Are we killing the earth?

 

 

Population, agriculture and energy: Are we killing the earth?

What is the future of earth?

As the world’s population grows, the already depleted natural resources are reduced further. As citizens of the planet, we are the only ones who can change how we live in order to make the way we live sustainable. Continuing to consume like we are does not seem sustainable without new innovations being created.

In the 1960s the planet reached what the scientists said was the max capacity of human beings at 3 billion. We were told this was the optimal number of people for earth to sustain. We are now at 7.4 billion with projections of around 8.9 billion by 2050. In order for this enormous population to survive, we had to adapt. What is known as the Green Revolution occurred.

We began monoculture, created fertilizer and pesticides, dwarf crops, irrigation and genetically modified crops in order to produce enough food to feed the world. These practices have impacted the earth negatively in a number of ways. Water systems have been affected by either being diverted or polluted by agriculture. In addition, farms on such a scale have diminished biodiversity and have damaged ecosystems. Agriculture is just one aspect of the consumption that occurs around the globe. Since food is kind of important to us, how we grow that food should be as well.

Food is not the only resource we are consuming. Energy consumption is another issue as standards of living in nations around the globe continue to rise. This energy currently comes mostly from a nonrenewable source: fossil fuels.

Read the full story: Restore our Planet

How Africa is Changing

A Data-Visualization-Presentation

www.Africa in Data.org A Data-Visualization-Presentation fromwww.OurWorldInData.org.

EXCERPT

One of the most fundamental changes in Africa is the huge improvement in education.

 

Read the full article: Ourworldindata

A green push for Asia (AlertNet)

Read at :

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/as-asian-growth-slows-a-green-push-could-pay-experts

As Asian growth slows, a green push could pay – experts

By Chelsea Diana

LONDON (AlertNet) – As Asia moves away from export-led growth, the need to invest in green growth instead is key, panelists said at an Overseas Development Institute-held discussion.

But, who is green growth for and what implications does it have for both the public and private sector?

The answer is complicated, with some seeing “inclusive” green growth as a way to reduce poverty, while others see poverty reduction as the eventual result of an improved and more resilient economy.

ASIA IN CRISIS

Global financial crises have had a major impact on Asia, which has seen declines in exports and GDP growth. Masahiro Kawai, chief executive of the Asia Development Bank Institute, said inclusive green growth could help.

To cope with changing conditions, inter-regional trade has become more common in Asia, in particular incorporating developing countries such as India and Cambodia into supply chains.

With more countries involved in regional trade, green growth, specifically low-carbon growth, will be key to ensuring environmental stability, improvement of human health and pollution reductions, he said.

GREEN ECONOMICS

With environmental degradation and climate change making big impacts on the continent, one solution is to focus on the three pillars of green growth: environmental, economic and social, said Alex Bowen, a green growth research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences.

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World hunger has no single, easily discernible source, least of all overpopulation (ACF)

Read at :

http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/blog/hunger-and-population-growth-correcting-common-misunderstanding?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+acf-usa%2Fnews+%28Action+Against+Hunger+%7C+Updates%29

Hunger and Population Growth: Correcting a Common Misunderstanding

As the media report that the world’s population is expected to top 7 billion by the end of October, the subject of global hunger is bound to arise, as is a commonly held assumption about global hunger: “There’s so much hunger because the world is overpopulated.”

Like so many hypotheses, the perceived relationship between hunger and population rests on a seemingly logical premise: the world can produce only so much food, so if people are going hungry it must mean too many people exist.

But this isn’t true. In fact, evidence contradicting this line of thinking is widely available, but all the evidence in the world won’t make any difference unless others like you know it—and use it as well.

To begin debunking the overpopulation myth, it’s worth exploring the relationship between world population and childhood malnutrition. (Our data is from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.)

Between 2000 and 2009 (the last year of the data), the world’s population went from 6.085 billion to 6.775 billion. In other words, it increased by about 11.3 percent. The growth was not uniform; the highest rates tended to occur in so-called “developing countries” where per capita income is low. These are largely the same countries where hunger and malnutrition are at their worst.

Given all this, those studying the data might expect childhood malnutrition increased at least as rapidly as world population over the same period. Actually, the opposite took place.

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Overpopulation and the ravages of global warming, desertification, and dwindling food shortages (Google / FP / Turtle Bay)

Read at :

http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/10/26/seven_billion_people_and_shrinking

Seven billion people and shrinking?

Posted By Colum Lynch

Sometime around Halloween, the United Nations will celebrate the birth of the world’s 7th billion baby. As U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders in New York last month, the 7th billion baby will most likely be poor and will inhabit an earth buffeted by the ravages of global warming, desertification, and dwindling food shortages.

Sounds swell. Given this kind of apocalyptic rhetoric, it’s no surprise that much of the media’s focus has been on the strain of an over-populated planet, one where more than 79 million people are added each year to the human family, overwhelming already overcrowded cities, fighting it out over a dwindling pool of natural resources.

But what if the world’s population actually shrank?

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The only way to curb population growth is through raising the quality of life in the poorest developing countries (Google / The Orion)

Read at : Google Alert – desertification

http://theorion.com/opinion/article_40959bd0-ff7c-11e0-9026-001a4bcf6878.html

Earth reaches 7 billion mark; planet overpopulated, strained

Jake Buffenbarger

The world did not end Friday, nor will 2012 bring about fire and brimstone, like so many claim it will. However, there are threats to the human race not being talked about by religious fanatics but instead by educated men of science.

By the end of the month, the world’s population will reach an astonishing 7 billion people, according to estimates by the United Nations.

In the past 100 years humans have experienced unprecedented exponential population growth due to advances in food production and distribution, according to Yale.edu.

Although the abundance of people may seem like a blessing, it is in fact a threat to our species as a whole.

Resources are already strained enough as it is with the current population.

Generally, developing countries have much higher growth and death rates than developed countries. Countries that have low child survival rates do so because of a lack of modern medicine, family planning and a natural human tendency to not put all of our eggs in one basket evolutionally. Due to the hardwiring of human brains, adults in countries with high child mortality rates make up for the potential loss of their young by having multiple offspring. This gives them a better shot at passing on their unique genetic code, which is the primary objective of all life.

The global population will grow to a staggering 9 billion by 2050, according to a 2009 United Nations press release.

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Overpopulation is fueling desertification and further deforestation (Google / Los Angeles Times)

Read at : Google Alert – desertification

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-harte-population-20110721,0,715317.story

The world’s biggest problem? Too many people

Our unsustainable population levels are depleting resources and denying a decent future to our descendants. We must stop the denial.

By Mary Ellen Harte and Anne EhrlichJuly 21, 2011

Think back on what you talked about with friends and family at your last gathering. The latest game of your favorite team? “American Idol”? An addictive hobby? The new movie blockbuster? In a serious moment, maybe job prospects, Afghanistan, the economic mess? We live in an information-drenched environment, one in which sports and favorite programs are just a click away. And the ease with which we can do this allows us to focus on mostly comforting subjects that divert our attention from increasingly real, long-term problems.

………………….

Overpopulation is also fueling desertification and further deforestation around the world. We can dream of drastically decreasing overconsumption by the wealthy, but even realistic potential decreases are voided by sheer human numbers in all countries, rich and poor. Our unsustainable population levels are depleting resources and denying a decent future to our descendants.

What to do? Stop the denial. Perpetual growth is the creed of a cancer cell, not a sustainable human society.

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If the world’s experts are wrong, who are the real experts being right ? (Foreign Policy)

Read at :

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/04/can_the_world_feed_10_billion_people?page=0%2C0

Can the World Feed 10 Billion People?

With an exploding global population — and Africa’s numbers set to triple — the world’s experts are falling over themselves arguing how to feed the masses. Why do they have it so wrong?

BY RAJ PATEL

The world’s demographers this week increased their estimates of the world’s population through the coming century. We are now on track to hit 10 billion people by 2100. Today, humanity produces enough food to feed everyone but, because of the way we distribute it, there are still a billion hungry. One doesn’t need to be a frothing Malthusian to worry about how we’ll all get to eat tomorrow. Current predictions place most of the world’s people in Asia, the highest levels of consumption in Europe and North America, and the highest population growth rates in Africa — where the population could triple over the next 90 years.

There are, however, plans afoot to feed the world. One of the countries to which the world’s development experts have turned as a test bed is Malawi. Landlocked and a little smaller than Pennsylvania, Malawi is consistently among the world’s poorest places. The latest figures have 90 percent of its 15 million people living on the equivalent of less than two dollars a day. By century’s end, the population is expected to be nearly 132 million. Today, some 40 percent of Malawians live below the country’s poverty line, and part of the reason for widespread chronic poverty is that more than 70 percent of Malawians live in rural areas. There, they depend on agriculture — and nearly every farmer grows maize. “Chimanga ndi moyo” — “maize is life,” the local saying goes — but growing maize pays so poorly that few people can afford to eat anything else.

If you arrive in Malawi in March, just after the rainy season, growing food seems like a fool’s game. It’s hard to find a patch of red soil that isn’t a tall riot of green. From the roadside you can see maize about to ripen, with squash and beans planted at the base of the thick stalks. Even the tobacco fields are doing well this year. But there’s a rumble in this jungle. Malawi’s swaying fields are a battleground in which three different visions for the future of global agriculture are ranged against one other.

The first and most venerable development idea for Malawi sees these farmers as survivors of a doomed way of life who need to be helped into the hereafter.

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The Solution To Global Population Growth is Saving Children (video) – (Gapminder / Singularity Hub

A message from my son Paul:

‘Healthier and wealthier babies make for smaller families’

‘There are clear links between increased economic success and reduced family size, and between low infant mortality and reduced family size.’

‘Ending global poverty (and increasing child survival rates) is the clear path to reaching a sustainable human population.’

http://singularityhub.com/2010/07/21/the-solution-to-global-population-growth-is-saving-children-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SingularityHub+%28Singularity+Hub%29

The Solution To Global Population Growth is Saving Children (video)

July 21st, 2010 by Aaron Saenz

Think the global human population is growing too quickly? Then work to decrease infant mortality among the world’s poor. That’s the message that world-class health analyst and statistician Hans Rosling presented at the recent TED Talks at Cannes. Rosling is known for making dense statistical analysis easily accessible through graphic displays, and is the director of Gapminder, an organization that looks to transform important data into clear and expressive visual aides. In his TED Talk, Rosling highlights how the gap between the developing and industrial worlds is closing, but that the largest population growth is still among the poorest peoples. Helping these individuals out of poverty isn’t just a humane act, it may be an ecological necessity. Check out Rosling’s presentation in the video below. It’s a clear call to tackle two of humanity’s grand challenges: poverty and health.

The Sands of Time (Google / 13.7 Billion Years)

Read at : Google Alert – desertification

The Sands of Time

The Chinese government is relocating millions of “eco-refugees” as once-arable land turns into desert in the face of climate change

“Our home area faces serious water shortages,” says Huang Cuikun, a Chinese farmer from the Gansu Province, in a May 17 article in the Guardian UK. “We need it for the animals and the land. We only have a bath 3 to 5 times a year.” Huang is one of millions of eco-refugees in China being relocated to greener pastures by the government as more and more of the country’s land succumbs to desertification due to water shortages caused by climate change, over-irrigation and other forces of anthropogenic origin.

BALLOONING GLOBAL POPULATION ADDING TO WATER CRISIS (UNNews)

BALLOONING GLOBAL POPULATION ADDING TO WATER CRISIS, WARNS NEW UN REPORT

New York, Mar 12 2009  2:00PM

The surging growth in global population, climate change, widespread mismanagement and increasing demand for energy have tightened the grip on the world’s evaporating water supplies, warned a new United Nations report released today.

As the world’s population has swollen to well over 6 billion people, some countries have already reached the limits of their water resources, according to the report compiled by 24 UN agencies.

“Climate change is going to make this situation worse,” said William Cosgrove, Content Coordinator for the UN World Water Development Report.

Problem Statement for Population (Google / Sustainable Population)

Read at : Google Alert – desertification

http://sustainablepopulation.blogspot.com/2008/10/problem-statement-for-population.html

Problem Statement for Population

Global human population is rising from more than 6.7 billion, having quadrupled in less than a century. Every 5 minutes 650 more people are added to human population – this equals a million person net gain in just over 4 days and another United States every 3 to 4 years. The U.S. itself is adding 2.5 million people per year to the existing 307 million, on its way to 450 million by the year 2050. Despite strong myths to the contrary, population continues to grow in the New England region as well. NECSP research shows that an aggregate of 67,000 people are added to the 14.25 million citizens of the six New England states each year. Vermont’s population expanded by 2.5%, or 15,081 people, from the year 2000 to the year 2006 – continuing an upward trajectory that has seen the state’s population expand 65% from the 1950 count of 377,747 to today’s 623,908+. If population were a stand-alone issue, reasonable people could honorably disagree about the optimal population density of a state, a region, a nation and the Earth, and perhaps the numbers listed above would not be cause for such great concern. However, as we witness the Earth giving off clear distress signals — examples being climate change, species extinctions, marine dead-zones and intensifying desertification – we no longer have the luxury to view human populations in isolation from the ecological crisis facing the planet.