I'm placing this thread in the Art Bell room because it reminded me of the Quickening and I could really see (hear) Art interviewing this guy. (feel free to move this to another room if needed)
I was listening to a show on NPR this afternoon and the person being interviewed was a PHD at UCLA (I think the field was geography).
He was talking about "overshoot" - In that we have now overshot the use of several things to the point where we can't replace them faster than we are now using them up or they are simply running out.
He listed: oil, trees, and water - (He listed several more - I can't remember them.)
He seemed very intelligent - he pointed out the rates of consumption and the rates to replace or in some areas the rate we can maintain.
According to his calculation, we (as America) can maintain our first world lifestyle for 30-50 more years and then we turn in to a third world.
He said we can't fix a subset of these - it's all or none, meaning you can't fix trees and oil but not fix the water problem or any combination. His list of items were all critical.
I'm placing this thread in the Art Bell room because it reminded me of the Quickening and I could really see (hear) Art interviewing this guy. (feel free to move this to another room if needed)
I will try to find a link to this guy or the show and post additional information.
It's a wake up call, or one of many wake up calls.
-Capt. Tuttle
reminded me of The Quickening
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reminded me of The Quickening
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TEXT OF STORY
KAI RYSSDAL: There's a technical term for what we're doing as we eat, shop, drive and go about our daily lives. The word is "overshoot" -- when a population uses up resources faster than they can be replaced.
Today, we're consuming about 30 percent more trees, fish and fossil fuels than the planet can regenerate. We can run a deficit like this for a little while, but there are limits to how big a hole we can dig before it gets too deep to get out of.
To help understand those limits we spoke with Jared Diamond. He's a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. You might know him better though his books -- Collapse, among others. When we talked, I asked him whether we've overshot our resources already:
Jared Diamond: Of course we are in overshoot and everybody knows that we are in overshoot -- and we are overshooting the things that people talk most about. First thing we're running out of is oil, and everybody knows it. Second thing we're running out of is water. Something like 70 percent of the fresh water in the world is already utilized. Topsoil -- we're exploiting it and it's running off into the ocean. We've already exhausted something like maybe half of the topsoil that was originally in the Great Plains. And then fish and forests...
RYSSDAL: Is the rate of use increasing? Are things getting worse more quickly than they did 20 years ago?
Diamond: Yes, things are getting worse more quickly, for obvious reasons -- namely, the human population is increasing, and worse yet, average consumption rates are increasing. That's to say, out of the world's six-and-a-half-billion people, the majority are in the so-called Third World, but they are working hard to catch up.
RYSSDAL: The same way that I would imagine there's no one thing you can point to where you'd say that's the tipping point of decline, is there one thing that can be done to reverse that decline?
Diamond: Yes, and that is to stop looking for the one thing that we could do to reverse the decline. The reason is that there are about a dozen major problems and we got to solve them all. If we solve 11 of those problems, but we don't solve the water problem, we're finished. Or if we solve 11 of those problems but we don't solve the problem of topsoil and agriculture, we're finished. So we've got to solve all 12 problems and not look for that one problem that's most important.
RYSSDAL: It seems to me what we're missing is the "or else" part of this discussion... There's a whole list of things we have to fix -- what happens if we don't?
Diamond: History is full of the "or elses." For example, the most advanced Native American society of the New World, the Maya, had astronomy and astronomical observatories and writing and books. They chopped down their trees, they ran into water problems, and the big Maya cities that American tourists go to visit today, they go abandoned.
RYSSDAL: Are we seeing those crashes anywhere today?
Diamond: Absolutely. The African country of Rwanda, the most densely population country in Africa, began to get deforested, massive problems of soil erosion, too many people and not enough food... And in 1994 Rwandans transiently quote "solved" -- if I can put it in quotes -- their population problems in the most awful way imaginable. Namely, six million Rwandans killed, one million Rwandans in brutal ways, and drove another two million into exile. That's an example of a country that did not master its environmental problems.
RYSSDAL: How much time to we have left?
Diamond: If we carried on as we are now, then I would expect that we will not have a First World lifestyle anywhere sometime between 30 and 50 years from now.
RYSSDAL: Concentrates the mind...
Diamond: Yes it does. To know that you could get shot tomorrow does grab your attention.
RYSSDAL: Jared Diamond teaches geology at UCLA and is the author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/disp ... med1_pm_3/
KAI RYSSDAL: There's a technical term for what we're doing as we eat, shop, drive and go about our daily lives. The word is "overshoot" -- when a population uses up resources faster than they can be replaced.
Today, we're consuming about 30 percent more trees, fish and fossil fuels than the planet can regenerate. We can run a deficit like this for a little while, but there are limits to how big a hole we can dig before it gets too deep to get out of.
To help understand those limits we spoke with Jared Diamond. He's a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. You might know him better though his books -- Collapse, among others. When we talked, I asked him whether we've overshot our resources already:
Jared Diamond: Of course we are in overshoot and everybody knows that we are in overshoot -- and we are overshooting the things that people talk most about. First thing we're running out of is oil, and everybody knows it. Second thing we're running out of is water. Something like 70 percent of the fresh water in the world is already utilized. Topsoil -- we're exploiting it and it's running off into the ocean. We've already exhausted something like maybe half of the topsoil that was originally in the Great Plains. And then fish and forests...
RYSSDAL: Is the rate of use increasing? Are things getting worse more quickly than they did 20 years ago?
Diamond: Yes, things are getting worse more quickly, for obvious reasons -- namely, the human population is increasing, and worse yet, average consumption rates are increasing. That's to say, out of the world's six-and-a-half-billion people, the majority are in the so-called Third World, but they are working hard to catch up.
RYSSDAL: The same way that I would imagine there's no one thing you can point to where you'd say that's the tipping point of decline, is there one thing that can be done to reverse that decline?
Diamond: Yes, and that is to stop looking for the one thing that we could do to reverse the decline. The reason is that there are about a dozen major problems and we got to solve them all. If we solve 11 of those problems, but we don't solve the water problem, we're finished. Or if we solve 11 of those problems but we don't solve the problem of topsoil and agriculture, we're finished. So we've got to solve all 12 problems and not look for that one problem that's most important.
RYSSDAL: It seems to me what we're missing is the "or else" part of this discussion... There's a whole list of things we have to fix -- what happens if we don't?
Diamond: History is full of the "or elses." For example, the most advanced Native American society of the New World, the Maya, had astronomy and astronomical observatories and writing and books. They chopped down their trees, they ran into water problems, and the big Maya cities that American tourists go to visit today, they go abandoned.
RYSSDAL: Are we seeing those crashes anywhere today?
Diamond: Absolutely. The African country of Rwanda, the most densely population country in Africa, began to get deforested, massive problems of soil erosion, too many people and not enough food... And in 1994 Rwandans transiently quote "solved" -- if I can put it in quotes -- their population problems in the most awful way imaginable. Namely, six million Rwandans killed, one million Rwandans in brutal ways, and drove another two million into exile. That's an example of a country that did not master its environmental problems.
RYSSDAL: How much time to we have left?
Diamond: If we carried on as we are now, then I would expect that we will not have a First World lifestyle anywhere sometime between 30 and 50 years from now.
RYSSDAL: Concentrates the mind...
Diamond: Yes it does. To know that you could get shot tomorrow does grab your attention.
RYSSDAL: Jared Diamond teaches geology at UCLA and is the author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/disp ... med1_pm_3/
"Be good"
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The problem is not one limited by resources, rather a lack of imagination by the past countries that Professor Diamond speaks of.
By that for example, look at the devestation caused on Easter Island when the relatively advanced society deforested the islands and consequently couldn't make canoes to fish with. When they were "discovered" by Europeans they were mired in poverty though by all signs they had been a prosperous society. They simply didn't have the wood to make canoes. Of course now many colleges around the country hold canoe racing contests where the boats have to be made from cement. They had all the materials they needed, just not the knowledge.
Many other Malthusians have been proven wrong (including the high prophet Thomas Malthus himself), there is no reason to believe that it would change now. Were you to go back and tell an American in 1900 that only 1% would be farmers, they would assume our country would be starving, face MASSIVE unemployment, and be dependent on other nations for food. They would have obviously been wrong.
No reason to get in a tizzy about all of this
By that for example, look at the devestation caused on Easter Island when the relatively advanced society deforested the islands and consequently couldn't make canoes to fish with. When they were "discovered" by Europeans they were mired in poverty though by all signs they had been a prosperous society. They simply didn't have the wood to make canoes. Of course now many colleges around the country hold canoe racing contests where the boats have to be made from cement. They had all the materials they needed, just not the knowledge.
Many other Malthusians have been proven wrong (including the high prophet Thomas Malthus himself), there is no reason to believe that it would change now. Were you to go back and tell an American in 1900 that only 1% would be farmers, they would assume our country would be starving, face MASSIVE unemployment, and be dependent on other nations for food. They would have obviously been wrong.
No reason to get in a tizzy about all of this