Slashdot Mirror
Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030
An anonymous reader writes "A recent report warns that humans are overusing the resources of the planet and will need two Earths by the year 2030. The Living Planet Report tells that the demands on natural resources have doubled in the past 50 years and are now outstripping what the Earth can provide by more than half."
if Americans all die tomorrow.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
Israel is a horrible example of sustainability! First of all, they are subsidized by the United States (but lets not get political).... Have you noticed that the Dead Sea is quickly disappearing? Israel uses proportionally magnitudes more water than those of their neighbors. They are sucking the Dead Sea dry to grow cash crops to give the illusion of prosperity (oh, not that all the other countries in the region don't do this as well).
The FACTS are MEGA-Cities of greater than 20M people will become the norm. Natural fresh water will become an ever more scarce and expensive commodity. Levels of pollution will become greater as reliance of these megacities on fossil fuels for electricity and desalinization plants becomes greater. Nuclear power is proliferating, but even that will not compensate for increases in conventional pollution of cars and electrical generation.
And not much changes in our daily lives?.... Can one really say this as the American Middle class is steadily eroding? Your life will not change THAT much, but your childrens' life will be much different.
Anyway, I live in Cairo, Egypt at the moment. It's a city of 20M people and growing bigger every day. This is the future for most of the world, where most of the growth is happening.
I'm an optimist, but from my globetrotting I can say with certainty that there will be resource wars, they have already begun. (Just for a laugh, I suppose you would claim that Iraq was not a resource war?) har har...
No, not really. Organic is still mumbo jumbo. You're assuming that organic all but invented those things...contrary to popular organic opinion, they did not. They just latch onto them. Sure, they make some good claims that are scientifically verifiable, like the importance of maintaining a healthy microbiological community in the soil, the need for biodiversity in the food supply to prevent disease, and promoting low input renewable biological techniques like crop rotation and companion planting methods, but then they heap on the mumbo jumbo with their asinine fear of chemicals (yes, all of them...organic proponents seem unaware that naturally occurring compounds like menthol hesperidin, and capsaicin are also chemicals), their anti-science luddite attacks on genetically modified crops (which have reduced pesticide use and soil damage by way of no till agriculture), and their claims that a plant really cares if a nutrient ion came from horse crap or a nutrient salt.
They're like the alternative medicine woowoos; sure, eating right and getting exercise is a good idea, but using a twig to cure cancer is not, and in both cases, that they are right about some things does not mean that they aren't using magical thinking and pre-scientific nonsense. Any correct conclusion they arrive at they come to for the wrong reasons. For example, they may be right in their claims of organic producing more antioxidants, however, this is not because they're magically natural and natural is better in every way, but because stressed plants tend to make more of those, and organic plants are usually going to live a tougher life. So, they might be correct, but for the wrong reason. To use an analogy; just because a compulsive gambler wins every now and again doesn't mean they don't have a problem.
Now, while factory farming has plenty of flaws, and the antibiotic use is indeed troubling to say the least, hormones, heck, you eat plenty of those to begin with in meat, and pesticides, organic uses them too, they just avoid any modern one that has gone through safety studies. Be cautious sure, but make sure you're not getting you information about any given hormone or pesticide from some scientifically illiterate reactionary source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem Seriously, how did you get modded up to 5, "insightful" for just saying "Durrr, they're biased"
Please help metamoderate.
A large part of the reason we need to drill in such deep water is not because oil is not available in shallow waters, but because of restrictive legislation. I don't think that companies should be given carte blanche to drill anywhere, but a serious effort needs to be made to allow the safe exploitation of whatever resources may be of benefit to us.