Earth Doomed by 2050?

[Boris Godunov]

http://www.observer.co.uk/internatio...750783,00.html

Ok, it's the Guardian, but here:

Earth 'will expire by 2050'

Our planet is running out of room and resources. Modern man has plundered so much, a damning report claims this week, that outer space will have to be colonised

The end of earth as we know it? Talk about it here

Observer Worldview

Mark Townsend and Jason Burke
Sunday July 7, 2002
The Observer

Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week.
A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life.

In a damning condemnation of Western society's high consumption levels, it adds that the extra planets (the equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year 2050 as existing resources are exhausted.

The report, based on scientific data from across the world, reveals that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades.

Using the image of the need for mankind to colonise space as a stark illustration of the problems facing Earth, the report warns that either consumption rates are dramatically and rapidly lowered or the planet will no longer be able to sustain its growing population.

Experts say that seas will become emptied of fish while forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are completely destroyed and freshwater supplies become scarce and polluted.

The report offers a vivid warning that either people curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the onus on scientists to locate another planet that can sustain human life. Since this is unlikely to happen, the only option is to cut consumption now.

Systematic overexploitation of the planet's oceans has meant the North Atlantic's cod stocks have collapsed from an estimated spawning stock of 264,000 tonnes in 1970 to under 60,000 in 1995.

The study will also reveal a sharp fall in the planet's ecosystems between 1970 and 2002 with the Earth's forest cover shrinking by about 12 per cent, the ocean's biodiversity by a third and freshwater ecosystems in the region of 55 per cent.

The Living Planet report uses an index to illustrate the shocking level of deterioration in the world's forests as well as marine and freshwater ecosystems. Using 1970 as a baseline year and giving it a value of 100, the index has dropped to a new low of around 65 in the space of a single generation.

It is not just humans who are at risk. Scientists, who examined data for 350 kinds of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, also found the numbers of many species have more than halved.

Martin Jenkins, senior adviser for the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, which helped compile the report, said: 'It seems things are getting worse faster than possibly ever before. Never has one single species had such an overwhelming influence. We are entering uncharted territory.'

Figures from the centre reveal that black rhino numbers have fallen from 65,000 in 1970 to around 3,100 now. Numbers of African elephants have fallen from around 1.2 million in 1980 to just over half a million while the population of tigers has fallen by 95 per cent during the past century.

The UK's birdsong population has also seen a drastic fall with the corn bunting population declining by 92 per cent between 1970 and 2000, the tree sparrow by 90 per cent and the spotted flycatcher by 70 per cent.

Experts, however, say it is difficult to ascertain how many species have vanished for ever because a species has to disappear for 50 years before it can be declared extinct.

Attention is now focused on next month's Earth Summit in Johannesburg, the most important environmental negotiations for a decade.

However, the talks remain bedevilled with claims that no agreements will be reached and that US President George W. Bush will fail to attend.

Matthew Spencer, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said: 'There will have to be concessions from the richer nations to the poorer ones or there will be fireworks.'

The preparatory conference for the summit, held in Bali last month, was marred by disputes between developed nations and poorer states and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), despite efforts by British politicians to broker compromises on key issues.

America, which sent 300 delegates to the conference, is accused of blocking many of the key initiatives on energy use, biodiversity and corporate responsibility.

The WWF report shames the US for placing the greatest pressure on the environment. It found the average US resident consumes almost double the resources as that of a UK citizen and more than 24 times that of some Africans.

Based on factors such as a nation's consumption of grain, fish, wood and fresh water along with its emissions of carbon dioxide from industry and cars, the report provides an ecological 'footprint' for each country by showing how much land is required to support each resident.

America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha. In Ethiopia the figure is 2ha, falling to just half a hectare for Burundi, the country that consumes least resources.

The report, which will be unveiled in Geneva, warns that the wasteful lifestyles of the rich nations are mainly responsible for the exploitation and depletion of natural wealth. Human consumption has doubled over the last 30 years and continues to accelerate by 1.5 per cent a year.

Now WWF wants world leaders to use its findings to agree on specific actions to curb the population's impact on the planet.

A spokesman for WWF UK, said: 'If all the people consumed natural resources at the same rate as the average US and UK citizen we would require at least two extra planets like Earth.'

The world's ticking timebomb

Marine crisis:
North Atlantic cod stocks have collapsed from an estimated 264,000 tonnes in 1970 to under 60,000 in 1995.

Pollution:
The United States places the greatest pressure on the environment, with its carbon dioxide emissions and over-consumption. It takes 12.2 hectares of land to support each American citizen and 6.29 for each Briton, while the figure for Burundi is just half a hectare.

Shrinking Forests:
Between 1970 and 2002 forest cover has dwindled by 12 per cent.

Endangered wildlife:
African elephant numbers have fallen from 1.2 million in 1980 to half a million now. In the UK the songbird population has fallen dramatically, with the corn bunting declining by 92 per cent in the past 30 years.

Discuss.

[JohnIII]

No wonder the Russians want to get to Mars.

[Juggler]

Russians are way ahead of us.

[Skanky Burns]

Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week.

They based the study on this?

If so, then the study is worthless, as humans do not exploit at a continuous rate regardless of what is available to consume.

[Urban Ranger]

The scary thing is the exploitation accelerates.

[Skanky Burns]

Until the resource becomes extremely rare, hence expensive.

[Boris Godunov]

What I found interesting is the rates of consumption for the U.S. vis-a-vis other nations. What greedy little piggies we are here!

[Lemmy]

America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha.

*waits for American to boast about their large footprint*

[Lincoln]

The sky is falling. The sky is falling. etc. I knew I should have recycled that soda can.

[Lemmy]

Until the resource becomes extremely rare, hence expensive

hmm, yes, then only the top 1% people can afford to buy food, and the other 99% will just die of starvation...

[JohnIII]

And then there will be enough for everybody.

[Provost Harrison]

...and that the US government just sticks it's fingers in it's ears and goes 'la la la la la la la la la'

[Spiffor]

It's not the first time "experts" predict the ecological doom of Earth in a short time (there was such an influencal group in the 70's, "Rome group" I think they were called).
So, I don't think we should take this too seriously. However, it's a sure thing our way of life based on overconsuption is **** for our environment, and for ourselves.
While Europe is very timid in limiting its own pollution, and while the US refuse to sign Kyoto protocol, many poor countries, which will become rich in a few decades, will use resources as extensively as ourselves. When several billion people will consume and pollute as much as the rich do, then the problem will be even worse for our planet.

Rather than political measures, which won't be able to counteract a deep dynamics of society, I think we'd need a philosophic revolution, where happiness is not consumption...
Now that's more easy to say than to do (I'm a consumer myself )

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Spiffor
While Europe is very timid in limiting its own pollution

Well it's a bit of a non issue seeing as our population is actually decreasing anyway...

[Spiffor]

It's still a problem as we're the second polluters of earth (far behind the Yanks, sure, but far ahead the others)

[Dauphin]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991778

[Sava]

I tell you.... American conservatives are turning the world to sh!t...

[Saint Marcus]

DUH

[Shi Huangdi]

The USA has is actually not very densely populated and is big enough to sustain alot more people. If we really needed more food, we could stop paying farmers to burn crops, have people plant food items in their yards, etc.

[chequita guevara]

The New Scientist seems to believe that wars for plunder are something new. In the mean time, it ignores that one of the causes of continuing strife in Palestine/Israel is control over limited water supplies.

As for the Guardian article, I should simply point out that Malthus said the same thing 200 years ago. There is plenty of room for agricultural growth. It will come at a great cost to the environment, however. Build enough desalination plants, and even the Sahara can be made to bloom.

[Vanguard]

If this were true, I'm sure the pre-cogs would have forseen it.

Joking aside, there is some cause to be concerned. Earth's resources are not infinite and human population continues to grow fairly rapidly. Overfishing is already a serious problem. A some point advances in agriculture are going to fall behind advances in population. And then, um, bad things happen.

It is difficult, however, to see a policy prescription that solves the problem. Doom! Doom!

[Blisterz]

Human race=Parasites.

par·a·site

An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
As for the Guardian article, I should simply point out that Malthus said the same thing 200 years ago. There is plenty of room for agricultural growth. It will come at a great cost to the environment, however.

That's like drinking hemlock to quench your thirst.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Build enough desalination plants, and even the Sahara can be made to bloom.

Hi, global warming, here we come

Unless we somehow find a way to build feasible fusion reactors before we get there.

[DinoDoc]

http://www.economist.com/opinion/dis...tory_ID=718860

[chequita guevara]

I didn't say those were good alternatives, merely that they exist. I'm merely disproving the thesis that the Earth will run out of resources in 48 years.

[Lemmy]

but it will still be doomed, right?

[DinoDoc]

Profits of Doom
by Charles Platt


Doomsayers have always been in plentiful supply.
"Resources are scarcely adequate to us," wrote the Roman scholar Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, "while already nature does not sustain us. Truly, pestilence and hunger and war and flood must be considered as a remedy for nations, like a pruning back of the human race becoming excessive in numbers."[1] This was around 200 AD, when world population was under 300 million.[2]

Tertullianus was wrong, Malthus was wrong, and modern academics have been wrong--most spectacularly when an MIT study team deduced from a massive computer simulation that all reserves of lead, tin, zinc, and petroleum would be exhausted within 20 years. (This was back in 1972.)[3] Still, the abysmal track record of pessimistic pundits has never impaired their popularity--which explains Jeremy Rifkin's lucrative career as a gene-splicing alarmist, even though
none of his horror scenarios has come close to reality, while research continues safely under severe restraints and promises huge benefits ranging from cancer cures to new crops that will fight third-world hunger.

Of course, recombinant DNA raises ethical issues and has frightening military applications. But in _The Biotech
Century_ (Tarcher/Putnam, $24.95) Rifkin goes far beyond these specifics. With Old Testament hyperbole he warns of an impending "second genesis" threatening "a biological Tower of Babel spreading chaos throughout the biological world and, in
the process, drowning out the ancient language of evolution." (page 68)

In fact nature already is a chaotic system, and the
"ancient language of evolution" is a risky process of random mutations. The AIDS virus emerged from one such mutation; likewise, numerous hereditary birth defects that cause untold misery. We'd be wise to learn how to inhibit these "natural" processes merely for our own self-defense.

Rifkin, though, warns that the power to cure defects can
also be used to create superchildren. "'Customized' babies could pave the way for the rise of a eugenic civilization in the twenty-first century," he says (page 3). Yet no one complains, today, if a woman chooses a husband for his intelligence or his good looks, hoping that her children will inherit those traits. Shouldn't individuals be allowed to control this process with less uncertainty?

In March, 1996, UNESCO denied this right,[4] claiming
that "the human genome is the common heritage of humanity." Thus, women should be forbidden to modify their ova, or men their sperm, because germ plasm belongs to future generations of our species, not the person in whom it resides.

Rifkin extends this dubious principle even further,
opposing private ownership even of plant genes, especially by pharmaceutical companies that extract useful DNA sequences in third-world countries. He doesn't explain who will pay to turn these sequences into drugs, test them, and market them if no one is allowed ownership rights. He simply rejects the idea. "Life patents strike at the core of our beliefs about
the very nature of life," he writes (page 62).

His view of life, however, is somewhat inaccurate. He
complains that gene splicing alters "our concept of nature and our relationship to it, reducing all of life to
manipulatable chemical materials" (page 14). But life cannot be _reduced_ to chemistry; it _is_ chemistry, as was proved almost a century ago when sea urchins were fertilized with inert chemicals in a famous experiment at the Woods Hole marine biological laboratory.[5] Since then we've established
that every cell contains its own DNA program, and currently we are learning how to modify that program with greater precision. To Jeremy Rifkin, this seems a threat and an insult, possibly for religious reasons, though he avoids mentioning his own faith.

_The Biotech Century_ purports to be an objective guide, but this is a deliberate deception. Mr. Rifkin makes no attempt at a fair or balanced assessment, and does not reveal to the reader his long record of anti-science activism. His "survey" of the next century is an endless catalogue of horrors, real or imagined, and he offers no suggestions for solutions.

If genetic research is impeded, millions of people will
remain hungry or will die unnecessarily. If scare tactics by doomsayers encourage legislation that outlaws some activities (such as cloning), the work will move offshore to nations where fewer safeguards may exist, thus creating greater risk. Since _The Biotech Century_ encourages these outcomes, it raises an intriguing question: who is more dangerous, the scientist seeking to enhance our lives, or the pundit who promotes unreasoning fear?

Mr. Rifkin would like tighter controls on risky research
conducted by greedy pharmaceutical companies. By the same logic, he should favor restrictions on reckless doomsayers, who work without regulatory supervision and profit handsomely while accepting no responsibility for the social consequences of their scaremongering.

References

[1] Quoted in Joel E. Cohen, "How Many People Can the World
Support?" (page 6). W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 1995.

[2] Same source as [1] (page 77).

[3] Donella H. Meadows et. al., _The Limits to Growth_ (pages
56-61). Universe Books, New York, 1972.

[4] In "Declaration on Protection of the Human Genome," from
UNESCO web page; quoted in "The Evolution Revolution" by
Charles Platt, _Wired_ magazine, January 1997.

[5] Boyce Rensberger, _Life Itself_ (page 9). Oxford
University Press, New York, 1996.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
http://www.economist.com/opinion/dis...tory_ID=718860

Not a big fan of applying risk/cost analysis to human lives. Do you want to be one of those sacrificed for profitability?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lemmy
but it will still be doomed, right?

Yes, in 4-5 billion years, the sun will expand into a red giant and envelope the Earth. There's nothing we can do to stop it. Earth is doomed. Party now.

However, more likely we will be destroyed by an asteroid strike in the next few dozen million years. Humanity is doomed. Party now.

All indications are that our species will have evolved into something different in about 3 million years. Homo sapiens sapiens is doomed. Party now.

Within the next few thousand years, our star system will travel through a dust cloud. The amount of life giving sunlight will be greatly diminished, and food production and energy production will collapse. Civilization is doomed. Party now.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

[DanS]

Even though The Economist is the spawn of the devil, I read the article and found it funny. I particularly liked the following...

"The fourth factor is poor individual perception. People worry that the endless rise in the amount of stuff everyone throws away will cause the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if America's trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past, and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up only the area of a square, each of whose sides measures 28km (18 miles). That is just one-12,000th of the area of the entire United States.

This was one of the things I always worried about, considering the amount of stuff we all throw away (and we throw away a lot).

Goes to show you that perceptions, while valuable, need to be informed by reason.