Enviormental report paints a bleak picture

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2007-10-27 07:18pm

Everywhere you turn there's more bad news on the environment. According to a new report released by the UN, it's not just other species that are in danger, humans are too. The United Nations Environment Program has released the Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) report, and it doesn't make for happy reading.

Covering environmental news can be a bit depressing at times; you're constantly reading about disappearing polar bears or fish or bees, or the fact that new data suggests that CO2 is rising faster than we thought and it's going to get even hotter. Unfortunately for the optimists, GEO-4 compounds that stream of bad news. Complied by almost 400 leading scientists in their fields, the report paints a picture of a planetary population living well beyond their means.

Although there have been a few notable successes, such as the Montreal Protocol that stopped the continued depletion of the ozone layer, they're very few and very far between. On the other hand, crises are brewing anywhere one chooses to look.

The seas, studies show, are rapidly being depleted of fish stocks by overfishing. At the same time, warming temperatures are eradicating the coral reefs, sources of massive biodiversity, and agricultural run-off is creating enormous dead zones of deoxygenated water, devoid of life. Consumption of sea food tripled in the 40 years following 1961, and subsidies for fishing fleets have created a huge excess capacity. Many fish stocks have been depleted to the point where they will never recover.

The oceans aren't our only water problem. Fresh water, an absolute necessity, is also in trouble. Water supplies are increasingly polluted; contaminated water is the leading cause of death worldwide. The report points out that 70 percent of all fresh water is used for irrigation, but meeting the food needs of our ever expanding global population would require doubling current output over the next five decades. With precipitation changes already being seen thanks to climate change, that's a bleak prospect. Industrial pollutants, from heavy metals to organic compounds, abound in the biosphere, and that means they abound in our food supply. While all of these problems disproportionately affect the poorer regions of the planet, the industrialized world is hardly exempt.

According to studies, our use of natural resources is unsustainable. We currently use a third more than the planet has to offer, and that's with less than a 6th of the global population living in industrialized countries. Despite the rapid development of China and India, the resources simply do not exist to allow their billions of citizens to enjoy the same lifestyles seen in the US or Europe.

The human population of planet Earth is, in effect, maxed out on its credit cards and soon will have problems paying the mortgage. Unless concerted global efforts are made to address these mounting problems, GEO-4 concludes that we shall shortly pass the point of no return.

From where I'm sitting, that's the most depressing part. Despite the stakes being so very high, a global consensus regarding how to tackle these mounting problems seems virtually impossible to come by. National interests and politics, vested interests and a degree of short-sightedness remain the order of the day. Populations are going to continue to skyrocket, with a predicted 9 billion by 2050. What kind of world will that be to live in, I wonder?

DarthShady · Post by **DarthShady** » 2007-10-27 07:47pm

A dark vision of the future.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-10-27 08:27pm

Green is the new red. There's nothing wrong with the environment, the market will substitute existing resources for even better ones for even more intense growth than before, and this is all simply the anti-progress lobby trying to destroy the sovereign state and institute world socialism, complete with death camps. Now through the backdoor, since the front failed. We have 300 years of oil left, even though now even the IEA and EIA admit we've reached a conventional plateau for the foreseeable future. Russia will have infinite resources, and after them, we'll melt the ice caps and get them there, or Antarctica. Really, we need to increase spending on military applications because all future threats are evil terrorists with plentiful nuclear or biological weapons. Also, we need to remove legal and social limits on our leaders in confronting both the New Totalitarianism of Green Marxism and Islamofascism. Liberals need to stop worrying about gays being beaten or being forced to pray to Christ at school and start worrying about reciting the Koran and wearing veils. They need to be GRATEFUL for the latter.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2007-10-27 11:44pm

Ive read editorials - and heard comments - very similar to that.

Zablorg · Post by **Zablorg** » 2007-10-27 11:54pm

It has occured to me a couple times that we might be able to launch all our waste and stuff into space. And since the universe is constantly expanding, we pretty much have an infinite amount of space to put it in, don't we?

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2007-10-27 11:55pm

Yes, but 8km/s (speed necessary to get into orbit) is a hell of a price to pay.

Tasoth · Post by **Tasoth** » 2007-10-28 12:36am

For some reason, with all the upcoming problems, I really don't see the world population hitting 9 Billion by 2050. Or even if we do hit it, we won't hold it for very long before mass death spreads a crossed the world. And I'm not deluded enough to think that the first world nations won't be hit, which is what saddens me the most because I really don't think my family line will make it past something like that.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-10-28 12:49am

I think we'll end up with a Command and Conquer 3 GDI kind of situation where a small number of first world wealthy and fortunate live near the upper regions of the world, near Alaska, northern Canada, Europe and such while most of the rest of the world is desert.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-10-28 12:55am

Zablorg wrote:It has occured to me a couple times that we might be able to launch all our waste and stuff into space. And since the universe is constantly expanding, we pretty much have an infinite amount of space to put it in, don't we?

You must be very seriously misinformed if you think that landfill is a significant problem compared to the real environmental issues at hand.

As for the original article, it paints a bleak picture but not one that should come as any surprise to anyone. We are simply fulfilling one of nature's laws: any species will expand and multiply until its environment can no longer support it. We are the only species that harbours the illusion that it can live in comfort and without constant competition for survival, and if current trends continue, we will soon be disabused of this illusion.

As in the past, it is the poor who will primarily pay the price for our mistakes.

Zablorg · Post by **Zablorg** » 2007-10-28 01:01am

Indeed so good sir. But I was thinking more of the animals than of our resource problem.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2007-10-28 01:15am

They are already in a mass extinction event. At this point, be concerned for *our* species survival.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-10-28 01:32am

Enforcer Talen wrote:Ive read editorials - and heard comments - very similar to that.

Almost everything in that post was a paraphrasing of something someone on this board has said, with a little synchronization with their general political aims with some satirical exaggeration injected. But a few of the claims are completely verbatim without alteration.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2007-10-28 03:12am

Darth Wong wrote:
Zablorg wrote:It has occured to me a couple times that we might be able to launch all our waste and stuff into space. And since the universe is constantly expanding, we pretty much have an infinite amount of space to put it in, don't we?
You must be very seriously misinformed if you think that landfill is a significant problem compared to the real environmental issues at hand.

As for the original article, it paints a bleak picture but not one that should come as any surprise to anyone. We are simply fulfilling one of nature's laws: any species will expand and multiply until its environment can no longer support it. We are the only species that harbours the illusion that it can live in comfort and without constant competition for survival, and if current trends continue, we will soon be disabused of this illusion.

As in the past, it is the poor who will primarily pay the price for our mistakes.

As the only high-technology race on Earth, we do have the ability to avoid reaching our limits on space and food.

What we seem to lack is the self-control to do so...so not only are we killing ourselves, but we can see how to avoid it and haven't gotten off our asses to do so.

hongi · Post by **hongi** » 2007-10-28 03:59am

It has occured to me a couple times that we might be able to launch all our waste and stuff into space. And since the universe is constantly expanding, we pretty much have an infinite amount of space to put it in, don't we?

Thinking a little further ahead, Earth is basically a closed resource system. Materials come through comets, but generally the Earth has been recyling the same materials for billions of years. If we keep on punting waste out there, we're basically depleting our resources. Resources that could be put to better use through recycling.

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2007-10-28 06:53am

Enviormental report paints a bleak picture

Do they paint any other kind?

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2007-10-28 07:29am

Zixinus wrote:
Enviormental report paints a bleak picture
Do they paint any other kind?

Yeah, don't they know they're upsetting us? Who do they think they are?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2007-10-28 09:40am

When humanity is cancer, all life gets washed away...

Every time I read one of these things, I keep thinking the only solution seems to be a bioweapon that sterilises a good portion of the world. Too many people needing too many resources, having too many babies, and a moral duty to feed as many as we can rather than condemning people to death through starvation. It seems then, to cut down the needy, rather than killing actual needy people or attempting to sustain the unsustainable, removing the needy that don't exist yet is preferable.

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2007-10-28 10:24am

Yeah, don't they know they're upsetting us? Who do they think they are?

No, seriously. I have yet of even HEARD of a report that doesn't somehow state that humanity is doomed one way or another. Not that I don't think they are valid, but seriously, the pessimism that gets from these things...

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2007-10-28 11:33am

Zixinus wrote:No, seriously. I have yet of even HEARD of a report that doesn't somehow state that humanity is doomed one way or another. Not that I don't think they are valid, but seriously, the pessimism that gets from these things...

The danger, of course, lies in the prospect of people simply going apathetic. But nevertheless, we need to look unflinchingly at the problem if we are to even begin to try countering it.

Singular Intellect · Post by **Singular Intellect** » 2007-10-28 12:27pm

Zuul wrote:Too many people needing too many resources, having too many babies, and a moral duty to feed as many as we can rather than condemning people to death through starvation. It seems then, to cut down the needy, rather than killing actual needy people or attempting to sustain the unsustainable, removing the needy that don't exist yet is preferable.

That's why I'll never donate a single penny to all those charities showing the starving kids in Africa and such. It's just compounding the problem, they don't have the resources to feed their current population, so why are we feeding their kids who will then turn around and pump out several more who need to be fed?

[R_H] · Post by **[R_H]** » 2007-10-28 12:52pm

Bubble Boy wrote:
Zuul wrote:snip
That's why I'll never donate a single penny to all those charities showing the starving kids in Africa and such. It's just compounding the problem, they don't have the resources to feed their current population, so why are we feeding their kids who will then turn around and pump out several more who need to be fed?

I share the same line of thinking. I don't think there shouldn't be aid though, just not the absolute waste that has been happening for the past few decades. The donate "0.8%" line of thinking is fucking retarded, throwing huge amounts of money and getting no results is and has already happened, a different approach should be tryed. Some basic mechanisation of agriculture could be of help, projects that can be done cheaply, easily and don't require a First World tech level or too much fuel. Couple that with building a few schools and training a few teachers means that the kids that don't have to work all the time on their parent's farms and have some time to go to school, and have the chance for a better future, a future that doesn't require handouts all the fucking time and the pity of the First World.

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2007-10-28 12:56pm

I share the same line of thinking. I don't think there shouldn't be aid though, just not the absolute waste that has been happening for the past few decades. The donate "0.8%" line of thinking is fucking retarded, throwing huge amounts of money and getting no results is and has already happened, a different approach should be tryed. Some basic mechanisation of agriculture could be of help, projects that can be done cheaply, easily and don't require a First World tech level or too much fuel. Couple that with building a few schools and training a few teachers means that the kids that don't have to work all the time on their parent's farms and have some time to go to school, and have the chance for a better future, a future that doesn't require handouts all the fucking time and the pity of the First World.

Isn't that what that rockstar on TED is trying to do? Essentially help the economy so people can help themselves?

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2007-10-28 06:03pm

Tasoth wrote:For some reason, with all the upcoming problems, I really don't see the world population hitting 9 Billion by 2050. Or even if we do hit it, we won't hold it for very long before mass death spreads a crossed the world. And I'm not deluded enough to think that the first world nations won't be hit, which is what saddens me the most because I really don't think my family line will make it past something like that.

The chances of the world population hitting 9 billion by 2050 is essentially nil. That sort of population growth depends on the Green Revolution which has been fueled by cheap petroleum. And we're at peak oil production right now and we're likely coming up on the end of the production plateau inside a decade at the most realistically optimistic. . . and demand has done nothing but grow. As has been stated in pretty much every other thread that is vaguely related to that subject, there's a lot of pie in the sky technologies and empty promises and nothing that's ready to be deployed on the scales needed to wean the world off oil in time to prevent massive upheavals.

Though the end of the Petrochemical Age will certainly solve the planet's overpopulation problems. It will probably also guarantee that we're ecologically fucked . . . as the only way we're going to get off of needing oil like we do is a massive industrial project to build the transitional and new infrastructures needed to maintain civilization after we hit the point where further extraction of fossil fuels costs more energy to perform than the energy obtained in using it which involves . . . lo and behold . . . burning a lot of fossil fuels in an awful big hurry.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2007-10-28 07:26pm

Petroleum I'm only marginally worried about, since there's oil shale and that bacteria that can convert crop stuff into petroleum that's being developed. It'll take time but we do have that angle covered.

Too bad the benefits of that tech won't reach much of the undeveloped world where there will be great dieoffs. Plus the migration to cooler parts of the world.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-10-28 07:50pm

Shinova wrote:Petroleum I'm only marginally worried about, since there's oil shale and that bacteria that can convert crop stuff into petroleum that's being developed. It'll take time but we do have that angle covered.

Too bad the benefits of that tech won't reach much of the undeveloped world where there will be great dieoffs. Plus the migration to cooler parts of the world.

None of the things you described are petroleum substitutes. Sorry.