth and multiply' might make sense if half your children aren't going to make it to adulthood, and you live in a small tribe, it doesn't make sense anymore, yet every Sunday people in magical robes tell some variation of that theme, and implicitly support that framework.

[customerserviceguy]

41. I'm speaking of the proportion

of people in any society who have "moved away" figuratively speaking, from making a living through agriculture. Is there any question that in the developed world, we have a far smaller fraction of the population whose jobs are tied either directly, or indirectly to agriculture?

The "be fruitful and multiply" command in every religion is based in the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural one. If we want to strip out that programming, we need to provide a substitute economy that says, "Replace yourself if you have to, but there's no need to have a litter to work the farm."

[The2ndWheel]

44. Directly, a far smaller amount

Indirectly, I'd say a very large portion of jobs exist only because of agriculture.

"we need to provide a substitute economy"

And that substitute economy is going to have to be one of the most destructive forces on the planet in the form of a mass produced manufacturing global machine?

[customerserviceguy]

56. Certainly

all other jobs depend on the agricultural ones, but it's a much further distance between most manufacturing/service jobs than it used to be a hundred years ago. The failure of a crop back then was more devastating to the people in a local area than it would be today, where we have the means to distribute food supplies more effectively than ever before. I really don't think it's a stretch to say that the proportion of people working to make our food supply in Western economies has shrunk dramatically over the last century.

A substitute economy for the developing nations does not need to follow the same exact path that it did in developed nations. They have the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, and leapfrog destructive technologies. A large part of the Western economy was built on super-cheap oil, and that's gone forever. We don't have to have global conglomerates controlling manufacturing, either. The success of microcredit has shown the viability of small businesses in developing economies.

[The2ndWheel]

65. Sharp sticks were destructive technologies

"A large part of the Western economy was built on super-cheap oil"

I'd say cheap energy. Oil came into the picture later, and allowed more to be done. The foundations of the Western economy were built on slavery(cheap energy), and the only reason it no longer practices overt slavery, is because a cheaper energy was extracted from the environment.

"I really don't think it's a stretch to say that the proportion of people working to make our food supply in Western economies has shrunk dramatically over the last century."

"We don't have to have global conglomerates controlling manufacturing, either."

The way I see it, global conglomerates are required because so few people(me included) have any idea where their food comes from, or what is in their food, or how the food got to their plate.

"Certainly all other jobs depend on the agricultural ones, but it's a much further distance between most manufacturing/service jobs than it used to be a hundred years ago."

And that distance is, in my mind, the reason our overall energy use, and overall impact on the planet, has done nothing but increase every year.

[MiJaMu]

10. this is stupid

there is no such thing as ecological credit. It is a stupid article about overpopulation. Overpopulation will take care of itself if we let it. If we continue to prop up those areas that were never capable of supporting their population (i.e. desert areas of Africa) we are only setting it up for a more gruesome failure in the future.

[bread_and_roses]

14. That remark is not only ignorant but depraved

The American consumer is having a far larger negative impact on the ecosystem than the people living in the "desert areas of Africa." And much of the poverty and environmental destruction in the "Third World" is the direct result of economic Imperialism raping those lands for their raw materiels. And there is a direct correlation between economic security and the status of women and birth rates. People who can't be reasonably sure their children won't starve to death have more.

And your recipe for letting the poor of the world simply starve to death....are you by chance imitiating "A Modest Proposal" or are you actually serious?

[GliderGuider]

16. It's an article about overconsumption

Overpopulation and overconsumption are two factors in the ecological footprint argument. In most variants of this argument, the culprit is assumed to be overconsumption. There is one human activity that is directly and indisputably tied to population, though. That activity is agriculture. Here is an excerpt from an article that explores that relationship:

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population%20and%20Food%20Production.html">The Ecology of Overpopulation

Eating is as close to a constant activity across human cultures as we are likely to find. Regardless of where we live or how rich we are, an adult human needs to eat between 2,000 and 2,800 calories a day. Most of us do not need more (though some of us may consume somewhat more, to our long-term detriment) and we cannot survive for long on less. Compared to other human activities such as driving automobiles or working in factories, the amount we eat is influenced very little by either cultural or individual circumstances. What we eat may change from place to place, but the amount we eat always stays in that narrow range of 2,000 to 2,800 calories per day. An Australian or a Finn may consume 50 times more energy than a Bangladeshi, but they all eat about the same amount of food.

A similar uniformity holds true for the technology of food production as well. Whether we consider grain production, fishing or animal husbandry, the technology used is remarkably similar from place to place. Similar amounts of arable land with similar inputs produce similar yields. With the rise of industrial agriculture, the inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, machinery and irrigation water) have become largely standardized. This standardization has been assisted by the global trade in food. If a country needs more food than it can produce, there is little impediment, short of extreme poverty, to them importing the deficit. The food production technology of one country is effectively at the disposal of any other country through the mechanism of trade. The production of a calorie of food can therefore be considered to have a fairly constant ecological cost that is relatively evenly distributed across the overall production activity.

This reveals an important chain of logic. If the production of an “average” calorie of food has a fairly constant ecological cost, then the aggregate, global impact of food production depends mainly on the number of calories produced. And if the number of calories consumed by an “average” person is likewise fairly constant, then the total number of calories to be produced depends mainly on the number of people to be fed.

That line of reasoning leads us to the following insight. Given that global levels of food production and consumption are balanced (so there is little overall shortage or surplus), the ecological impact of food production is directly proportional to the global population.

[pitohui]

17. habitat destruction looks the same whether in america, europe, or africa to my eye

i agree w. glider, it's just plain too many mouths chasing too much food

much of the usa is agricultural desert, you can drive for hundreds of miles in the midwest or the mississippi delta and never encounter any natural habitat, it's all degraded whether for soy or corn, i remember reading that in one of the "i" states (was it indiana?) that literally the only known habitats of some of the native wildflowers were tiny patches around old gravestones (the kind that stand up and can't be mowed easily) -- that little stands between those plants and extinction and no one sheds a tear, just more corn, more corn, more corn and if people can't keep eating all that damn corn well by damn make it into ethanol or something

we're eating the world and it isn't just africa -- there are certainly scary scenes of habitat destruction in africa but they are pretty much just doing as we do

when we bitch about ranchers sneaking their cows onto national parks in kenya -- hello? in america we also have ranchers -- MILLIONAIRE ranchers in some cases -- using our public lands for cattle, what's wrong w. this picture? it isn't less destructive when the rich man does it

[GliderGuider]

20. Agriculture = Habitat destruction

We are eating the rest of the world's species out of house and home.

And it's not just happening on land. 90% of the large fish in the world oceans are gone. Why? We ate them.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. How about the desert areas of Nevada? New Mexico?

There is NO way that there should be more than 5000 people living in Las Vegas. That area cannot support any more without "propping up".

Don't blame it on the 3rd world.

[kutastha]

18. The world's a petri dish...

... and just like bacteria, we can't subsist on our own detritus.

[Raston]

19. Kids - response is dead on

Everybody's so upset about the first response regarding having
so many kids, but think about it for just a sec - the American
culture comes from a strongly religious base, and the first
thing they tell you is to have more kids.  'Be Fruitful and
Multiply', and the more religious you are the more that's a
facet of your psychology.
What did Anne Coultier remind us of?  "God says this
Earth is ours, it belongs to use to use as we please - take
it, use it, rape it, it's yours."  That's what their old
religion represents.
Step one - plan your family.  What can you afford?  Do you
need to use condoms regularly or just get snipped?  If you
have seven kids, that's too many unless you're a
multi-millionaire.  This is no longer the 1800's where kids
died of 'bad humors', the survival rate is fantastic.  Two
children are statistically all a family needs anymore to
sustain its bloodline, not twelve.
With this sense of rationality comes less waste - not just
fewer diapers but a real understanding of what your family
needs.  Seven kids requires two large gas-guzzling American
Fords, as opposed to one or two where the whole family can get
around in a Honda two-door.
Look at the Chinese, their culture, what they're consuming and
how they treat people.  With masses comes disposability -
children are precious, you're shaping a life.  Take your time
and raise the one or two as carefully as you can.
Then apply that perspective to the world around you.
Stop being offended and think about how you were raised, what
it means, and what actions are reasonable in this modern
world.
And for pete's sake, Vote for Obama.  Not Kucinich or the
Boston Tea Party (seriously, look it up, they're on the
ballot) - don't throw away your vote.

[glinda]

96. Thanks! And that was excellent and

exactly the point (s) which you so eloquently put. I have had 55 years to think about this.

[Raston]

21. (and, after all that..)

I failed to mention marriage (tax credits), and with marriage
comes kids (more tax credits).  Even if you're on welfare,
those wanting more money do what?  Have more kids.
It's driven by a religious base (especially Republican),
making these laws to encourage what?  More Kids, because
everybody who attends church and sees the playgrounds in the
back yards knows that the first thing you teach your kids is
religion, and thus the self-propagating cycle.

[The2ndWheel]

22. And the same way the economy was propped up again using the same

methods that got us into the mess in the first place, we'll do the same thing about the environment. We'll change the color of the economy, and think the rules don't apply.

[Irish Girl]

36. Whose doing more damage, the family living in a grass hut or the billionaire with six homes?

:eyes:

[cobalt1999]

43. The large family in a grass hut.

This isn't about who uses the most energy. It's the ability of the earth to support the number of humans on it right now. The billionaire isn't eating 30 times the amount of food as the large family in a grass hut.

This "inconvenient truth" is that planet cannot support the humans on it right now. Once fish stocks collapse (and they are close), starvation WILL start occurring.

[Irish Girl]

46. The richest 2% own nearly 50% of global assets and resources

Sorry Cobalt, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Whose using the most resources during their lifetime? Who owns the food supplies?

When the richest 2% own almost 50% of global assets and resources, there is simply a massive imbalance. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe anyone who has children should be fully prepared to adequately support the little rugrat(s). But rich nations with nasty habits of over consumption, hoarding resources and constantly taking more than they give back to the earth is what is unsustainable.

[GliderGuider]

48. We're arguing about angels on the head of a pin here

There is nothing whatsoever about our civilization (and in fact our species itself in its current situation) that is even remotely sustainable. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Not sustainable, no how, no way. Our numbers are not sustainable. Our use of the world's natural capital is not sustainable. Our pollution is not sustainable. Our interference wioth other species is not sustainable.

Situations that can't be sustained, aren't.

Sooner or later all unsustainable situations change to something sustainable. That's happening to us. The machine is stopping. Grinding to a halt. Running out of steam. Collapsing under its own weight.

Arguing over who is to blame, who should take responsibility, who should bear the burden entirely misses the point.

[cobalt1999]

49. Exactly.

There is not enough renewable and sustainable food sources for the total number of humans on the planet, no matter how it's distributed. The fact is very soon people will starve off.

It's inevitable.

[Irish Girl]

51. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, there is enough to feed everyone

If the available food was distributed according to need, it would be sufficient to feed everyone in the world, providing 2 720 kcal per person per day. But the reality is that 17 countries have severe food supply problems

http://www.fao.org/NEWS/1998/981204-e.htm">Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Work in FAO shows that world agriculture can produce enough to feed humanity in the future without putting excessive pressure on prices or the environment. The existence of 780 million chronically hungry people in the developing world today shows that there is something fundamentally wrong in the distribution of food and the resources with which to access it.

FAO, 2002, p.9
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/003/y6265E/Y6265E.pdf

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.

Poverty is the principal cause of hunger. The causes of poverty include poor people's lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict, and hunger itself. As of 2008 (2004 statistics), the World Bank has estimated that there were an estimated 982 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1 a day or less (World Bank, Understanding Poverty, Chen 2004).

[GliderGuider]

52. I think it's a bit narrow to say poverty is the principal cause of hunger

That's a truism, but it's nowhere near a root cause.

Where does the poverty come from? What causes income and power disparities to increase as a civilization becomes more complex? Is there anything that can be done to reduce the disparities significantly while the underlying complexity remains intact? Does hierarchy always result in disparity (i.e. wealth and power flowing upward)? Does the management of complexity require hierarchy, or can a complex system be managed with egalitarian governance? Is there evidence that such a thing is possible? Has such a thing happened before in history, on a scale that would make the lessons applicable to modern civilization?

Saying that "poverty causes hunger", while true, is not terribly helpful.

[Irish Girl]

54. Understanding monetary policy may help shed light

Your questions are indeed probing and I wished more people asked them. As a young lass, I've spent many years wondering much of the same. What causes poverty and what determines wealth? Furthermore, what causes inflation (which eats away at purchasing power of our wealth), and where does money for interest we pay on loans come from? Witnessing family and friends consume while falling further into debt made personal finance a personal obsession of mine. I became determined not to fall into the same traps and set out to discover the financial system.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with monetary policy, GliderGuider, but my own research into these matters led me to a shocking revelation. I believe poverty is unfortunately inevitable under our current global money system, a debt-based fiat currency. The Top 1% wealthy elite figured out centuries ago how to suck wealth from the hands of the bottom (the working class) to the Top (the few, or the one) through a clever monetary scheme. They've determined how the current monetary system is designed and unfortunately we play by their rules, but by nature the monetary system is a giant Ponzi scheme and fundamentally unsustainable.

If you're interested in learning more about how monetary policy operates, "Money As Debt" is a great introductory presentation.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&ei=8r8ISYvzGYeQrALwkM2nDA&q=money+as+debt&hl=en

This story, while cute, is also worth browsing through as it does touch upon some very serious questions
http://www.relfe.com/plus_5_.html">I Want The Earth, Plus 5%

Even if you dismiss these two resources, please, please continue your journey in seeking answers to the questions you've posed. Questions like yours are exactly what can break the cycle of self-destruction and perhaps lead humanity toward a more sustainable future.

[GliderGuider]

57. Thanks. I've seen "Money as Debt"

I think it's a remarkable piece of work. It has the mark of genius, which is to make a complex idea seem obvious without diminishing it. Because of that piece, I now think we're facing a deflationary depression as debt/credit/money (all basically the same thing) evaporates from the market, rather than the hyperinflation that most are afraid of. Which does not bode at all well for people trying to buy food.

My questions are really more structural than that, though. They go to the nature of complex adaptive systems (like our civilization), and the interactions of those systems with both biologically evolved human nature and our modern cultural narrative. Considered at that level, the fiat money system and its evil step-child, fractional reserve banking, while they cause many ills, are themselves really just symptoms of those interactions.

[cobalt1999]

53. As the OP mentioned, there is enough food NOW because we are "deficit spending" the environment

Is there enough food right this minute? Yes and people still starve due to a number of injustices. I totally agree with the the UN report on the current situation.

That's not the point though. A better question for the UN is...Is the current level of food production sustainable? The answer is No. The UN has stated as much saying meat eating can no longer be sustained.

Also, google "declining fish stocks" and read the news.

Here is a story from this week alone.

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Nile Perch fish stocks in Lake Victoria, which is shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, plunged 42 percent this year due to over-fishing, the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization said.
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=a90Z54YI20gU&refer=africa

What's going to happen to those Africans when the lake is barren? It's not because some billionaire ate them all either.

Global fish stocks are down worldwide. Why? Because our current rate of fishing the oceans & lakes is beyond the replenishment rate.

The problem is too many people.

[villager]

60. OP here. And that's right. Meat will have to go soon...

...though I wonder if we'll have to have the first mass die-off shocks for people to "get it..."

we are the drunken, reckless sailors of food and energy consumption, as a species, and we're about to wake up rolled...

[tama]

61. There is

about 30 ares arable land per capita in the world plus gathering, fishing and hunting, planting forests and drylands with edible trees. Mother Earth is still bountifull and could support sustainably even our current bloated numbers and then some. With permaculture cultivation and mostly vegetarian diet.

What she cannot support is our consumerism and destructive industrial farming methods, urban sprawl etc.

[GliderGuider]

63. According to my figures there are only 0.51 acres of arable land per person in the world.

Global arable land according to http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/agr_ara_lan_hec-agriculture-arable-land-hectares : 1,365,069,800 hectares, which is 3.5 billion acres. With 6.7 billion people in the world, that comes out to 0.51 acres per person.

According to http://tranquileye.com/clock even if we count "productive land" (that includes arable land, pasture and forest), there are only 2.1 acres per person. And we are losing about 28,000 of those acres every day, as the world population grows by 200,000 people.

The oceans are, for all intents and purposes, dead. We've eaten everything of importance in them already.

The only way we can feed our current population is by destroying the habitat of other species (and in many cases the species themselves), by borrowing from the past in the form of fossil fuel, and by stealing opportunity and hope from the future.

There is absolutely nothing about our civilization that is sustainable, let alone our agricultural practices. When considered in broad ecological terms, even permaculture is nothing but a slightly slower planetary poison.

[tama]

67. Wikipedia claims

19,824,000 km² (7.65 million square miles) arable land. About 2,000,000,000 hectares or 200,000,000,000 ares. Divided by 6,7 billion that leaves about 30 ares per capita.

As one acre is about 40 ares, our numbers are close enough. With intensive permaculture gardening, it does not take many ares to feed a person.

There is no disagreement that there is absolutely nothing about our civilization that is sustainable, let alone our standard agricultural practices. But how is permaculture, natural gardening, agroforestry etc. "but a slightly slower planetary poison"?

A 300 years old food forest in Vietnam - the past and the future:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ZgzwoQ-ao

[GliderGuider]

68. Sorry, I misread "ares" as "acres".

Given the measurement inaccuracies and varying definitions of "arable", we're close enough.

I tend to be a hard-liner when it comes to agriculture. My position is that any and all agriculture (as distinct from horticulture) is ecologically harmful and unsustainable. Inasmuch as permaculture can be considered horticulture, it is obviously less damaging than totalitarian agriculture. I am unconvinced that any system that can feed 7 billion humans can be sustainable in perpetuity though, especially if other species are accorded intrinsic value and their needs are factored in.

[tama]

69. Fukuoka-san

A japanese "natural farmer" or "horticulturist" who died recently, showed that natural farming (no tilling, no fertilizers, no poisons) gives equal or better crop than industrial or any other "totalitarian" agriculture, once the soil recovers from manipulative robbery called and becomes healthy and vibrant again.

I feel that "we all die no matter what we do" is useless and counterproductive message and a self fulfilling prophecy, we need to hear and see that there are some positive options that we can do / stop doing / learn. Have you read "Garden Planet"? http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=27815

When talking about Eutopia, why settle for anything less than Paradise on Earth, possibly and preferably in just few generations? :)

[GliderGuider]

71. We may well get there.

I have a lot of hope as a result of encountering organizations like Awakening the Dreamer and books like The Ascent of Humanity, Derrick Jensen's Endgame and Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest.

However, I see ideas like permaculture as yet more deckchair tango, and I think that the revolution that's needed (and may be coming) far eclipses such efforts. Others are free to believe in them, they are obviously better than Roundup, ammonium nitrate and John Deere. It's just that I don't believe they're what is truly needed -- they are not commensurate with the scale of the problem.

[tama]

76. Friend,

we are dreaming the same dream - or variations of, and variety is beauty. :)

My current path in this dream is to study gardening in a public gardening school, hoping some day (soon) to find or found an "ecovillage" that suits my habits and calling as shaman's little helper.

Thank you for being there. :)

[GliderGuider]

77. I did a search on DU a little while ago

for "anarcho-primitivism", and your handle popped up. I knew then we weren't too far apart :-)

[tama]

82. Well

I did some actual reading of Zerzan awhile ago, and found out that he has still a lot to learn - and forget. But not sure if he is able. :)

[GliderGuider]

85. I liked Zerzan a lot in the early small doses I got

Trying to read his larger works has left me less impressed. However, his deconstruction of the union movement in "Elements of Refusal" changed my mind about unions forever.

I'm really liking Derrick Jensen so far, though.

[tama]

87. My problems were

the articles "Against language" and "Against art". Zerzan should liberate himself from civilized language of bivalent "either-or"-logic and accept language of "both-and".

[pitohui]

70. mother nature is NOT bountiful, that's the whole issue

you know, your post sounds nice, because it allows the person to avoid making hard choices -- it reminds me of the story of pandora's box, hope was the last evil to fly out because it CAN be evil -- while you are hoping for what can never be, the real world marches on

nature is not your mother, and while it may be possible for some people to survive by living a mean, miserable life of subsistence farming where meat is a rarity -- hey-- that's the way serfs lived in feudal times, after all -- it is not a life worth the living for most people

something about life in a state of nature being nasty, brutish, and short

anyone who thinks nature "bountiful" needs to actually get OUT into nature and i don't mean freaking central park

i mean get out in areas of africa where people are still living this "bountiful" life of subsistence agriculture -- look at the land -- so eroded and degraded that there are areas where there is nothing left but thorn tree and if not for the goat (who can eat thorn tree and change it into usable protein)or the chicken (which can change insects scratched for in the dirt to usable protein) huge populations would be dead already

being a vegetarian is a luxury of the well to do -- probably why it was associated with the highest caste in india (it's my belief that eastern indian religions have greatly influenced the modern vegetarian movement, being a vegetarian is so often a class issue here in america, poor people don't have time to waste on it)

we simply have too many people in this world, if you think everybody quitting meat is going to do anything except kill a lot of people you've never met...well, that's nice for you, i guess

i suggest travel, it will open your eyes

poor people don't want and usually as a practical matter can't become vegetarians living lightly on the land, they have to take everything they can get because they have so little...and still it isn't enough

THAT is the problem

what we have divided by 7 billion people ISN'T enough, supposedly we're already consuming 40% of the biomass for our own food, in other words, we are literally KILLING the other species, especially the plants, which are going extinct at amazing rates

a woman in kenya in this century, the 21st won a nobel peace prize (i think it was the nobel) for trying to save TREES -- now think about that for a minute, how scary that is, that we have widespread areas where TREES are endangered because poor people can't think of tomorrow, they have to boil water or else die of dysentery today and so the trees are removed to be burned up and you have these wide areas that are just nothing but some kind of real scrub grass that nothing can eat and the thorn trees in drainage ditches that only the goats can eat -- it's really frightening -- TREES are something in areas of kenya that you go to parks to see, seriously -- they even had to have signs up in some villages warning people they would be put in prison if caught cutting the few remaining trees

THAT is the problem

[GliderGuider]

73. A small disagreement -- nature is in fact bountiful, just not for 7 billion people.

Humanity was a sustainable presence on the earth for almost two million years, and according to Marshall Sahlins and others we spent only about 4 hours a day working. The key was that during that time (until 8,000 years ago or so) our population never rose over a few million people. When we get back to that level, we'll be sustainable again and will be able to go back to living well on 4 hours of work a day. Getting from here to there may not be without its discomforts, though...

[riverdeep]

75. Looking at Africa today and concluding that nature is inherently

stingy doesn't really make the point. Africa today looks nothing like it did in the past. Even forty years ago. 60 minutes had a piece this past Sunday about an American entrepreneur trying to save an African wilderness. One part included a man who was driven away from the area by war, and when he returned, he looked for the animals that had been present in the thousands. He wandered for weeks without seeing an animal.

Here's the story:

("One Man's Plan To Save A Natural Treasure")
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/24/60minutes/main4543667.shtml

[tama]

80. Strange

Africa is the place where man originated. And the most enviromental devastation has happened there during just these last few decades - the latest and final phase of capitalistic colonialism/imperialism called "globalization".

[tama]

79. There is a lot of anger in you

no worries, that happens. A lot. Especially if one fears Nature. :)

Nature is indeed my mother, in my language Nature means also the same or similar what "Kundalini" means in Sanskrit.

I have done my travels, now I'm going back home. It's somewhere in the middle of forest. In the heart.

[cobalt1999]

95. Only if you want to turn every plot of arable land on the earth over to supporting humans?

Then what happens in a couple of generations when the population has increased yet again?

Fishing & Hunting? What fish? We've already wiped them all out as it is. What hunting when all land is used for farming?

What about people in countries without much arable land?

What about droughts and floods that take out major portions of food production on occasion?

Sorry, you are living in a dreamland if you believe the planet can sustain us at our current levels.

Forget the New Age "Bountiful Mother Earth" BS, we like any species tend to breed until our food supply runs out, then starvation reduces the numbers. It is inevitable.

[tama]

89. The only inconvenient truth

is that there is hardly anything as ugly, greedy and selfish as the attitude "let's kill all the poor sobs so that "we American middleclass" can keep to our consumerist lifestyle that requires 6 planets Earth's instead of one to support - if just for a few more years".

[hatrack]

64. "The biotic potential of any species exceeds its carrying capacity"

William Catton, "Overshoot"

[GliderGuider]

66. Catton should be universally required reading.

"Overshoot" fits all this "stuff" that's happening around us into a coherent picture, and what we're doing suddenly becomes obvious. After reading Catton, the question becomes, "Now that I understand, what do I do about it?"

Sign petitions, write letters and blog?
Or something more ... direct?

[hatrack]

81. Then you're probably ready for Derrick Jensen, assuming you're not already there . . .

http://www.endgamethebook.org/

[GliderGuider]

83. I have both volumes of "Endgame"

And I have a copy of Dave Foreman's "Ecodefense" sitting on the shelf waiting patiently for my commitment to match my understanding...

http://www.ecodefense.com/

[tama]

84. If Derrick Jensen

is the guy who suggests that civilization should by aided by violent action in it's self-destruction, then he is a fool. Terrorism is terribly inefficient and 2012-2014 will come soon enough, anyways... :)

A good friend told me a story about woman who was diagnosed with a lethal cancer and not given much time by the doctors. The woman decided she didn't want to live her last days in anger and frustration, but accepted to love the cancer just like all her other organs, realizing they were all part of her, including the cancer. Guess what happened?

[GliderGuider]

86. Yeah, society is monkey-wrenching itself pretty effectively, as far as I can see.

I'm still trying to find out how the "direct action" stream mingles with the "consciousness and love" stream for me. They both have a very strong pull.

[tama]

88. What I've realized

is that love and hate are basically the same emotion. Hate is love giving into fear, love is freedom from fear.

Facing one's fears, those that are most deep and hidden, is not easy. It's deadly... to begin with... ;)

Remember, without organ called heart it is difficult to be... :)

[riverdeep]

78. I made a post expressing very much the same sentiment

during the height of the Paulson plan fiasco. Understandably, there weren't many responses; people were consumed by economic fears. I said that what we had done to the American economy- basically having good times on credit, not paying attention to warning signs, etc. is exactly like what we were doing to the natural world, and when that creditor comes calling, there will be nowhere to run, and will make getting tossed out of your home seem likea pleasant dream.

Of course, the economy and the problems of the natural world are intimately tied. Even if the economy as we know it recovers, without fundamental structural changes to how we function, it will only buy us time before the real crash.