Humans living far beyond planet's means: WWF

(Reuters) ^ | Tue Oct 24, 6:29 AM ET | Ben Blanchard

[flyingtabby]

BEIJING (Reuters) - 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.

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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.

[Sue Perkick]

LOL. It seemed like some did and some didn't. :)

Wow. That's been a while. It was more fun back then.

[LonePalm]

You have fallen into a common fallacy.

You forgot to include technology change in the equation. In the last 30 years we have doubled the number of cars on the road and yet cut total automobile pollution. Cars are safer, get better gas mileage, and require fewer repairs even though the number of passenger miles is way up.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[giznort]

First of all, Flyingtabby, I'm disappointed that you don't have a home page to fit your sceen name. Dang! As for this article, it is the typical claptrap from the Al Gore type idiots who think that what we do in the course of normal human events ruins the planet. Did God not say "be fruitful and multiply"? Surely He who created the earth and all that is in it can give and take things away from us. At His will. Of course, we are to be responsible stewarts of that entrusted to us. All in all, this is another chicken little article by some hemp-wearing toe-jam sandle freak thinking that we ought to limit our population ala the Chinese method and save the world. I just don't buy it. It's a shame because Yahoo is eating this up big time.

[CountryBumpkin]

Would that be "The Iron Sheik" Khosrow Vaziri? Ah! The good ole days of "The Polish Power" Ivan Putski, Tony Atlas , and Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.

[Centurion2000]

Meanwhile Kim Jong Il has released "studies" that show he was the inventor of the automobile, the airplane and the nuclear weapon. Other "studies" from Norkland revealed that NK standards of living are far above the rest of the planet.

These are actually BELIEVED in Norkland.

[Centurion2000]

Well, common sense tells you that there is only so much land for vegetation and raising cows. At some point we will reach saturation.

70% of this planet is not currently being used by human habitation or cultivation. There is PLENTY of room.

[CountryBumpkin]

Lil' Kim also invented porn. But he does concede that Algore invented the internet.

[Left2Right]

WWF = Malthus XCXVII

[Waco]

No solutions permited!

[BlazingArizona]

If this is true, then why does the US have more of its acreage in preserves and parks than any other country? As we demand more resources to feed our lifestyle, our technology improves to plug the gap. Now that China is industrializing, it's becoming the "super-America" of resource utilization, causing this human process of pushing technology even faster.

[xc1427]

Amen, brother.

[xc1427]

I understand your point. The Chrysler building in the 1930's was the standard. People were much more impresses what that building than the Empire State Building. How the mighty have fallen.

[John Lenin]

Wrong Again

The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)

I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)

In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)

This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976

If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

---

[ProtectOurFreedom]

You should read the actual book, "The Limits to Growth," or just the abstract. The authors did not blindly believe the "predictions" of their models. Some key points from the 1972 abstract:

• If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.
• It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future.
• Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful.
• We shall emphasize just one more time that none of these computer outputs is a prediction. We would not expect the real world to behave like the world model in any of the graphs we have shown, especially in the collapse modes.
• The exact timing of these events is not meaningful, given the great aggregation and many uncertainties in the model.

The great irony is the Western, developed world (and Japan, too) has dropped below replacement birth rates, while the Muslim world is growing way beyond replacement rates. The West has adopted the birth rate controls recommended in the report and is bound for extinction because the Muslim world is ignoring them.

[Drammach]

I think you could put the entire world's population in the state of Texas and still have room left over..

[driftless2]

"crops"

I have a friend who grew up on a farm and one day was bemoaning the loss of good farm land to development. I mentioned to him that they don't need as much farm land as they did even decades ago to feed the population. His argument didn't really make sense. If we have enough land to grow crops and feed the population (and obviously we do), why would this suggest to him that developed ex-farm land was a bad thing?

He didn't have an answer for me. He didn't understand that land can be used for more than one thing. But many people, mostly libs, think like he does.

[driftless2]

A very large percentage are crooks, charlatans, AND economic ignoramuses. One can be all three. And many lefties are all three.

[BlazingArizona]

Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful.

So not only was "The limits to Growth" dead wrong, but we're not even supposed to challenge its predictions?

On the real Earth, human populations that "overconsume" are also the ones that innovate their way out of whatever shortage is most threatening.

[Muleteam1]

>>I think you could put the entire world's population in the state of Texas and still have room left over.<<

Yep I've lived on the east side of the State where half the world's population already lives.

[Old Professer]

Calling the earth a planet is a clever use of words, it somehow makes the world as we know it a much smaller and malleable place.

Makes you want to cuddle it and soothe its sores.