Earth's ability to sustain future generations

[pnutchuck]

Study highlights global decline

The world's bulging population has led to the creation of mega-cities
The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth's ability to sustain future generations.
The report says the way society obtains its resources has caused irreversible changes that are degrading the natural processes that support life on Earth.

This will compromise efforts to address hunger, poverty and improve healthcare.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations over a period of four years.

It reports that humans have changed most ecosystems beyond recognition in a dramatically short space of time.

The way society has sourced its food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel over the past 50 years has seriously degraded the environment, the assessment (MA) concludes.

The current state of affairs is likely to be a road block to the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by the world leaders at the United Nations in 2000, it says.

"Any progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty and hunger eradication, improved health, and environmental protection is unlikely to be sustained if most of the ecosystem 'services' on which humanity relies continue to be degraded," the report states.

Way forward

more.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4391835.stm

[Mr.Green93]

1. The U.S. standard of living

is unsustainable and must be lowered dramatically.

[pnutchuck]

2. I've been saying for a while now that the next natural resource

war will be over fresh water supplies. The largest fresh water reserve is in Siberia....

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. Not the standard but the footprint

The per-capita environmental footprint in the US is unsustainable and must be lowered. But that does not necessarily mean lowering the standard of living.

[etherealtruth]

3. Have you read E.O. Wilson's "The Future of Life" ?

The writings of E.O Wilson, Robert Kennedy, Jr. ... convinced me to change careers, and become (albeit a small) part of the solution.

[pnutchuck]

4. I haven't read it....

Thanks for the tip. What do you do? If you don't mind me asking.

[etherealtruth]

5. I will have a degree in Environmental science in 3 weeks...

Switched from Nursing.

You will love EO Wilson's writing ... 2-3 years ago Scientific American published an interview (Wilson) and sections of the book... You're obviously a "believer"---this book will motivate you even further.

[pnutchuck]

6. Yes, I am a believer

I was so touched yesterday when I was watching BBC. They were covering a lone woman who also happens to be a buddhist monk(I can't remember if it was Taiwan or South Korea) . She's gone on 3 hunger strikes to halt development of a high speed train. She says the development will drain wetlands that are home to rare species of salamander.

The government did halt development in order to conduct an environmental impact report.

I was soooo proud of her!

[dcfirefighter]

7. The key to maximising the ability of sustaining future generations

Is to ensure the efficient use of resources.

And the key to ensuring the efficient use of resources is to tax them, or at least collect their market rental for public use.

Henry George wrote about it a century ago. http://www.henrygeorge.org/chp1.htm

It's also the foundation of 'Green' Taxes. It's good environmentalism, good economics, and good politics.

[XemaSab]

9. The standard of living in the US

is a big issue, but other countries are not lacking in culpability here.

Most wood cut down worldwide is for firewood.

[camitche]

10. Let's be serious...

The United States is definitely the issue here. Look up any consumption or pollution report and the United States is always one of the top per capita. Occasionally, Australia or someone will take first place and we second.

[XemaSab]

11. The US is not the entire problem

We're a big part of the issue, don't get me wrong, but other countries, like Russia and China, have their own appalling land use practices.

http://www.taigarescue.org/index.php?view=taiga_news&tn_ID=874

The Norilsk complex is Russia’s worst ambient air polluter and the biggest single source of sulphur dioxide (SO2) poisoning anywhere in the world. Surely the time is ripe for a campaign to clean up its act?

Every day, according to local authorities, Norilsk plants send 5000 tonnes of SO2 and heavy metals into the sky; some falling as far as Norway and Canada. Near Norilsk’s operations in the Kola Peninsula, the sulphur has turned the snow yellow for 30 miles around; copper makes it black.

More than 8000 km2 of larch forest and lichen, essential sustenance for reindeer herds maintained by Nenets and Sámi, have been wiped out by acid rain since 1980 alone. Hundreds of km2 of tundra have been rendered sterile.

http://pubs.wri.org/pubs_content_text.cfm?ContentID=1431

Poor ambient air quality prevails

"The residents of many of China's largest cities are living under long-term, harmful air quality conditions," Zhao Weijun, deputy director of the air pollution department of NEPA, reported in 1997 in China Environment News <16>. China has long recognized air pollution as a critical problem. Ambient concentrations of total suspended particulates (TSP) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are among the world's highest. In 1995, more than one half of the 88 cities monitored for SO2 were above the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline. All but two of the 87 cities monitored for TSP far exceeded WHO's guideline. Some cities such as Taiyuan and Lanzhou had SO2 levels almost 10 times the WHO guideline <17>.

At least in the US we HAVE environmental standards, which is more than most places can say. We contribute to the problems in other countries by buying their cheap crap, but other countries buy cheap chinese crap and cheap russian nickel too, and it's only going to get worse as other countries industrialize. No country is going to voluntarily reduce the standard of living of their people.

Ultimately, there's a fine line between advocating environmentally sound development and trying to keep poor people poor.

[pnutchuck]

12. CNN International and BBC are running regular reports

on this throughout the day. They're showing different examples of consumption polluting elements like nitrogen fertilizers used in farming that run off into local water supplies and deplete the ecosystem.

[Viking12]

13. Direct Link

Experts Warn Ecosystem Changes Will Continue to Worsen, Putting Global Development Goals At Risk

(From the press release)
The MA Synthesis Report highlights four main findings:

* Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively in the last 50 years than in any other period. This was done largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. More land was converted to agriculture since 1945 than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, first made in 1913, ever used on the planet has been used since 1985. Experts say that this resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in diversity of life on Earth, with some 10 to 30 percent of the mammal, bird and amphibian species currently threatened with extinction.

* Ecosystem changes that have contributed substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development have been achieved at growing costs in the form of degradation of other services. Only four ecosystem services have been enhanced in the last 50 years: increases in crop, livestock and aquaculture production, and increased carbon sequestration for global climate regulation. Two services – capture fisheries and fresh water – are now well beyond levels that can sustain current, much less future, demands. Experts say that these problems will substantially diminish the benefits for future generations.

* The degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century and is a barrier to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals. In all the four plausible futures explored by the scientists, they project progress in eliminating hunger, but at far slower rates than needed to halve number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Experts warn that changes in ecosystems such as deforestation influence the abundance of human pathogens such as malaria and cholera, as well as the risk of emergence of new diseases. Malaria, for example, accounts for 11 percent of the disease burden in Africa and had it been eliminated 35 years ago, the continent’s gross domestic product would have increased by $100 billion.

* The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands can be met under some scenarios involving significant policy and institutional changes. However, these changes will be large and are not currently under way. The report mentions options that exist to conserve or enhance ecosystem services that reduce negative trade-offs or that will positively impact other services. Protection of natural forests, for example, not only conserves wildlife but also supplies fresh water and reduces carbon emissions.

http://www.maweb.org/en/Article.aspx?id=58

Full Text of draft reports:

http://www.maweb.org//en/Products.Synthesis.aspx