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More Than 15,000 Scientists From 184 Countries Issue 'Warning To Humanity' (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: More than 15,000 scientists around the world have issued a global warning: there needs to be change in order to save Earth. It comes 25 years after the first notice in 1992 when a mere 1,500 scientists issued a similar warning. This new cautioning -- which gained popularity on Twitter with #ScientistsWarningToHumanity -- garnered more than 15,000 signatures. William Ripple of Oregon State University's College of Forestry, who started the campaign, said that he came across the 1992 warning last February, and noticed that this year happened to mark the 25th anniversary. Together with his graduate student, Christopher Wolf, he decided to revisit the concerns raised then, and collect global data for different variables to show trends over the past 25 years. Ripple found: A decline in freshwater availability; Unsustainable marine fisheries; Ocean dead zones; Forest losses; Dwindling biodiversity; Climate change; Population growth. There was one positive outcome, however: a rapid decline in ozone depletion. One of the potential solutions is to stabilize the population. If we reduce family size, consumption patterns don't rise as much. And that can be done by empowering girls and women, providing sexual education and education on family planning.
The average prole can do little. His eco footprint is already nearly insignificant because he can't even afford running the damn AC anymore.
Those that do have the eco footprint of an elephant also seem to think they can buy themselves another earth and to hell with the rest. Get rid of them and we're solving a lot of ecological (and probably economical) problems.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Among those included in this list of Climate Scientists:
Davis, Joanne - Australian
Daweti, Nokuthula - Student
de Clercq, Deon - Earthling
Hamilton, Ava - independent documentary producer/citizen scientist
Jara, Andrea - Colombian
Thapa, Lal - Asst. Professor of Alien Invasion
It is very hard to take this (or their agenda) seriously when they won't even do the basic science of vetting a list of "scientists".
Encourage abortion for those that continue to poduce with no way of paying for them.
Uh, just to point out the obvious, a simpler and cheaper solution would be just to make sure that birth control is available to those who want it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The people and organizations who should care, because they have the money, power, and influence to do something about it: Rich people, global corporations.
Why they don't care: Short-term profits, keeping shareholders happy, is more important than what'll happen a couple hundred years from now. That's 'someone else's problem to deal with', and these people will all be dead and gone by then; why, so far as they're concerned, should they even care?
Who else is standing in the way of doing something about this: Dominionists, and fundamentalist religious organizations. So far as they're concerned, The Earth is a 'temporary' home for humanity, and is therefore expendable, as is all other life on it. Dominionists in particular are more interested in accelerating the destruction of the Earth, because they fervently believe that the sooner they can bring about the Apocalypse, the sooner Zombie Jesus will 'return' to the Earth to 'take them all home'. So anything they can do to make Earth uninhabitable faster is all to the good so far as they're concerned.
Then there's the Average Person; they're too busy just trying to deal with their day-to-day lives (and in some cases, too literally trying to stay alive) to even think about anything that's going to happen even 10 years from now, let alone several hundred years from now. Again, that gets waved off as 'someone elses problem', because they'll all be dead and gone before that even happens. Sure, they think about what their theoretical grandchildren may have to deal with -- so maybe they turn off the lights when they leave a room for more than a few minutes, or put off that errand they need to do until later. But it's all a drop in the bucket that really has no effect, not even if everyone does the same.
Overall there needs to be top-down actions taken, world-wide, in every country that creates a large enough fraction of the total problems. Seeing as we can't seem to get enough nations to agree on how to handle problems a fraction of the size and scope, good bloody luck with that. Add to that resistance the fact that The Rich, the aforementioned religious types, rich, influential religious types, and disinterested greedy corporations aren't going to be cooperative, and the likelihood that anything more than just 'feel-good', overall ineffective things being done becomes rather small. What we really need to have happen first, is a change of hearts and minds across the board; we need everyone to actually give a damn, right down to the core of their being. If someone's got a recipe to make that happen, I'm all ears.
Every thing the coal industry had has been stripped and sold. From profitable mines, to equipment, to river front real estate, to scenic valleys, to pension funds to ... every last thing the coal industry had has been stripped and raided and stolen and sold away.
The last thing remaining is the vote of these desperate people, stuck in a dead end job, too old to retrain, in isolated communities. A country as rich as ours should be able to take care of them. After all the coal industry built America, they contributed significantly to the wealth we are enjoying today. We should be able to buy any mine that is losing money, keep all the miners on the payroll to properly shut the mine down, cap off, and close it. Absorb them all into fish and wildlife service and park service and do conservation work till they all retire. There are not that many left, and we need their expertise to close the mines safely.
But that is not going to happen. Their vote is valuable, and keeping them angry and desperate is the way to get it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I see, it's always get rid of someone else's children, isn't it ? We can just "empower girls and women" in THOSE cultures to abort their babies.
It's odd that when an article suggests reducing the rate of population growth, a certain subset of radical conservatives immediately starts shouting "We need to abort their babies!"
What the actual article says is taking the step of:
So, why is it that you suddenly start shouting about abortion?
Do you want to actually reduce the rate of abortion? That turns out to be really simple: abortion rates decrease when people have access to birth control. Simple.
Boy, it would be really convenient of all these simple cultures would just stop procreating in the first place. Maybe the WHO could just pay some group to just sterilize them, like they did in Kenya? But you know what would really "eliminate" the problem? What if we just eliminated those humans, so they don't burn all those fuels without scrubbers, and pollute those lakes, and cut down the forests for fields to grow food? After all, those leftists are looking out for the "greater good", so it's ok if it's nonconsentual.
What part of "access to education and voluntary family planning" is it that you are referring to here?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com