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UN Warns of 70 Percent Desertification by 2025
BUENOS AIRES - Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet's soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned.
A partial view of the lenga's forest taken from the base of Perito Moreno glacier in 2008 in Patagonia, Argentina. Argentina has lost nearly 70 percent of its forests in a century, the Environmental Secretariat said at a UN conference on desertification.
(AFP/File/Daniel Garcia) "If we cannot find a solution to this problem... in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected," Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday.
Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report.
"There will not be global security without food security" in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital.
"A green deal is necessary" for developing countries working to combat drought, he stressed.
The next meeting on the convention is scheduled to take place in South Korea in 2010.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllOh my God...I don't want to live on this planet 25 years from now...given the fact that 1st world countries (USA, Canada, European and parts of Asia) are destroying this planet by encouraging ECONOMIC GROWTH to India and China and to the world as a solution to our economic growth. You can't prevent and prepare for war at the same time....just as you cannot encourage economic growth and preserve natural resources at the same time. Our economic policies are destroying the planet and humanity! WE are insane!!!! Insane for not challenging our govt. Insane for not changing our consumer purchases from MULTINATIONAL to local and regional products, for not reducing our use of energy and for not demanding all levels of govt. (local, state & national) change the way we conduct business!!!
We are insane!!!
Ever hear a cancer described as showing "robust growth"? Only an insane person would use such phrases.
Maybe the swine flu will be the great check on population growth that is so long overdue.
Exciting to be here for the end though. I just feel sorry for everything that evolved so hard to get where it is. Mankind the drunken chimp with the flame thrower just spins and shoots endlessly. Acid oceans. Scorched plains. Skies full of drones. Paradise lost.
The supreme irony of course is that the people who are most well-adapted to living in deserts are the Beduin and their cousins. i.e., Arabs. Just like the people best adapted to a hotter climate are NOT us melanin-challenged off-pink folk. I'm not saying it'll be pretty for anyone, but it's a bit amusing that whitey shat so hard in our own bed that metaphorically, at least, we'll be the first to go. ( i'm not factoring in poverty, rising sea levels, etc. I'm trying to look at it poetically, or something)
I'll ask my usual question (and doubtless get the usual 98-99% silence): we know what the problem is, we know the direction we need to move, so what are we going to *DO* about it?
How much are YOU PERSONALLY willing to give up in your life to solve the problem? *ANYTHING*? Are you willing to give up *ANYTHING AT ALL*??
Let me step back a pace: how many here even really, truly, no-shit believe that there *IS* a problem that's in the process of killing us all?
If you really truly do believe there's such a problem, and you're still not willing to basically abandon your regular life to beat feet passing out literature, talking to people, and generally organising the crap out of your less-able fellow citizens, how do you reconcile your belief with your unwillingness?
I'm willing to give up everything but "You should never argue with a crazy man no no no no you oughta know by now..."
I'm presuming the reference is to a song, but I'm a traddie not a rocker, so you'll have to 'splain.
OK. Strive to make yourself free. Have no possessions that you be possessed by none. Give it all up. Money, reputation, the 4,000 square foot house, the Mercedes, all of it.
I am not there yet but my wants and needs become fewer each day. But I will have enough to do without trying to explain this to my neighbor. He doesn't want to hear it because I'm talking about giving up the only things that give his pathetic little life any meaning---things.
Ah, well, that's the real problem though. You MUST bring your neighbor along, because he's part of the problem and must be converted to be part of the solution instead.
When I ask how much people are willing to give up, everyone interprets that to mean how frugal are they willing to be personally, as though personal frugality will do the job. I'm not sure why.
I'm really asking how much *time* are people willing to divert from tv, socialising, writing at CD, parties, building a deck, work, etc. in order to beat the drum loudly enough and long enough to get people like your neighbor to understand --*truly* understand-- what the situation is.
The only way to stop the disaster is to get enough people to understand that it's not a story on tv, and that we must change the system if we want complex life on Earth to continue. To overcome the noise machine that keeps people disconnected from that reality is going to take an enormous amount of *time* as well as energy and every scrap of intelligence we can bring to bear.
Getting all the dull, disconnected CDers to wake up might be a good place to start.
Strive to make yourself free. The term 'free will' as it is usually used does not exist. 99.99 % of our behavior is the result of nature and nurture. What is left belongs to our addictions, habits, patterns of behavior that have become comfortable for us.
We have no power to change others. We have some power to change ourselves, if we work at it. Anybody who has stopped smoking knows how difficult exercising free will can be.
Becoming free should be our life's work both because it is all we can do and because there is nothing for which the world has more need than free people.
Make yourself free. People still in bondage will notice, but it's a work in progress. We must do all we can while we live. My own time is running out and this life is no trial run. Every day must be accounted for.
Even if I believe Jesus was misguided or Buddha was Quixotic how faithful have I been to my own highest ideals?
The less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.
Yes we change ourselves, if we change anyone. Sinclair had it right when he said that it's awfully hard to make someone understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding. Or, as Yogi Berra put it, if people don't want to do something, there's no way to make them stop.
But we can communicate our experience. We can pose new questions that are difficult to answer using old thinking. We can put the truth out there in a way people can easily digest. We can make it easier for people to change themselves.
We don't have to leave people at the mercy of the noise machine. And if we want complex life to carry on, even tho we ourselves will no longer be part of it, we'd better not abandon our fellow creatures.
But if you don't want to be a change agent, I can't make you stop. :-)
(I don't believe it's meaningful to claim we have no free will. That cannot be demonstrated, so such assertions are generally just cop-outs (which isn't to say that I think that's your motive))
I in fact do not want the human species to continue. I never have. I struggled as hard as I could (while still having sex; of my own free will?) not to have children. I failed. The will is stronger than I.
I begged my daughter not to have kids. She has three who are the light of my life. The fact that an old fart takes delight in his grandchildren does not mean that the human race is worth a damn.
PS I love the Yogi Berra quote. He should be in every book of philosophy.
If it were only the people who created the problem who would suffer, I'd happily help frogmarch the bastards on board the Fossil Record Express. But I simply don't have in me whatever it takes to be indifferent to the fate of the innocent majority. The idea that children of all species will suffer and die horribly? No, I just can't accept that without a struggle.
Humans are as good as any other species. We're distributed under the normal curve, with about 1-2% obligative psychopaths --individuals who are, in important ways, human-shaped non-humans-- under one tail and about the same number of what for want of a better word we have to call saints under the other. Most people are under the big hump in the middle, responding to their environment according to what gets rewarded and punished.
If we who want a better world will only create it, the 98% who aren't monsters are completely capable of living in peace and plenty forever. All we need do is make such a world available. ...and weed out the psychopaths the moment they appear.
(+1 on Yogi. His expressions are remarkably Zen-like)
IMO, the problem has progressed too far for literature to have any effect. Only by massive force-of-arms to destroy industrialization does mankind have any chance. And since THEY have the weapons WE need to do the job quickly, the job won't get done; so, WE have already lost, but then so have THEY.
They have the weapons, but cannot make the world go their way without our assent.
And yes, mairead, I was out today giving out literature and getting signatures to stop war funding. But you are right about people having to take some action or else the natural world will soon be ruined, possibly beyond its ability to rebound.
Nietsche - The Mercedes and the 4000 square foot home I cannot give up. (I never had things like that). But you are right about materialistic values aka piggishness being part of the problem.
Joe
I did not mean to imply I had those things. My house is too big but aside from that I do live on the edge with a SS check and a small pension.
I was already pretty sure you were part of the solution, Joe, but it's nice to have that confirmed. How much of your life are you able to dedicate?
How much am I willing to PERSONALLY give up to be an example to others and to walk my talk??
Well, I sold my 35,000 dollar house (paid that little for a 1 bed cottage in a cute downtown area in the southeast USA) I bought in 2000 after only 4 yrs. of living in it and paying less in taxes, insurance and mortgage than I could have by renting....because I was sick about the direction the country was going in after RE-educating myself to the truth of this country and the lack of urgent concern by my neighbors or community members to face the truth. I then opened up a tiny fair trade shop to provide a solution to the FREE TRADE crap that was destroying our labor/environment etc... and I lived in the back of the store on a futon in an 8x8 room. I heated water w/ my coffeemaker to washes dishes in the utility sink, had a college size frig., a hot plate and for the first 6 mo. I went to a beachpark to take my showers every day until the weather got too cold (no hot water showers).
Now, I live on the west coast USA and live in a 13 ft. trailer w/ a bucket to pee in and go to a gym to shower each day and boil water and wash my dishes outside my trailer in view of people in the neighborhood. I use less than 3 gal of water at home and take a 10 min. shower (so my carbon footprint is minimal on resources at my "home on wheels". I am involved in all kinds of local issues (saving mass transit from the elite), going to DEP meetings to keep toxic mercury waste from being transported and stored less than 150 mi. from where I live, and have to seek out work and money to meet my few needs. If it were not for 200 in food stamps every month and a couple or three hundred dollar donations by a DEAR committed-to-the-struggle friend of mine...I would be suffering true poverty! I am stressed enough!!
I am 40 yrs. old. I was raised in a middle-middle class family and according to my upbringing....I should be a hell of a lot better off than I am now. Do I feel sorry for myself...NO. I feel sorry for others who are embracing fear and keeping the status-quo in power and are failing to provide a better world for their kids and the next generation of leaders. We will reap what we sow. I rarely find other people like me who are living off the grid and are saying more by their actions (buying from greedy corporations or banking with crooks like BoA or Wells Fargo and drinking their killer coke product or helping Nestle in their quest to bottle water from fresh springs all over the USA...stealing our clean water to sell back to us...)
I am not unwilling to live near the edge and clearly I am....ARE YOU?
"I am not unwilling to live near the edge and clearly I am....ARE YOU?"
-------------------
I think you might be misunderstanding the nature of the problem, or the nature of my question, or both.
Some problems are personal, others are systemic. Both require personal action to solve, but completely different *kinds* of personal action.
You're apparently defining the problem as a personal one: the fact that you, personally, have brought your footprint down to a minimum level consistent with still being alive is your piece of the solution. In your view, if everyone just did what you're doing (or even a quarter of what you're doing!) the whole problem would be solved. If they're not going to do that, well, that's their fault and not yours. You've done your part.
I define the problem as a systemic one. All my personal frugality -my vegetarianism, cycling, cfl bulbs, minimal cooking and heating- while important to me, isn't important in the context of the problem. Despite what I do --and even what *you* do-- we humans are still on track to go extinct and take all high-order life on Earth with us when we go.
If we want that not to happen, we have to spend our time and energy doing something more productive than squeezing nourishment from a stone.
Lovelock uses as an example a relatively small disaster that happened at Manchester airport in, I think, the mid-'80s. An airliner caught fire and the crew failed to evaluate the danger correctly. They told everyone to stay calm and remain in their seats. Some people, though, looked at the flames, climbed over their seatmates, and ran for their lives. The rest obediently sat there til it was too late, and died.
Most of the people in the world who are even aware of the climate disaster are sitting there obediently, convinced that the people in charge know best. Well, we here should know by now that the people in charge are frigging psychopaths whose only concern is their own wealth and power. As Diamond pointed out, they're willing to kill us all as long as they're the last to die.
So if we want to solve the problem, we have to get everyone on Earth to "look at the flames". Once people see --*really* see-- what's happening, then a saving change can occur. But until people look at the flames, and actually *see* them and understand that they're real flames and not something on tv with scriptwriters to save the heroes and heroines (themselves) at the end, they'll sit there in their seats because that's what the psychopaths have told them to do.
The size of the problem should be evident by looking around at the number of people *even at CD* who are among the sitters disconnected from reality. Who obviously don't really 'see the flames' because all they're willing to do is talk about how awful things are as though those flames are just part of a story on tv that they can turn off any time they get bored.
So, does that clarify anything at all?
very well said and 99.5% of americans won't even consider making these kinds of sacrifice...we don't have recovery clinics for being addicted to our cultural drugs....communes, anyone?
freethinker, yes, insane indeed! But might there be a method behind the madness? Might there be more than meets the eye? Might the truth be stranger than the fiction? And might the insanity not be in the drinking of the kool-aid, but in the very belief of it?
The problem is that the people with the abilities to understand and resolve the problem are the very same creating the problem. The billions of people too poor, too hungry, too uneducated and too sick are not the ones creating the problem - it's those other people.
You know the ones I'm talking about - the ones drunk with the bounties the earth has to offer, who can't get enough of her resources and riches, who want more and more and more for themselves with little if any regard for the costs to others or to the future, of the earth and of humanity itself.
The insanity isn't insanity at all. It is an ancient human tradition. It is the notion that there exists an elite master class of human beings - a royal class of blue bloods - a class entitled to rule over a servant class. For this class, with their wealth and power, the state of nature matters little, for they can always buy or demand the construction of what they need. They can move into what ever space they wish to occupy. Earth has great temples erected to honor these elite masters, which separates them from the hardship and toil, and harbors them from exposure to the brutal elements of nature and the reality that most of us must face. Whether in the end they must also succumb to the harsh realities doesn't really matter, for they will never believe it. They are like unto caesar and the pope, and believe they are as gods amongst men. They don't live by the same set of rules the rest of us mere mortals find inescapable. And we believe in these man-kings as such. We celebrate them. We seek them out and create the very pedestals we put them on.
And remember, they don't wage wars because they fight them - they wage wars because we fight them. They don't suffer from inequitable health care, nor suffer from declining incomes and inequitable retirement investments. And almost never do they repay us with genuine truth and compassionate integrity.
And we don't look to ourselves and the insanity of the system we allow that supports these narcissistic phonies, and we repeat the process, again and again. And have throughout known history.
The insanity is believing in this system of power-wielding man-kings - a system of pseudo gods, of relatively ordinary men and woman given absolutely extraordinary status and power over other human beings. And the insanity is how in the entire history of humankind we haven't figured out to see and understand this for what it truly is- especially when it comes to our money and commonwealth (aka 'common wealth' aka 'common welfare' aka 'common good').
The bible tells us God gave mankind free will and yet we readily hand this right and power over to other mortal human beings, as if we cannot know or equitably manage our own lives, as if we cannot cooperate with each other without someone to tell us what to do, or how to behave. We do not recognize within ourselves our own personal inner connection with a higher truth and higher power not of mankind but of universal design.
Freethinker is very right to recognize how the environmental problem is actually a problem of examining our personal and cultural belief systems. In this regard I highly suggest reading Richard Brodie's book "Virus of the Mind" about the science of the Meme. Hopefully it might help some of us better understand our widely held obsessive belief in the kool-aid that ails us all.
Beautiful, scathing exposition. Bravo!
great comments here but try as I may, the only references to freewill I can find in the bible are stated as 'freewill offerings'in the earliest part of the old testament....sounds like propaganda to me.
hmm, a worthy point about "free will" it seems.
I recalled this from earlier days so I tried as you did to find a specific reference to it. I used the online bible references and discovered them to all be rather modern day rewrites. I remember as a younster having access to English translations of both Roman and Greek Orthodox version of the bible, and I wondered why I wasn't able to readily find those on the Web.
I suppose most of us here on CD are aware of the Councils of Nicaea and how long before that how it was the Romans had outlawed Christianity and banned and burned all the bibles and killed Christians, etc., and even before that they had pillaged and burned the great Greek libraries.
Anyway, I think you are right to suppose some if not much of the bible to be propaganda, but if you do not, then the argument for God giving man free will can still be logically surmised from the texts regardless of whether the statement for free will is made explicitly in succinct terms. I suspect though some could use the texts to argue the other way as well, given the often contradictory nature of the texts.
Whether we bring God and the bible into it or not, I believe our Founding Fathers referred to the same basic right of self-determination under the Laws of Nature and our implied Unalienable Rights in the Declaration of Independence.
Sooo, given propaganda as "communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position" I'll accept your labeling as such, negative as it is.
Please support indigenous peoples and their rights to ancestral lands
The Guarani are fighting for their lives, ancient stewardship culture and lands against monoculture. They have been working with scientists and academics to develop cross-cultural education models that are restorative.
Write a letter to Brazilian President Lula to stop the Guarani genocide and support their rights under article 231 of the Brazilian Constitution:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/guarani
Visit the site for Society for Threatened Peoples in Germany
The World Social Forum http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2
WRITE LETTERS
Inform yourself. Solidarity with
I'm with you. And it's time we try something new--LEARN from indigenous people. Till we do, these 2 articles hold some hints for lots of us ,, ..
Building With Whole Trees www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/garden/05tree.html?_r=1&ref=garden
The Carnivore's Delima www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31niman.html?ref=opinion which brought a letter to the editor about the tiny footprint left by hunting and gathering, like the locals once did in "GM's Money Trees--In Brazil, people with some of the world's smallest carbon footprints are being displaced--so their forests can become offsets for SUVs" - on: www.motherjones.com/environment
Yes - "Give forests back to local people to save them .. So concludes a study that's tracked the fate of 80 forests worldwide over 15 years" http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17937-give-forests-back-to-local-people-to-save-them.html
The opposition: "If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem" ~Larry Kersten
Consumption dwarfs population as main enviro threat - A small portion of the world's people use up most of t earth's resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions, www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/15/consumption-versus-population-environmental-impact
The Population Delusion: www.newscientist.com/special/population
A millionaire with a super yacht is a larger strain on resources than 100s of peasant families The Population Myth: www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/29/the-population-myth/
UK 'exporting emissions' to China http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7028573.stm
'Ecological Debt' day marks the point in the year when consumption around the world exceeds the Earth's annual "biocapacity" .. 'A typical American will by 4am on January 2 have produced as many emissions as a Tanzanian generates in a year.' http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/25-3
Let's just get busy helping any people left on our planet, who still hold ancient wisdom of HOW to live on it, expand what's left of the planet's forests, grasslands, etc out into the surrounding mono-cropland and advancing deserts. To help pay for this and lots of solar roofs, raingardens (google that) and such, and to add a few months to the av American eco debt day, lets help the super rich suck up some of their nasty footprint with a nice tax, say 60-70 percent.
'Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing ~ Arundhati Roy http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/
nobody mensioned family planning , mass transit, vegetarian diet-- what if we did those three things/ and also captured solar energy , wind etc? Don't forget education of this entire tragedy developing. We must move !!!
Thanks for this website-
The only way environmental problems will be solved is if the nations of the world cease and desist with their love of war and the big military establishments they deem "necessary" for the waging of war. Money spent on the environment would be money far better spent than for new ways to kill one another, for whatever stupid reasons humans kill each other.
I think Bertrand Russell said something similar once -- that if the nations of the world would give up this mad foolishness about war and preparation for war, within a generation, poverty and sickness would be things of the past; words to that effect, anyway. I'm sure he'd add saving the environment to that list, were he alive today.
This is the unfortunate consequence of industrial ag dependent on machines, chemicals, patented seeds, and irrigation--all of which destroy the soil on which all life depends.
We have the technology to solve this problem quickly. It's called Permaculture - permanent agriculture. Permaculture techniques sequester carbon, build topsoil, store water, replenish water tables, and provide more food in a smaller space than you can imagine.
Permaculture techniques are bringing water and plant life back to the Jordan Desert and other places in the world thought too dead and salinated to ever support life again.
Anyone can do permaculture in any climate, and grow all the food, fuel and fiber their family needs in just a few acres.
http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/2009/09/17/you-can-fix-all-the-worlds-problems-in-a-garden/