Posted on 10/24/2006 7:13:15 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
OK, time out!
Someone in the WWF please define this-obviously highly charged--term "consumptive lifestyle".
Please show me a life form that does not consume?
The average Australian used 6.6 "global" hectares...
What the heck is a "global hectare"? This term positively reeks of hidden agenda and deception.
The "basis"of all these"studies"is the same thing!And that is that human beings are the greatest threat to the survival of mother earth!!Everything was hunkey dorey before we got here!!!It's the same old SH*T!!!!!!!!!
Good observation!
Plus, the deforestation is being done by backward cultures who are living the lifestyles touted by the left. Our lib friends forget that London was a cesspool under blackened skies in the "good old days." Only modern technology has enabled mankind to clean up the atmosphere. Literally thousands of examples bear this out.
The Yahoo article (and the position of the WWF) is pure, unadulterated, B.S.
Do you have a point? If so, you did not make it.
Would you mind explaining at just what point we will run out of (a) land, (b) vegatation, or (c) cows?
Personally I do not believe we will ever run out of land. I have driven across this nation, and I know for a fact there are places you can drive for hundreds of miles and not see anything but the road ahead and the road behind you. We have the technological means to turn this land into productive land, if we needed to. At this time there is no need to.
Growing food for the world is not the problem, it will never be the problem. Distribution of the food remains the problem. There are too many governments that use food as a weapon.
Too many people are not the problem either. There are places in this world (look at Tokyo) where large number of people can and do live, work and play in a very small space.
The problem is that there are some that think they knew how you and I should live. They want to restrict what you and I can do. One way of doing this is to scare us into thinking if we do not put them in charge, the world would end at some future date.
Well having seen how well the old Soviet Union did, and how Cuba and North Korea are working, I can only say, if we turn our selves over to these doom and gloomers, the world may very well end as they say, since they will take what is working and destroy it.
Or maybe they could pull their lower lips over their respective heads and swallow..........
Yeah, and don't you just LOVE how this article happened to be published from Beijing???? I'll bet the ChiComs funded the so-called study, and of course mandated it had to be done to their guidelines, accepting only the results that they wanted to see........
GREAT ideas - all the way thru! LOVE your thought process! Can we get rid of the ChiComs along with the Muslims? And maybe include Kim Jung Il and his band??? Hillary (oh God I hope so...) could also be thrown off the planet....
I was on the farm until 20 years ago. I was 38 when I left.
I tend to agree with your farmer friend. Good soil is a gift God gave to America, and to a few other places on the planet. We need to treat it carefully.
Farmers have been stewards of the soil since the country was founded, and to see it turn into a highway or mall is a little disturbing. I'm not suggesting stopping development, but the loss of such a limited resource shouldn't be treated lightly.
I grew up seeing first hand the difference between good soil and poor soil. Corn is $2.50 in the midwest today, mostly grown on good soil. If it was mostly grown on poorer soil, like a good share of our farm had, corn would easily be $10 a bushel, and your grocery bill would probably be 2 or 3 or 4 times what it is today. A lot less red meat too.
We've come a long ways, but your bread and butter is highly dependant on that top 6 inches of soil in the midwest.
The truth is clever?
I think we would all agree the planet earth has a finite "carrying capacity." Is it 10 billion people? 20 billion? 100 billion? The book's authors stressed they were not making specific time-based forecasts, just that there is a finite capacity. I recall the authors later admitted that they did not take full account of the capabilities of technological innovation to stretch out the time horizons over which the earth would be exhausted.
I find the great irony to be that Western nations and Japan have largely implemented the recommendations in the book with regards to limiting population growth, improved energy efficiency, improvements in agricultural efficiency and reduction of pollution. Yet, in the end, what will we have to show for it? Probably the end of Western Civ and the hand-over of the planet to the muzzies are totally disregarding the population control recommendations made by the Club of Rome.
Yet on average the world is a little more free, capitalist and prosperous each generation. (Excepting of course the years of the Carter administration.)
This is what really bothers the left. More and more societies on the globe are developing a level of prosperity that allows individuals to make effective choices about how to order their own lives, and provides them the resources and motivation to defend that freedom. So the doomsday lie becomes more desperate and fanatically inflated with each iteration.
You miss my point. We only need as much farm land as needed. It might be good for farming, but land has other uses...in many cases development. It is not automatically and in perpetuity farm land. If we needed more farm land to grow crops, we would be doing so.
My point was that as a practical matter, we are already using all the good farmland. From here on out we will be using second choice land.
Yes, there's much more land out there, but all the good stuff is already in production. When mall and highways and new developments are built, especially in the Midwest, they are being built on prime farmland.
I'm satisfied with the capitalistic method of determining the best use for land, it just gives a little pain every time I see good land being covered up.
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