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We've Gone Into the Ecological Red
On 21 August our environmental resource budget ran out. Now we're living beyond the planet's means to support us
At the weekend, Saturday 21 August to be precise, the world as a whole went into "ecological debt".
That means in effect that from now until the end of the year, humanity will be consuming more natural resources and producing more waste than the forests, fields and fisheries of the world can replace and absorb. By doing so, the life -support systems that we all depend on are worn ever thinner. Farms become less productive, fish populations crash and climate regulating forests decline. All become less resilient in the face of extreme weather events.
The date is arrived at by comparing our annual environmental resource budget with our ecological footprint – the rate at which we spend it.
The more we overshoot the available budget, the earlier in the year we start to go into the ecological red. Collectively we started to live beyond our means in the 1980s. Since then the date has crept earlier and earlier in the year. Improved measurement and data bring the latest date forward by a whole month in comparison with last year's date. It now takes about 18 months for the planet to generate what we consume in just 12.
The worse news is that this also assumes that the whole of nature is there for human exploitation. Any farmer or ecologist will tell you that for ecosystems to function healthily fallow portions and periods are essential.
In a worst case economic scenario, like the banking crisis, governments can, and did, intervene to ensure that money still comes out of the cash machines. But if ecosystems crash, they cant print more planet.
The same data used to produce the date above also reveal a creeping vulnerability for the UK. We have become more dependent on both food and fuel imports. Worsening self-sufficiency carries a high economic cost as the price of both essentials is rising. But it also undermines national security in other ways.
It was only two years ago that we lived through another food and fuel crisis when prices for both rose suddenly and dramatically. At the time, the severity of the bank failures distracted many from the long-term signals. Increased competition for declining oil reserves and a global agricultural system increasingly vulnerable to climatic upheaval, mean that such events are likely to become much more common.
The price of oil is now again on an upward curve (and events in the Gulf of Mexico lay bare the difficulties of extracting the remaining, more marginal oil fields). Significant crop failures this year have triggered a rise in "food nationalism".
Following serious droughts, Russia, one of the world's major grain baskets, banned grain exports in order to guarantee their domestic food security. Ukraine, one of the world's other major producers, is likely to follow.
Every week seems to bring news of new "land grabbing" initiatives in which wealthy nations or corporations buy or take long-term leaseholds on productive farmland in poorer countries, motivated either by concerns over feeding their own people, or with a speculative eye sharply focused on the money to be made from a combination of demand and scarcity rising hand in hand.
By coincidence the day we overshoot the world's biocapacity happens to fall in a month, August, that seems to have become synonymous with spectacular "natural" disasters. No self-respecting climate scientist will claim a direct cause and effect link between a single weather event and the warming climate. But there is a very high level of confidence in saying that we will face more and more extreme events of the kind that have caused massive upheaval this month, from the vast floods in Pakistan to the mudslides in China.
Greater climatic disruption is one side-effect of over-consumption as we pour more waste greenhouse gases from fossil fuels into the atmosphere than can be safely absorbed. Our danger now is that these dynamics feed off each other. Overstretched and denuded by our over-consumption, the productive ecosystems that we depend upon, and rely upon to meet rising demand, are becoming more vulnerable to a destabilised climate.
We need to start scrutinising and acting to correct our ecological debts with at least the same seriousness as is being given to our private and public financial debts. Banks were saved at the point of collapse after several years of ignored warnings. If we leave it that long to correct our environmental deficit, it will be too late.
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110 Comments so far
Show AllI wonder how long before a declining oxygen content within the atmosphere becomes noticeable. We're killing the oceans which contain phytoplankton which is not only the bottom level of the food chain but also supplies a large amount of oxygen. We are denuding rainforests which are said to be the lungs of the earth. And every living breathing creature including over six billion human beings exhale how many tons of C02 per day, along with fossil fuel burning generation of C02?
We don't have much longer at the current rates of things. Global warming is going to cause tundra to thaw and release hundreds of thousands of tons of methane into the atmoshpere. Methane is a much more efficient global warming spur that is C02.
I don't think human beings have another 50 years left on this planet. Probably less. Nothing much is going to change as long as capitalist elites are in control of events and media.
In the great Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, it is believed that atmosphereic oxygen declined to only 12-13 percent. Thus, even sea-level was the equivalent of 17,000 feet of altitude today.
But it will take a lot longer that 50 years. Such really bad, life-on-earth ending stuff is still thousands-years away. But this is unimportant, becasue once humans set the runaway processes in motion they will be unstoppable.
While the world may not quite yet be coming to an end, it has already been noted that in the current period of extreme weather patterns it is the world's poor which will be hit hardest. While that in itself is nothing new, the mere fact that world population is on the unsustainable rise, so is the number of poor and disenfranchised peoples. More people, more poor, more misery, more violence. For all the sanguine talk of economic expansion elixirs, it is old school poverty were true growth is really going strong. Largely due to this ever widening rift between the haves (who seem to have more and more everyday at an ever greater cost) and the have-nots (who have less and less with every passing day as they struggle to hold on to what little they have) the planet's ability to go on sustaining a life-procuring ecology will continue to deteriorate with increasing speed while shortening the amount of time to do something sane and effective about it.
'i don't think human being have another 50 years left on this planet'......
jacques cousteau, the famous french mariner wrote in his book before his death, that he believed at the time of writing, we had, 50, 100 maximum 150 years left. i believe like you, that he was correct on his first 50 year assessment..........(give or take a few decades)
We have and will have growing food and fuel shortages on an over-populated planet. What to do? First, put people to work in factories producing ever greater quantities of condoms and birth control pills. Second, prioritize military spending to increase funding of smaller assault units and put them to work against the Vatican and any Imam's encouraging procreation. Third, prioritize food over fuel by ending subsidies for bio-fuels. Yes, I do understand this last item flies in the face of all rational philosophy: "I move, therefore I am."
All this ranting about population is just another form of denialism. It belies a complete misunderstanding of capitalist economics, where carbon emissions are a function of economic growth, not pouulation. 90% of all AGW is attribitable to the 500 million or so wealthiest inhabitants living in areas of stable and low-density population. The world population could be be culled 80% and that wealthiest would only burn even more fossil fuel - their capitalist ecoinomy demands it.
And, even we took the simple-minded assumption that carbon emissions was simply a function of population, forced-birth control would still be useless, in that it would not reduce population nearly fast enough.
All this ranting about over-poplation being irrelevant is a form of denialism, The fact is, the present poopulation was only creatable, not even sustainable, due to capitalist economic expansion.
When the oil goes, so does our food. We passed the carrying capacity to grow sufficient food on sunlight and cow manure about 200 yrs ago. There is only so much net primary production available whether we live on grassland or eat phytoplankton.
For every kilogram of human flesh, one less kilogram of any other consumer, in the ecological sense, species can exist.
Perhaps you'd enjoy a world of two species: humans and something we eat, grown on our own shit, but I would find that, at the very least, boring, even if it were sustainable.
At what point do you consider the number of humans enough? In the economic sense, it seems even capitalism passed that number about 30 years ago.
Before oil came along, the planet supported between 500 million and 1 billion humans. When oil is gone, probably less than that number will be supported, because soils have been depleted, have not been allowed to rest, and some areas are almost like 'hydroponics' and will produce nothing unless 'teased' with artificial fertilizer. The future will not be a friendly place, and todays children will curse this generation for bringing them into the world.
Thanks for agreeing with me.
If you are referring to my post above, I did not intend to "simple-mindedly" imply that carbon emissions are a function of population growth, although such growth has to contribute at least somewhat, even some small percentage. I'm more worried about plankton depletion and rainforest destruction. However, in the capitalist paradigm, more population growth means bigger markets, more manufactured goods and consequently more carbon emissions as industry grows to meet the demand.
I fully concure with the comment by phineas August 23rd, 2010 12:11 pm, just prior or just after this comment, depending on whichever order your viweing is set up.
Hey, we exhale carbon dioxide. Any way he wants to look at it, population and carbon production are proportional. There's only so much animal matter the plant matter can support.
Population increase is certainly one way a capitalist expands his markets, but it is much-less important one. The most important one is through the mass-propaganda system of the media to push contrived prodicts that no one needs and did perfectly fine without.
The most insidious drive for markets is the way suppliers work through manufacturers to assure an expanding market for their product. This leads to "deliberately-engineered inefficiencies" For example, the automobile, and particularly the engineered-to-be-hyper-inefficient form it takes in the US. This assured a secure market for oil, but to get the market really rolling, the car manufactureers goaded the RE developers into creating the most hyper-inefficient sprawling suburban infrastructure possible, while dismantling the formerly highly efficient publiuc transit syatems.
Who cares about how and why capitalism utilizes or expands its markets?
In the end, the amount of primary production is finite, therefore so is the amount of animal matter it can support, i.e humans and any other non-photosynthetic species.
Capitalism, in this sense, is just so irrelevant. It only defines the rate. It is only relevant in that the tipping points would have been reached 200 years ago without capialistic oil extraction that provided fertilizer and energy to grow more human-edible photosynthetic output over non-human-edible photosynthetic output. Just as another tipping point, the extinction of large game to sustain increased human predation, led to agriculture over hunter-gathering 6000 years ago.
Not to rile up a common Native America poster here, but who knows if the Native Americans weren't on the road to extinction here irrelevant of the arrival of Europeans? We have no real clue what the sustainable population was then, or the rate of predation of buffalo. It was assumed, romantically, despite no evidence to support it, that they lived in balance, but suppose year after year, they were slowly marching to the same fate, eating more than could be produced in a year.
Do we really know if they would have not been totally extinct by now? It would be ironic that, depsite the destruction of their culture, the only reason their geneone survives is because of Europenas. Note to ShadowDancer: Don't even try to embroil this in an argument, it is mere hypothetical conjecture, you won't get a repsonse.
Harvesting is really a very mature form of population dynamic modelling. There's nothing romantic about what is sustainable. Follow the line and you maintain balance, fall below it and your prey thrives at a lower predator population, rise above it and you both eventually become extinct.
From what I read of the practices of a few South American tribes, none had any mystical ability to understand sustainabilty on an instinctual level. Here's an example: their method of river-fishing. They took the cyanide leachate from their cassava root and dumped it in the river, killing 90% of the local fish, so they could easily gather the 10 percent they enjoyed as food.
Not very sustainable was it? It was learning of that practice that spurred me to study what sustainability actual meant in terms of behavior and resource utilization, for the long term. Because no one could argue that killing 90% of the fish to easily harvest 10% was ever going to be sustainable over the long haul.
But, despite this little tangent, you're missing the point, entirely - capitalism is irrelevant, it is population numbers and resource harvesting, no matter what system of accounting and extraction you use. Stop trying to sharpen it.
Phineas, thanks, you've well articulated your main point, which is one that seems to elude a number of posters here: namely, that capitalism is (ultimately) not particularly relevant to the ecological-impacts issue. As you aptly point out, it is population numbers and resource use that is relevant ... whether the economic structure in which that occurs is capitalist, socialist, tribal, feudal, communal, or something else entirely.
I'll stick by my earlier comment, that I'm not aware of a single nation on earth right now that is gradually reducing, rather than enlarging, its ecological footprint ... with the possible exception of a couple of unfortunate nations that have recently been through severe economic/social crises (Haiti, Sudan, etc.), or perhaps one of the handful of European countries (e.g., Italy) whose population is actually shrinking.
There are simply too many people on the planet now to sustain all at a reasonable level of comfort and consumption, without a massive input of energy from stored fossil fuels to artificially goose the production and transport of food, etc.
One way or another our population numbers will get whittled down to sustainable levels -- either voluntarily, thanks to proactive actions on our part (thanks, Italy!), or involuntarily, through the limitations inevitably imposed by Mother Nature and available resources.
In the latter case, you get no second chances. Mother Nature, as they say, always bats last.
How do you feel about some countries exporting their population via emigration, in particular China and India?
There's only one planet. They haven't really gone anywhere.
Jonathan Edwards, I think it's not a good idea to export the "surplus" population. So I think all the overseas Chinese and Indians must be put back in their respective countries of origin. Just to be consistent, I think all white people from North & South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc., also must be put back in their countries of origin in Europe. And perhaps the black people can go back to Africa, too. I bet that would change the picture somewhat, wouldn't it? Something tells me that China and India may not face too much of a difference.
I am not addressing the past when population wasn't an issue. I am not addressing slavery, brought on by religious superiority and the dehumanizing of the "savage". I am not even addressing the people's moving from one country to another. However, I AM addressing the problem of specific countries which have gone far beyond sustainability and suffer inability to halt their population from growing, exporting their problems to other countries. Countries which are net importers of food should have to deal with their population problem, and should not be able to circumvent that by encouraging emigration instead. A few developing nations have a serious population problem - many don't -, just as much as most developed nations have a serious consumption problem. People should trade within their region, cities within their province or state, states within their country, and countries between their immediate neighbours. That should include limits on food and limits on natural resources. If every entity must live within their means without being able to exploit the resources of other nations half way around the globe, things would improve overall.
Not all developed countries waste equally. There is no country on this planet which wastes the energy and resources of the planet like the United States of America. The US extracts 7 million barrels of oil per day and uses over 20 million. That is about 8-9% of the daily production and 25% of the daily planetary use. It's only about 4.5-4.6% of the world population. The US should be a net exporter of energy, if anything, and not an importer.
>>Jonathan Edwards August 24th, 2010 9:07 pm wrote: "I am not addressing the past when population wasn't an issue. I am not addressing slavery, brought on by religious superiority and the dehumanizing of the "savage". I am not even addressing the people's moving from one country to another. However, I AM addressing the problem of specific countries which have gone far beyond sustainability and suffer inability to halt their population from growing, exporting their problems to other countries. Countries which are net importers of food should have to deal with their population problem, and should not be able to circumvent that by encouraging emigration instead."<<
That's a very funny thing to say. In fact, your whole post reveals your ignorance of certain facts, though you conveniently say "I am not addressing the past when population wasn't an issue". Of course, population **was** an issue in Europe by the time Columbus started the mad rush. Much of the forests in Europe had already been cut down - especially in western Europe, and especially in the British Isles. So discovery of the "New World" came at just the right time and provided the European countries to export their "surplus" population there, while also allowing them to import back the resources from there. The cities were starting to get overcrowded in England following the Enclosure Movement, as the landed aristocrats could never have enough land, first to produce wool and then to produce beef. England kept exporting its "surplus population" in a planned and well-organized manner, and such "exporting" was taking place regularly, all the way to its use of Australia as a "penal colony". The export was planned so meticulously that they even tried to make sure there would be enough female population. Many of the unfortunate folks from debtors prisons were shipped off. So if the English people can boast of a beautiful countryside, it has a brutal history behind it. Even the Irish potato famine was partly "facilitated" by the British, and the British bankers were at hand to buy up the land vacated by the fleeing Irish. And this was not in some distant past.
>>You say: "Countries which are net importers of food should have to deal with their population problem, and should not be able to circumvent that by encouraging emigration instead."<<
You mention China and India and so I assume you are referring to these here. These countries import food primarily because they can afford to do so, as there has been an increase in consumption of meat and dairy in recent years. Not that it's a good thing, but they can go back to being self-sufficient if they switch to a largely vegetarian diet. That was the case in India except during a few decades immediately post-Independence in 1947, when they had to import food grains.
You should educate yourself about the food imports by western European nations. Here's an "overshoot" story - about EU's over-consumption of fish:
"Fish dependence - The increasing reliance of the EU on fish from elsewhere"
http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/fish-dependence
"EU citizens are consuming far more fish than European seas can produce, becoming increasingly dependent on seafood from other waters. If the EU were only to consume fish from its own waters, it would run-out of fish on July 8th, making it wholly dependent on fish from elsewhere from July 9th."
Currently, the UK is 60% self-sufficient in its food supplies, and this has been the **highest** in the last 100 years. During the 1930's, '40's and 50's, food self sufficiency for the UK was between 30% and 50%.
You think only the USA has a problem? What about Canada? Australia? I bet you have no clue what the term "ecological footprint" means, or what the per capita footprint is for various western European nations. A large ecological footprint simply means that these countries **cannot** sustain their lifestyles and consumption using what can be produced within their own borders.
You cannot even begin to imagine the conditions in Europe if they had not exported their surplus population. But you are free to live with your illusions that have nothing to do with historical facts.
Did you bother reading my entire post? Didn't think so. Seems to me that your complaint is more racially based than ecology based. Neither the populations of North America, Europe nor Asia are sustainable, for different reasons... but the end result is the same.
>>Jonathan Edwards wrote: "Seems to me that your complaint is more racially based than ecology based."<<
Although I didn't say so, that's **exactly** the impression I got from **your** posts and I thought I had to set the record straight.
Here is your post from August 23rd, 2010 9:34 pm"
>>"How do you feel about some countries exporting their population via emigration, in particular China and India?"<<
That was all there was in this post, and that clearly sounds "racially based" to me - especially since you would rather **not** talk about history, where such a "policy" actually existed in Europe, whereas I haven't heard of any such "policy" on the part of the Indian and Chinese governments. The growth rates are actually falling in these countries, although more slowly in India.
Perhaps you didn't mean to make a racial comment, but ignoring history makes it appear so. That is also the reason I did not use that term in my replies to your posts. Even now, the **main** problem with China and India is not their population - it's the emerging inequalities within their countries and increasing wasteful consumption - particularly their meat and dairy consumption that is increasing in recent years. While both countries are working on stabilizing (and hopefully decreasing) their populations, they can make the situation more bearable for their people by cutting out the wasteful consumption on the part of their elite. Also, if they can build sustainable infrastructure - such as public transportation and railways - instead of more highways for use by automobiles and trucks, they can stretch their resources further. And at some point, if they can cut down their military expenditure, that would help too. But none of these things is happening right now, and China clearly is aiming to be the next superpower (if it is not one, already). That should be the real concern, more than its population.
Thanks Alcyon. You're a great help. By the way, are you from India by any chance? My parents came from there.
If we all just eat rice, we can all huddle together, the 47 billion of us, and keep each other warm. ;-) The problem is not that people eat meat. That may upset some vegetarians and vegans, but people have always eaten meat. The problem only arises when billions of people want to eat meat. The planet has many problems, and they are all based in human overpopulation. The greater the population, the lower the energy, resource and food budget available per person within the limits of sustainability.
1.2 billion people [the US, Canada, the EU and Japan] use up half of the world's oil. It's a good average lifestyle, but there are probably already twice as many people living that lifestyle, as is sustainable, and that does not even yet count populations from outside of that block which also want to share in the same lifestyle. Hence in the long term human population has to be greatly reduced. In my opinion - while in the short-term less consumption is necessary, as well as a "retooling" of our economy toward better durable goods and away from the throw-away society - the longterm trend should be to reduce human population so that humans can have a comparable lifestyle as we enjoy, but within sustainability of the biosphere. That takes time, and convincing, and I am not convinced that we have the luxury of time.
Well said.
>>phineas wrote: ... but who knows if the Native Americans weren't on the road to extinction here irrelevant of the arrival of Europeans? We have no real clue what the sustainable population was then, or the rate of predation of buffalo.<<
That was a completely needless and gratuitous conjecture - perhaps out of a desire to paint the whole of humanity with the same brush, so you can feel better, that everyone is equally destructive?
No, sorry. You only told ShadowDancer to not to bother to respond - so it doesn't apply to me :)
phineas, I have been reading up on history for years and years and from different points of view, and I HAVE TO conclude that there is indeed a BIG DIFFERENCE in the rate of destruction carried out by various peoples. Not only the rate of destruction, but even the ruthlessness and the complete lack of scruples that accompanied the destruction and conquests.
I think empires originating in Europe have been far more ruthless and far more stupid and arrogant than empires elsewhere. And when religion was used in the service of empire, it became much more destructive - because now just about anything and everything could be justified as "God's work".
I am not particularly looking for an extended debate, but I simply cannot let a ***gratuitous generalization*** go without challenging.
Humans ***have*** lived in North & South America for thousands of years. While a lot of the ancient forests in Europe have been decimated in the last 2,000 years and a lot of the wildlife that once existed in Europe has been wiped out (all as a direct result of empires spreading, with the accompanying destruction and over-consumption), the fact remains that when the white people arrived in the "New World", there were still lots and lots of forest cover and wildlife. That is proof enough that the rate of consumption was somewhat sustainable, even though certain pockets might have been overexploited. The people who lived there did not feel the need to overrun the whole damn continent, and having exploited it, to look for new lands to conquer.
No it wasn't. It was to show that even hunter-gathering and local, solar-based agriculture is, in itself, not necessarily sustainable; that sustainability is not something that naturally develops; that most species aren't intrinsically living some instinctual sustainable existences, even "primitive" humans.
Populations ebb and rise in cycles. If the species is lucky, its cycles don't lead to extinction of its food sources. But the fact is, most aren't so lucky, especially on the local population level.
One good buffalo virus could have wiped out most of the North American Plains tribes in a few years. Failing to understand the dynamics of their predator/prey interactions, while engaging in the natural tendency of species to increase their numbers until the inevitable tipping point, is not only a technological human trait.
In essence, population stability as a swing between too extremes, unnoticeable in short time spans of individual lives, is inherent in a "natural" system. It is merely, that we have reached the generation who will experience the tipping point of our dynamic regime. My example was to illustrate that any regime operates in the same manner. Which culture, time period would you have preferred I used?
Have a nice day,
OK, I see what you mean, phineas. The reason for my objecting to your post was that I've been seeing far too many posts that tend to blame "humanity" or "humans" as a whole. Combined with the extreme reluctance to address the issue of over-consumption, I tend to view such posts with a bit of suspicion. I still think it is somewhat disingenuous to talk of "humans" in general as responsible for the **current** crisis (I'm not referring to you, here), no matter if the crisis would have landed anyway at some point in the future.
Even if you want to argue that there has been no community that has been truly sustainable, I think it is obvious that there are **great** differences in how unsustainable they are within a local ecosystem. I also think some of the differences can be attributed to the psyche - in particular, a community's relationship with and its view of nature.
Many communities in the Americas and Asia (before contact with the Europeans) had a somewhat deferential attitude towards nature, and their beliefs and superstitions all point to a great deal of respect for nature (in the form of their deities) and even fear of offending their gods. Such communities were clearly limited by their beliefs (and superstitions), and they tended to view any misfortune as a punishment from their gods - many of whom were "local", and not some invisible entity in the sky. Certain places, trees, rivers, mountains, rocks, and even some animals and birds were considered "sacred" by many "primitive" and indigenous communities. Though some of their attempts to "appease" their gods might appear crude or even barbaric, the fact remains that they never felt that they - the human beings - were the masters of their environment. Such a mindset put some natural limits on the extent of their exploitation of nature. Their "empires" too were limited in scope and extent - though they too had their impact on the local environment, including a great deal of deforestation.
I really think there was something different about the European psyche - from the days of Alexander "the great" onwards - that made it OK for them to go on endless conquests just for the heck of it. And the practice of an elite class or aristocrats holding on to vast tracts of land was partly responsible for pushing the "commoners" to escape the misery by getting on the ships to the "New World". There was also active shipment of people - often unfortunate folks who may have committed petty "crimes" - to distant lands controlled by the British empire.
So, even if these other communities were not consciously thinking of sustainability, I think it's not correct to ignore the differences in the degree of unsustainability - which continue to this day. I say this because I see such arguments used to evade responsibility by implying everyone is somehow equally destructive.
ALCYON: Was it something different about the European mindset or the influence of a martial (hello, Rome!) form of Christianity that lent itself to an ethos that applauded the DOMINATION of the land? Note, too, that the land is frequently perceived as a feminine depiction of Mother Nature; and that Christianity is anathema to the Divine feminine. The very concept of original sin being linked to the female body and her temptations (to the male) helped to demonize, as well as discredit, the spiritual dimensions of womanhood. And this insidious assault has lasted for centuries.
Indigenous tribes who teach their young to hold in high regard the sacredness of waterways and majestic forests still lend homage to the great Mother. Replacing this understanding, the one that breeds respect for ecological communities, with only a respect and homage to the father god had MUCH to do with the decimation of the natural world. It's also quite useful in amassing armies.
Today's Chritianity (and there are some wonderful exceptions) is seen in its uber: Martial form when Evangelical preachers enter the Air Force to bless weapons and convince naive, young troops that their missions are holy, and (in killing others) that they serve a higher plan. This is blasphemous, but few go on record to say as much. This is one reason why the mystic, who does challenge the church in its claims to absolute god-given authority, is presented as the heretic, forced to face the fate of death for speaking against THAT establishment. Funny enough, much of this prejudice remains with us even in this forum where I have felt the sting of being cast as heretic, for exposing these important correspondences.
Interesting question you raise, Siouxrose. It's the kind of question that's better asked than answered :) While we can try and piece together what happened and when, it's harder to explain why. I think the kind of beliefs that people, especially the rulers, hold will surely influence their actions. The Roman empire extended all the way to Britannia even before the advent of Christianity, or at least before it became the state religion. Alexander reached the western edge of India even before that. These earlier conquests were probably not driven by any religious belief, but simply by the human ego that's unchecked by any other factor. In fact, the way I understand it, even later on, Christianity was adopted in a "convenient" way that wouldn't interfere with the ego's ambitions - so the earlier ego domination continued unchecked by this new religion. What it did, however, was to make it easier to recruit foot soldiers in the service of empire. Islam too was used in the cause of territorial expansion and to serve the human ego - by removing certain compunctions that people might have had in killing large numbers of other people and to confiscate or destroy property. It was easier if the others happened to be "non-believers". Religion also extended the longevity of empires.
In contrast, I think the human ego was kept somewhat under check in cultures that had a different relationship with nature. I don't think these cultures were able to view themselves as separate from nature or having any kind of dominion over nature. There was always this underlying fear that if they stray too far, they would be punished. I think even the kings or rulers had this fear. There was this emperor Ashoka in India (269 BC to 232 BC, according to Wikipedia) who felt this great remorse after a particularly bloody battle against a small kingdom that had refused to accept his supremacy. Though he won that fight, it is said that the bloodshed all around him affected him so much that he converted to Buddhism and renounced war. His son and daughter too became Buddhist monks. And we hear of this Aztec belief or superstition of some kind of a retribution for a past transgression and how that made it easier for the Spaniards to overrun this empire. The flip side is that any compunction over killing other people must have been assuaged by divine sanction for the conquistadors.
I'm inclined to think that the human ego can be dangerous if unchecked. What can keep the ego under control is the realization of some kind of a connection with everyone and everything. I'm also inclined to think that this connection need not be felt by everyone, all the time. Even the presence of people who have had this realization or are seekers of something deeper can influence those around them. Some people can articulate this connection that they felt in "secular" terms, and others may refer to some sacredness. But the search for something sacred seems to have been universal. For whatever reason, I think certain regions have had a shortage of such seekers or realized souls. I say only shortage, not "absence". And this can vary not only regionally, but even temporally within a region - so a general dimming of spirituality can affect a people too. It's unfortunate that Jesus was made out to be a one-and-only case by the Church so that more people didn't bother to be Christ-like. And I think this happened in Islam too - that made certain beliefs, faith and do's & don't's more important than any kind of realization 'in this life'. Of course, people have been seeking something deeper, *despite* the religious conditioning. So hopefully at some point, spirituality will overtake simple religious belief, which is really an extension of the ego mind. I know I've been rambling. That's why I said certain questions are better asked than answered :)
War is to blame. War fuels the rate of destruction. People have more babies during war times. War is the downfall of us all. Divide and conquer til there is nothing left to divide and conquer.
Unfortunately it's more than just an issue of greenhouse-gas production. It's also an issue of exhausting over-taxed soils and groundwater, over-exploiting ocean fisheries, over-harvesting tropical forests, over-polluting fresh water sources, and over-hunting endangered species.
I'd be mighty relieved to learn that the other 6.0 billion people on the planet are NOT cutting down forests, plowing up virgin soils, over-fishing the oceans, hunting down endangered species, polluting lakes and rivers, nor destroying habitat for the other gazillion species that share this planet with humans.
Unfortunately, I don't think one can make that argument. I myself have worked and lived in many parts of the developing as well as the 'developed' world over the last couple of decades, and I've been dismayed by what I've seen just about everywhere. I don't know of a single country where the ecological footprint appears to be shrinking rather than growing, except perhaps for the truly economic basket-cases.
The magnitude of ecological impact is basically equivalent to (population) x (per-capita exploitation of resources). So yes, we need to address both factors of that equation if we have any hope of reducing that impact. Reducing per-capita consumption by, say, 40% would be awesome ... but it will also equate to zero progress if population increases by 40% in the interim.
Greenhouse gas production is actually a pretty good all-ncompassing measurement. In a oxidative system like the atmosphere, CO2 IS entropy, the creation of an endpoint thermodynamic state. All the factors you mention are just a means to that endpoint.
Americans would never willingly allow their lifestyle to be decimated to the point of sustainability and fair share of resources.
It's also a matter of overcoming enough ego to get down on our knees and PRAY.
Illogical.
To whom?
Jeevee, let me just say that I completely agree with you on the need to at least understand the workings of the ego and its **direct** role in all this mess and destruction. And as such, getting rid of or subduing the personal ego (and the collective ego in the form of nationalism or other forms of identifications) can produce the fastest results and perhaps even the best possible outcome under the circumstances. It's also the ego that's standing in the way of tackling the crisis urgently and comprehensively.
But a convenient lab-created "Super Bug" will, without anyone being able to put a 'killer' tag on anyone. Many scientists were puzzled at the strains combined in H1N1. I don't think it's a puzzle at all. It's only a puzzle for people who cannot fathom that their own governments would hurt them. More than 1200 architects and engineers have come together to sound the alarm on the collapse of the WTC buildings. Does it matter? People believe what they want to believe, and refuse to believe what they are scared of.
I am way past the point of trusting government. I have no reason to doubt that there are 'bugs' being created in labs right now. I just haven't yet come to a conclusion whether people taking vaccines, or people refusing vaccines, will be the vulnerable ones.
"We've Gone Into the Ecological Red"
Yet another, typically "progressive", and even doubly deceptive metaphor.
"We" meaning the blame for the destruction of the planet is equally to equally shared among all of us. Not true.
U.S. and global capitalism, forever driven to maximize profit, at every level of it's criminal and parasitic existance, has caused global warming.
"Ecological Red" a bookkeeping metaphor to hide the reality of U.S. imperialist capitalism, is determined to secure profit by any and all means possible, including wars for profit, including ecological disasters that never end, including total corruption of both Demcoratic and Republican parties and electoral processes, by complete mass media ownership and control, etc.
The only "bookkeeping system" of capitalism is how to maximize profit, to maximize the "bottom line". Capitalists never go "into the red" trying to restore the destruction they have caused. Nor are they forced out of business to stop global warming.
By ignoring the environment to maximize profit, by ignoring essential safety concerns of workers and society to maximize profit, by polluting the land, water and air, rapacious run-amok, gangster capitalism is destroying us all, by continuing profitable pollution in speculative gimmicks such as "cap and trade", nothing will be done under capitalism to end the crises destroying the planet and humanity.
Read daily the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org
The thoughtless headlong plunge to extinction does not require a label.
The system devised in the US & Europe, being aped by the rest of the world, is what the world is stuck in. I believe this can be a moment where people get away from that madness.
The elected officials will not show leadership in this regard, as business and war is not affected by it.
We may have about five years to be able to get enough power to make real change- the Australian elections may or may not be a sign.
After that, we are at the mercy of those who have the weapons.
Love
Zero
Future populations will be decimated, and what's left will likely be controlled via remote controlled weapons, similar to the drones being flown in current war zones.
I posted a comment similar to yours on another article on this topic, so I've been thinking about it. I, too, believe "ecological debt" is a potentially misleading term because it only applies to ecological "services" that cycle, such as carbon, oxygen, surface water, crops, and so forth. However, every single species comprising the living part of ecosystems is on a one-way trip along the path of evolution. Therefore, species extinction is never a debt; it is always a permanent loss that shreds ecosystem integrity. Similarly, every resource that is "mined" or "extracted" such as oil, soil, minerals, and slowly recharging groundwater, not to mention complete mountaintops, is also, for all practical purposes, a permanent loss. Same for the ecosystems lost during the mining or extraction processes.
As the author notes, "In a worst case economic scenario, like the banking crisis, governments can, and did, intervene to ensure that money still comes out of the cash machines. But if ecosystems crash, they cant [sic] print more planet." Exactly my point! Debts are repayable; losses are permanent, and it's the losses that are accelerating ecological catastrophes worldwide.
We are IN an ecological "worst-case scenario" RIGHT NOW. Biologists call it the "sixth extinction." That said, balancing the ecological "budget" and keeping ecological services "in the black" are apt metaphors for ecosystem "management" (though humans have never fully been able to manage ecosystems--it's next to impossible to manage what you barely understand), and may be useful guides indicating use or abuse of ecosystems. But the sixth extinction is happening, and will continue whether or not we stay out of ecological debt or not. Hence, the use of a term like "ecological debt" is misleading if and when its use suggests that things will be okay if we just balance the budget. We're in far deeper than that. We're not "operating in the red"--we're bankrupt and in the process of liquidation.
As an economic analogy, even your permanent losses make sense. It is the liquidation of savings. It was first used 40 years ago to describe the use of fossil fuels - living on our energy savings, while tossing away our energy income - solar insolation.
However, in the ensuing years it became apparent, and better understood, that even the sunlight is not an "excess" income we can use as we see fit. The sunlight we think is "excess" is already powering the geological atmospheric cycles, mainly, providing the driving force for the carbon, hydrodynamic and nitrogen cycles.
No one has really calculated how those cycles will be affected if, and when, we start moving sunlight about for industrial processes and dumping it into the atmosphere as heat where it is not gathered, rather than it being absorbed and used locally.
Passive solar used locally may be the only viable solar energy option.
The only sustainable viable industrial option seems to be geothermal. Why is nothing being done in that area?
Your concerning about getting into the "black" as being pointless if the permanent losses can never be replaced misses an overrideing point, that actually proves your argument. We'll never get back into the black. We may replace the value of that family heirloom we hocked, but the actual physical object, in this case -distinct species, are not comng back. However, in a purely objective ecosystem service model, the replacement of the exact species is not that important, in an objective sense. The services will be replaced eventually, albeit with a new species.
That is not to imply I an objective about the lose of present species. They are here, they are now, they have every right to continue to exist without the stress of humanity upon them and we have no right to assume they are ours to destroy no matter how replaceable their services or non-utilitarian we find them.
In the end, an emotional appeal may motivate the masses more than an objective one will hinder the capitalists. Let's hope so!
Thanks. That was a helpful and interesting response. Yes, evolution is likely to replace "services" we are so casually obliterating and disrupting, and evolution can occur rather more quickly than most people think. Life, in general, is quite resilient. (I just finished reading "The Making of the Fittest," by Sean B. Carroll. If you like "good reads" on evolution, it's a good one, as is Nick Lane's recent "Life Ascending.") Yes, I fear we will never be in the black. And yes, I am fond of all species, too, and emotionally regret being part of the sixth extinction.
We need a massive uprising of biophiliacs!
You're right. Environmentalists blame the whole world, but for more than 60 years, less than 5% of the planets population have used, abused and wasted the resources of the world. 4.3% of the world's population use 25% of it's energy. Shameful. 300 million people use over 20 million barrels of oil a day. 6,700 million people use the other 60.
On the Death of the Human Species
Praise the Earth --
All you birds and beasts,
All you sentient beings,
All you survivors!
For an oppressive burden
Has been lifted from your backs!
Live life to experience your world,
Not theirs, to the fullest,
In freedom and peace,
Now that the malignant parasitic plague is no more!
You have been liberated, finally,
To reclaim your battered kingdoms and restore your spirits!
beautiful sentiments rodent..........
hope we don't take too many of them with us though................
I believe our earth is way beyond too late to fix. As an individual you have to make your own decision on whether or not you want change and just do it!! For instance.. getting off your asses and read a self help book on learning how to plant a garden!
You're probably right on all counts.
The Owners realize what is at stake.
They are planning to eliminate a few billion little people from the planet.
(Of course, this will in no way affect them.)
They may be rich, but they’re not too bright.