Big Issues We Ignore at Our Peril.
Environment, Overpopulation, Fantasy Economics, a Resource Crisis
“At the heart of green politics is the simple premise that our prosperity depends completely on a healthy, functioning planet. Go on abusing the planet, go on ignoring climate change, go on ignoring population growth, and all else fails – including our deepest yearning for human rights.”
Jonathon Porritt, environmentalist
“The global economy treats natural resources as if the Earth were a business in a liquidation sale, undermining the life-support systems of our planet. There is little long-range thinking in a world where propaganda and big money have undermined governance and the media.”
Brent Blackwelder, ex-president Friends of the Earth USA
“We are eradicating other species. We are destroying climate balance. We are endangering ourselves. 10,000 more people on the Planet EVERY hour. If governments won’t talk population, they are not serious about cutting emissions, managing food supplies and a secure quality of life for people.”
Brian McGavin, writer/ environmentalist
UN projections show that at current birth rates, there could be over 26 billion people on the planet by 2100, not its 11 billion ‘medium variant’ assumption.
Media and political blindness?
“A Sustainable World is one with a stable population living within planetary limits. Those who talk up a country’s economic dividend facing a population explosion are fantasy optimists. Governments will be struggling with millions of unemployed and hungry people attracted to violence and extremism. Political blindness and an economic mind-set of 'out with limits' has undermined common sense.”
Brian McGavin
The Ageing Population Scare - a transition not a crisis
“Population ageing in advanced economies is the manageable consequence of positive developments. By contrast, rapid population growth in many poorer countries poses a severe threat to human welfare… The delusion that it will drive national economic success is by far the most important demographic challenge facing the world today.”
Abridged, Adair Turner, economist, 2015
“Our food reserves are at a 50-year low, but by 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food, we will need 50% more energy, and 30% more fresh water.” Professor John Beddington, UK govt. Chief Scientist, 2009.
A Food Crisis
“Ninety five percent of our food comes from the soil. If current rates of depletion continue, the world's topsoil could be gone within 60 years.”
UNFAO, Dec, 2014
Sustainability Fantasies
“The Netherlands is a prosperous country of 17 million people. The problem is the import of worldwide resources. Its environmental footprint is eight times the actual area of the country.”
Mathis Wackernagel, Global Footprint Network
The entire political and economic system is inherently unstable, built on debt, fuelled by speculation; robbing the future to fuel the present; demanding perpetual growth on a finite planet.
Abridged, George Monbiot
“If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”
Sir David Attenborough)
“We are the generation who knows we are destroying our world. We are the last generation who can do anything about it.”
WWF Fight for your World campaign