Earth Faces a Century of Human-Instigated Ecological/Environmental Disasters

 

Economic and environmental catastrophes unavoidable unless rich countries cut consumption and global population stabilizes

World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid "a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills", warns a major report from the Royal Society.

Contraception must be offered to all women who want it and consumption cut to reduce inequality, says the study published on Thursday, which was chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston.

The assessment of humanity's prospects in the next 100 years, which has taken 21 months to complete, argues strongly that to achieve long and healthy lives for all 9 billion people expected to be living in 2050, the twin issues of population and consumption must pushed to the top of political and economic agendas. Both issues have been largely ignored by politicians and played down by environment and development groups for 20 years, the report says.

"The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption ... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future", it says.

At today's rate of population increase developing countries will have to build the equivalent of a city of a million people every five days from now to 2050, says the report. "Global population growth is inevitable for the next few decades. By 2050, it is projected that today's population of 7 billion will have grown by 2.3 billion, the equivalent of a new China and an India."

But the sheer number of people on earth is not as important as their inequality and how much they consume, said Jules Pretty, one of the working group of 22 who produced the report. "In material terms it will be necessary for most developed countries to abstain from certain sorts of consumption, such as CO2. You do not need to be consuming so much to have a long and healthy life. We cannot conceive of a world that is going to be as unequal as it is now. We must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than a $1.25 a day out of absolute poverty. It's critical to slow population growth in those countries which cannot keep up with services."

The report gives the example of Niger in West Africa which has increased life expectancy in the past 30 years but is doubling population every 20 years. "Even assuming its total fertility rate (Tfr) falls to 3.9 by 2050, which may be optimistic, the population will grow from 15.5 to 55.5 million by 2050. A future in which population increase outstrips the production of food and other necessities of life is a real possibility for Niger. It is difficult to see a bright future for the country without sharp reductions in fertility and population growth together with increased investment in health and education," it said.

Most of the global population growth in the next century will come from the 48 least developed countries, of which 32 are in Africa, said Ekliya Zulu, one of the authors and president of the Union for African Population studies. "Taking Africa alone, the population will increase by 2 billion this century. If we fail and fertility levels do not go down to 2.1, (from 4.7 now) the population [there] may reach 5.3 billion. When we slow down population growth we empower women and provide more money for least developed countries to invest in education. The majority of women want fewer children. The demand to reduce fertility is there", he said.

The authors acknowledge that it would take time and massive political commitment to shift consumption patterns in rich countries, but believe that providing contraception would cost comparatively little. "To supply all the world's unmet family planning needs would be $6-7bn a year. It's not much. It's an extremely good investment, extremely affordable. To not provide family planning is an infringement of human rights", said Sulston.

The authors declined to put a figure on sustainable population, saying it depended on lifestyle choices and consumption. But they warned that without urgent action humanity would be in deep trouble. "The pressure on a finite planet will make us radically change human activity", said Pretty.

"The planet has sufficient resources to sustain 9 billion, but we can only ensure a sustainable future for all if we address grossly unequal levels of consumption. Fairly redistributing the lion's share of the earth's resources consumed by the richest 10% would bring development so that infant mortality rates are reduced, many more people are educated and women are empowered to determine their family size – all of which will bring down birth rates", said an Oxfam spokeswoman.

Reference Link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/26/earth-population-...

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Quotations About The Environment and "Civilization's" Impact on it
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Canada’s green house gas emissions have increased by 30% since 1990.
~ CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) News 2007-12-07

For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century.… We are now heaving more than a thousand different species of animals and plants off the planet every year.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49), author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

It wasn’t the Exxon Valdez captain’s driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours.
~ Greenpeace advertisement New York Times 1990-02-25

One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
~ Woody Allen (born: 1935-12-01 age: 76)

The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday.
~ Scientific American (born: 1845 age: 166)

Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job.
~ Philip Angell Monsanto’s director of corporate communications. Playing God in the Garden New York Times Magazine, 1998-10-25

One of the biggest flaws in the common conception of the future is that the future is something that happens to us, not something we create.
~ Michael Anissimov (born: 1985 age: 26)

Contrary to popular belief, we do not face a choice between economy and ecology, It is often said that protecting the environment would constrain or even undermine economic growth. In fact, the opposite is true: unless we protect resources and the earth’s natural capital, we shall not be able to sustain economic growth.
~ Kofi Annan (born: 1938-04-08 age: 74) Secretary General of the United Nations

Don’t blow it — good planets are hard to find.
~ Anonymous

Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What have we to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!
~ Isaac Asimov (born: 1920-01-02 died: 1992-03-06 at age: 72) Russian-born American scientist and prolific writer

A small grove massacred to the last ash,
An oak with heart-rot, give away the show:
This great society is going to smash;
They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
How much they cost each other and the gods.
A culture is no better than its woods.
~ Wystan Hugh Auden (born: 1907-02-21 died: 1973-09-29 at age: 66) A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods

It is not possible for us to agree to the destruction of land that sustains us.
~ Chief Marilyn Baptiste of the Xeni Gwe’tin first nation

There have been more than 30,000 oil wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico in the last 50 years. This is the first time something like this has ever happened [BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill], and we need to get to the bottom of it, find out what happened, make sure it doesn’t happen again. But I think it is very reasonable to continue to drill.
~ Haley Barbour (born: 1947-10-22 age: 64) Republican governor of Mississippi and shill for the oil industry.

Granted the Deepwater Horizon spill was the biggest spill in US history, but there were hundreds of smaller spills. The oil industry has publicly admitted the oil industry has no tools to stop a deep water spill, save a relief bore that takes months to complete. That is the issue. There is no mystery that we need to “get to the bottom of”.

Can you think of any problem, in any area of human endeavour, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?
~ Dr. Albert A. Bartlett (born: 1923-03-21 age: 89) click to watch

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
~ Dr. Albert A. Bartlett (born: 1923-03-21 age: 89) click to watch

You cannot sustain population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources.
~ Dr. Albert A. Bartlett (born: 1923-03-21 age: 89) click to watch

I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case a $20 billion shakedown.
~ Joe Barton (born: 1949-09-15 age: 62) Republican Representative for Texas, the potential head of Energy and Commerce committee along with rival John Shimkus.

Barton believes it is unfair to ask BP to clean up its own oil spill and to compensate those damaged by it. To him it is a random act of God, and thus the taxpayers should pick up the tab. Not surprisingly Barton receives more over-the-table contributions from big oil than any other politician. He has roughly a four-year old’s understanding of science. He denies plate tectonics. He thinks Jesus placed the oil for Americans to find it. He denies global warming, but simultaneously thinks it will solve the energy crisis.

The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
~ Gregory Bateson (born: 1904-05-09 died: 1980-07-04 at age: 76)

Whereas CO₂ is the dominant greenhouse gas overall, it accounts for only 11 percent of agricultural emissions. The rest is nitrous oxide (53 percent), and methane (36 percent). Nitrous oxide is 296 times more potent per pound than CO₂ as a climate-change gas, and on farms it results mainly from the use of fertiliser but also from cattle pee, especially if there is excessive protein in the diet, and from burning biomass and fuel. Methane which is 25 times more potent than CO₂ is mainly emitted by cows and sheep when they belch.
~ Mike Berners-Lee How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything

Global warming threatens the survival of our species.
~ Lucien Bouchard (born: 1938-12-22 age: 73) Environment minister in the Conservative Mulroney administration of Canada

We’ve embarked on the beginning of the last day of the age of oil.
~ Mike Bowlin (born: 1943-02-20 age: 69) Chairman and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of ARCO petroleum

What they [Jim deMint and the oil lobby] do care about is the precedent. If they open up ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), they’ll think they can do anything to the environment — anything at all. Drilling in Yosemite? In the Grand Canyon? What’s next?
~ Barbara Boxer (born: 1940-11-11 age: 71) Democratic senator from California

Wear protective gear, and you are fired!
~ BP

The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.
~ Edmund Burke (born: 1729-01-12 died: 1797-07-09 at age: 68)

Discovery peaked 30 years ago. It takes no feat of the imagination. It takes no feat of intellect to conclude we now face the corresponding peak in production in 2005.
~ Gordon Campbell , geologist, addressing the British House of Commons.

Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to global nuclear war.
~ Environment Canada (born: 1971 age: 40) (The Canadian equivalent of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency))

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
~ Rachel Carson (born: 1907-05-27 died: 1964-04-14 at age: 56)

Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
~ Rachel Carson (born: 1907-05-27 died: 1964-04-14 at age: 56)

If it were any other species but ours, there would be no doubt that the condition was pathological.

The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modem and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
~ Rachel Carson (born: 1907-05-27 died: 1964-04-14 at age: 56)

The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.
~ Rachel Carson (born: 1907-05-27 died: 1964-04-14 at age: 56)

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.
~ Rachel Carson (born: 1907-05-27 died: 1964-04-14 at age: 56)

During the 1960s, we used twice as much oil as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind’s previous history.
~ President Jimmy Carter (born: 1924-10-01 age: 87) 1977-04-18

The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.
~ Fidel Castro (born: 1926-08-13 age: 85)

Takeover consists in diverting some fraction of the earth’s life-supporting capacity from supporting other kinds of life to supporting our kind. Our pre-Sapiens ancestors, with their simple stone tools and fire, took over for human use, organic materials that would otherwise have been consumed by insects, carnivores or bacteria. From about 10,000 years ago, our earliest horticulturalist ancestors began take over land upon which to grow crops for human consumption. That land would otherwise have supported trees, shrubs or wild grasses and all the animals dependent thereon — but fewer humans. As the expanding generations replaced each other, H*** sapiens took over more and more of the surface of this planet, essentially at the expense of its other inhabitants.
~ William Catton Jr. (born: 1926-01-15 age: 86), Overshoot 1980

From the point of view of the other species on earth, we humans are as welcome as Viking invaders or pancreas cancer.

Only the extinct don’t change.
~ Chris Chandler

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild lifes become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
~ Anton Chekhov (born: 1860-01-29 died: 1904-07-15 at age: 44)

Environmental policies are driven by a kind of emotional spiritualism that threatens the very foundation of our society. There is increasing evidence of a government-sponsored religion in America. This religion, a cloudy mixture of new-age mysticism, Native American folklore, and primitive Earth worship, is being promoted and enforced by the Clinton administration in violation of our rights and freedoms.
~ Helen Chenoweth-Hage (born: 1938-01-27 died: 2006-10-02 at age: 68) Rep, R-Idaho, testifying to congress about her delusions. She has such a sectarian view of the world, that she can only grasp science in terms of warring cults.

We are investing millions in alternative energy.
~ Chevron (born: 1911 age: 100)

On the other paw, in 2010 they invested $21.8 billion in fossil fuels. Millions is the cost of two homes or less than the advertising budget Chevron spent lying that it is an environmentally responsible company.

Switching to light-coloured roofs and roadways would have the equivalent effect on greenhouse gas emissions to taking one billion cars off the road for eleven years.
~ Dr. Steven Chu (born: 1948-02-28 age: 64) US Secretary of Energy, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics 1997

The biggest gains, in terms of decreasing the country’s energy bill, the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, and our dependency on foreign oil, will come from energy efficiency and conservation in the next 20 years. Make no doubt about it. That’s where everybody who has really thought about the problem thinks the biggest gains can be and should be.
~ Dr. Steven Chu (born: 1948-02-28 age: 64) Secretary of Energy for the USA, 1997 Nobel Prize winner.

The Panama Canal must double its capacity.
~ Zurich Insurance Company (born: 1872 age: 139)

The world got by without any Panama Canal for most of its history. What they mean is, if the capacity of the Panama Canal were doubled, the new capacity could be profitably sold. This is not the same thing as need.

Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress.
~ Charles Darwin (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1882-04-19 at age: 73)

16% of global warming in caused by forestry practices.
~ Guy Dauncey (born: 1948 age: 63)

If everyone lived the way people do in Vancouver, we would need three more entire planets to support us.
~ Guy Dauncey (born: 1948 age: 63)

If we continue business as usual we are on schedule for a 6.0°C (10.8°F) global temperature increase by the end of the century. That means the end of civilisation and all the world ecologies.
~ Guy Dauncey (born: 1948 age: 63)

We need to reduce fossil fuel use by 100% by 2020 to avoid a 2.0°C (3.6°F) global temperature increase.
~ Guy Dauncey (born: 1948 age: 63)

We accept it as normal that people who have never been on the land, who have no history or connection to the country, may legally secure the right to come in and, by the very nature of their enterprises, leave in their wake a cultural and physical landscape utterly transformed and desecrated. What’s more, in granting such mining concessions, often initially for trivial sums to speculators from distant cities, companies cobbled together with less history than my dog, the government places no cultural or market value on the land itself.
~ Wade Davis (born: 1953-12-14 age: 58) in lecture 4 of the 2009 CBC Ideas lectures.

It’s never been proven that air toxics are hazardous to people.
~ Tom DeLay (born: 1947-04-08 age: 65) former Republican House Majority Leader, and shill for the oil industry, cited in the Houston Chronicle 1990-10-27

By definition, something toxic is hazardous. That is what toxic means.

Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.
~ Dr. W. (William) Edwards Deming (born: 1900-10-14 died: 1993-12-20 at age: 93)

You do not have to change: survival is not mandatory.
~ Dr. W. (William) Edwards Deming (born: 1900-10-14 died: 1993-12-20 at age: 93) On Overcoming Resistance to Change

But my bill, the Drill Now Act, would actually expedite the whole process, let the Interior Department move ahead quicker… it would stop the radical environmental lawyers from delaying for years with frivolous lawsuits the leasing of the property.
~ Jim deMint (born: 1951-09-02 age: 60) Senator from South Carolina and shill for the oil industry.

In parts of Montana, salt concentrations in soil water, have reached those double those of seawater.
~ Jared Diamond (born: 1937-09-10 age: 74) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed page 47

Natural selection is engineering; sexual selection is art.
~ What Females Want and Males Will Do a PBS (Public Broadcasting System) Nature Documentary.

Plants with leaves no more efficient than today’s solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous bacteria could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop — at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.
~ Eric Drexler (born: 1955-04-25 age: 57) Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology

But we are almost certainly going to miss our [global warming] deadline. We cannot get the 10 lost years back, and by the time a new global agreement to replace the Kyoto accord is negotiated and put into effect, there will probably not be enough time left to stop the warming short of the point where we must not go.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) 2008-12-08 based on 18 months of 70 interviews in a dozen countries.

So humanity is doomed by its own stupidity, like a monkey in a trap holding a banana refusing to let go to free itself.

The military profession, especially is the long-established great powers, is deeply pessimistic about the likelihood that people and countries will behave well under stress. Professional officers are trained to think in terms of emergent threats, and this [climate change] is as big a threat as you are going to find. Never mind what the pundits are telling the public about the perils of climate change; where the military strategists telling their governments This will tell us a great deal about the probable shape of the future, although it may not tell any anything that we want to hear.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) Climate Wars page 5

The surprise is the old walruses in the military are the ones clammering for action on climate change. This is because, unlike business that thinks only 3 months ahead, they routinely plan for contingencies 50 years into the future.

The real requirement, if we are to avoid runaway global warming, is probably 80% by 2030, and almost no burning whatever of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) by 2050.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) 2008-12-08 based on 18 months of 70 interviews in a dozen countries.

The scientists are really scared. Their [global warming] observations over the past two or three years suggest that everything is happening a lot faster than their climate models predicted.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) 2008-12-08 based on 18 months of 70 interviews in a dozen countries.

There is a point of no return after which warming becomes unstoppable — and we are probably going to sail right through it. It is the point at which anthropogenic (human-caused) warming triggers huge releases of carbon dioxide from warming oceans, or similar releases of both carbon dioxide and methane from melting permafrost, or both. Most climate scientists think that point lies not far beyond 2.0°C (3.6°F) C hotter.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) Harsh Truths 2008-12-08 based on 18 months of 70 interviews in a dozen countries.

This is a world [the world after climate change] where people are starting to starve, but it is not always the familiar scene of helpless peasant societies facing famine with numb resignation. Some of the victims now are fully developed, technologically competent countries, and their people will not watch their children starve, so long as there is any recourse, however illegitimate, that might save them. So the lucky countries in the northern tier that can still feed themselves — but that have little or no food to spare — must be able to turn back hordes of hungry refugees, quite probably by force. They must also be able to deal with neighbours who try to extort food by threats — and these desperate neighbours may even have nuclear weapons. Appeals to reason will be pointless, as it is reasonable for nations to do anything they can to avoid mass starvation.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) Climate Wars page 4

Consider how badly the USA has behaved in its desperate pursuit of oil. Nations will behave even worse to avoid mass starvation.

This is a world [the world after climate change] in which food imports are no longer available at any price, as there is a global food shortage. But even then there are relative winners and relative losers: the highest-latitude countries — northern Europe, Russia, Canada — are still getting adequate rainfall and are able to feed themselves, while those in the mid-latitudes are in serious trouble. Even the United States has lost a large amount of crop-growing area as the rain fails to fall over the high plains west of the Mississippi, persistent droughts beset the southeast, and the rivers that provide irrigation water to the Central Valley of California cease to flow in the summertime. Countries of smaller size, like Spain, Italy and Turkey, on the northern side of the Mediterranean, (not to mention those on the southern side), find that their entire land area is turning into desert, and that they can no longer feed their population. The northeastern monsoon that brought rain to the north Chinese plain has failed, and the rivers that watered southern China have suffered the same fate as those that provided California’s water now: they only flow in the wintertime.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) Climate Wars page 4

I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait ’til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
~ Thomas Alva Edison (born: 1847-02-11 died: 1931-10-18 at age: 84)

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago, had they happened to be within reach of predatory human hands.
~ Havelock Ellis (born: 1859-02-02 died: 1939-07-08 at age: 80) .

Algae are amazing little critters.
~ ExxonMobil (born: 1999-11-30 age: 12) in a TV commercial.

If ExxonMobil wants to claim expertise in biofuels, the first thing they need to learn is that algae are plants not creatures.

The best evidence indicates that we need to reduce our CO₂ emissions by 70% by 2050. [Kyoto round one aims for only 6%]. If you own a four-wheel drive, and replace it with a hybrid fuel car, you can achieve a cut of that magnitude in a day, rather than half a century. If your electricity provider offers a green option, for the cost of a daily cup of coffee, you will be able to make equally major cuts in your household emissions. And if you vote for a politician who has a deep commitment to reducing CO₂ emissions, you might change the world.
~ Tim Flannery (born: 1956-01-28 age: 56), The Weather Makers

Although they [light and medium trucks] have only 5% of the transportation market…, they account for fully 35% of greenhouse gas emissions from freight transportation.
~ David Suzuki Foundation (born: 1990 age: 21) 2002-09

Less than 10% of the fuel energy burned in automobiles is translated into forward motion of the vehicle, and even then most of this energy is needed to move the vehicle itself, which typically weighs 20 times more than its passengers.
~ David Suzuki Foundation (born: 1990 age: 21) 2002-09

In contrast, a bicycle weighs about 1/8 of the weight of its rider, and it can get as low as 1/50.

A penny saved is a penny earned.
~ Benjamin Franklin (born: 1706-01-17 died: 1790-04-17 at age: 84)

It is also true that every barrel of oil you save in energy efficiency saves you from buying a barrel of oil from OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries).

Do more with less.
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller (born: 1895-07-12 died: 1983-07-01 at age: 87)

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller (born: 1895-07-12 died: 1983-07-01 at age: 87)

The earth is like a spaceship that didn’t come with an operating manual.
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller (born: 1895-07-12 died: 1983-07-01 at age: 87)

CO₂ Carbon Dioxide is a powerful cerebral dilator. At concentrations between 2 and 10%, Carbon Dioxide can cause nausea, dizziness, headache, mental confusion, increased blood pressure and respiratory rate. Above 8% nausea and vomiting appear. Above 10%, suffocation and death can occur within minutes.
~ Universal Industrial Gases

It would take only 10% of the federal lands in Nevada to generate sufficient solar energy to completely power the entire USA.
~ National Geographic (born: 1888-01-27 age: 124) Eco-Engineering: Solar Engine

Humans react to danger when it is immediate, immoral, visible… Global warming does not press any of those buttons.
~ Daniel Todd Gilbert (born: 1957-11-05 age: 54) rough paraphrase., Professor of Psychology at Harvard

We humans can look deep into future and predict what will happen, but then turn around and do nothing about it.
~ Daniel Todd Gilbert (born: 1957-11-05 age: 54), Professor of Psychology at Harvard

Our brains have been finely tuned to be hypervigilant at spotting dangers in a world we no longer inhabit, while the world we live in today presents us with abundant dangers we do not see, hear, taste, or smell. The brain’s threat response system is buffaloed time after time.

Although the human brain is extremely alert to threats it can sense, our brain is unsuited for the ones we face on the ecological front: these are dangers that come on gradually, or at the microscopic level, or globally. Our brain has been exquisitely tuned to notice changes in light, sound, pressure, and the like within a narrow range — the zone of perception that tigers and reckless drivers come in. These trigger our get-out-of-the-way system to react in milliseconds; we sense these familiar threats as clearly as we see a match light up a dark room. Ecological dangers, though, we notice as poorly as we see the difference that a match makes in a well-lit room.
~ Daniel Goleman (born: 1946-03-07 age: 66) Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything Read online page 33

Shipping by sea produces 1/60 the emissions of shipping by air and about 1/5 that of trucking.
~ Daniel Goleman (born: 1946-03-07 age: 66) Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything Read online page 54.

Shipping is about 1/6 that of trains. In other words, shipping is better than trains and trains are better than trucks.

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun. As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.
~ Al Gore (born: 1948-03-31 age: 64) Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Oslo, Norway 2007-12-10

Producing usable oil from the tar sands is a dirty, energy-intensive process — tar sands production generates between three to five times more greenhouse gas emissions that conventional oil extraction.
~ Greenpeace

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
~ J.B.S. Haldane (born: 1892-11-05 died: 1964-12-01 at age: 72)

Global warming has already triggered a sea level rise that could reach from 6 metres (19.69 ft) to 25 metres (82.02 ft).
~ James E. Hansen (born: 1941-03-29 age: 71) Is there Still Time to Avoid Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference with Global Climate Change

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm… If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
~ James Hansen (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64) along with 14 other scientists in Science 2005-06-03

Analogously, you can’t do it until you need glasses, because by the time you need glasses, you have set in motion an irreversible process that leads not only to blindness but to death. Because we did nothing in 2005, the action we need to take is now ever more drastic.

The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25 years of coal use that does not capture CO₂, is Herculean, yet feasible when compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable.
~ James Hansen (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64) along with 14 other scientists in Science 2005-06-03

Why did business people rise to the occasion to fight Nazi Germany, but fund FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) to delay dealing with global warming? They saw WW II as an economic windfall, but see the even bigger threat of global warming as purely a liability ignoring the huge opportunities for an exploding world market who will have no choice but to buy green energy. They still don’t get it that profits fall to zero when global warming decimates workers and customers.

If you factor in the cost of the military to protect our petroleum assets in the middle east, gasoline costs us $7 a gallon. We have to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
~ Gary Hart (born: 1936-11-28 age: 75) of The Last Word TV show on MSNBC 2010-11-21

What an arrogant, imperialistic, but at least candid American! He refers to the oil in the middle east as belonging to the USA. I suppose it does now in a sense, stolen, now that Obama had the big auction to sell off all of Iraq’s oil reserves to American and European oil companies on the very day he announced the pullout.

A species may eat a particular bacterium, phytoplankton, smaller fish, or plant in an area. Lacking a predator, these species/populations will overgrow and alter the area’s biology, overwhelming and driving to extinction dozens or hundreds or thousands of other local species.
~ Thom Hartmann (born: 1951-05-07 age: 60) Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture page 24

The more species, the greater the biodiversity, the more stable an ecosystem is. When you start killing off half the species, the ecosystem becomes much more fragile, and more susceptible to complete collapse from even minor disturbances.

Because nitrous oxide [released by nitrate-fertilised soil] is 296 times stronger than CO₂ at global warming, and methane [cow farts] is about 23 times as potent as CO₂, the combined greenhouse effect of our livestock worldwide is greater than the sum total of all the cars, trains, busses, trucks, ships, airplanes and jets.
~ Thom Hartmann (born: 1951-05-07 age: 60) Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture page 33

We have no choice but to reduce our consumption of meat, to use it more like a condiment, the way the Chinese do. The first step is to stop the astronomical agricultural subsidies on fodder and meat to let it gradually rise to its true market price.

When the Europeans first arrived in North America, the average depth of the topsoil was 53.34 cm (21 in), and it was rich in the types of symbiotic organisms necessary for plant roots to absorb minerals from the soil. Today North America averages around 15.24 cm (6 in) of topsoil and most if it is exhausted of nutrients and much is devoid of life.
~ Thom Hartmann (born: 1951-05-07 age: 60) Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture page 22

As any gardener can tell you, you can’t get soil much thinner than 45.72 cm (18 in) and still grow a decent crop of vegetables. Yet, even knowing the rate of erosion, farmers persist in the agricultural practices that strip the soil. They refuse to look ahead any more than one year.

Climate change is no longer a doomsday prophecy, it’s a reality.
~ Astrid Heiberg (born: 1936-04-14 age: 76) president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Early ecologists soon realised that, since humans are organisms, ecology should include the study of the relationship between humans and the rest of the biosphere. … We don’t often tend to think about the social sciences (history, economics and politics) as subcategories of ecology. But since people are organisms, it is apparent that we must first understand the principles of ecology if we are to make sense of the events in the human world.
~ Richard Heinberg (born: 1950-10-21 age: 61) The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies

The industrial civilisation is based on the consumption of energy resources that are inherently limited in quantity, and that are about to become scarce. When they do, competition for what remains will trigger dramatic economic and geopolitical events; in the end, it may be impossible for even a single nation to sustain industrialism as we have know it in the twentieth century.
~ Richard Heinberg (born: 1950-10-21 age: 61) The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies

We are about to enter a new era in which, each year, less net energy will be available to humankind, regardless of our efforts or choices. The only significant choice we will have will be how we adjust to this new regime. That choice — not whether, but how to reduce energy usage and make a transition to renewable alternatives — will have profound ethical and political ramifications.
~ Richard Heinberg (born: 1950-10-21 age: 61) The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies

We have unintentionally, begun to disturb massive planetary systems that have kept much of the world climate relatively hospitable to civilisation for the last 10,000 years. We are heating the deep oceans, which leads to more frequent and intense El Niño weather patterns. The time of the seasons is noticeably altered and most of the Earth’s glaciers are retreating at accelerating rates. The potential effects are catastrophic. They include the drowning of coastal cities and whole island nations, as a result of rising sea levels and intensified storms; the proliferation of disease-spreading insects into new regions, resulting in cases of malaria perhaps doubling in tropical regions and increasing 100-fold elsewhere; and the loss of forests and wildlife that depend upon a stable climate, leading to vastly increased extinction rates and the collapse of entire ecosystems.
~ Richard Heinberg (born: 1950-10-21 age: 61)

When a caterpillar eats a leaf, then a thrush eats the caterpillar, or when a hawk eats the thrush only 5 to 20% of usable energy is transferred from one level to the next. … Thus herbivores will account for a much smaller fraction of the biomass [than plants], and the carnivores for a still smaller fraction.
~ Richard Heinberg (born: 1950-10-21 age: 61) on why carnivores starve first when food gets tight.

When the price of carbon reaches $100 a tonne, then it will become an economically viable business proposition to start taking CO₂ out of the atmosphere and sequestering it underground.
~ Thomas Homer-Dixon (born: 1956 age: 55) in Energy and Climate Change: A Sustainable Future?

Around the world people are dying, ecosystems are crumbling, and economies face ruin because of climate change, and all Bush and the oil industry can think of is how to maximise their profits and continue business as usual.
~ Paul Horsman , Greenpeace spokesperson

We should have no concern for the environment, because, after the great flood with Noah, God promised that He would never ruin the earth again.
~ James Inhofe (born: 1934-11-17 age: 77) Republican Senator for Oklahoma

Inhofe is spewing Christian bafflegab to cover up the fact that he is a big oil shill. He may or may not believe his own drivel. Even if you take this biblical prediction seriously, it says nothing about the possibility of humans, corporations or Satan deliberately bringing on global climate change/floods by releasing massive quantities of CO₂ into the atmosphere. If you read the promise in Genesis 9:11 , it says “neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth”. All Jehovah promises is not to do to destroy the earth by flood; he leaves open all other means including parching it.

The one thing oil companies are good at is making money. You have to hit them [BP] in the heart, in the place if they had a heart [money].
~ Keith Jones father of one of the workers killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion

Within 6 hours deserts receive more energy from the sun that humankind consumes in 1 year.
~ Dr. Gerhard Knies (born: 1935-12-01 age: 76)

In the central North Pacific, plastic outweighs surface zooplankton 6 to 1.
~ Thomas M. Kostigen , reported in Discover Magazine. Since he wrote that, according to the movie Tapped, by 2009 it had increased to increased to 46 to 1.

If you drill, there’s going to be a spill. It’s axiomatic.
~ Dennis Kucinich (born: 1946-10-06 age: 65) Democratic member of congress for Ohio

Nuclear waste is a heavy burden to lay on our children and their children and their children’s children and their children’s children’s children and their children’s children’s children’s children…
~ Rufina M. Laws

Mountain Pine bark beetles need -37°C (-35°F) for three days to freeze to death. Unfortunately, with global warming, that no longer happens in British Columbia [Canada]. This means the population of the beetles have exploded. They have destroyed more forests than all the environmentalists put together have saved.
~ Mark Leiren-Young (born: 1962 age: 49)

Humanity is a virus that destroys any community it touches.
~ Link an android in the The Human Factor episode of The Outer Limits played by Zack Ward (born: 1970-08-31 age: 41)

By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe, and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions.
~ James Lovelock (born: 1919-07-26 age: 92)

Lovelock is more pessimistic than the consensus, because he thinks man will refuse to take significant action to ameliorate global warming. So far, he has been right.

Our future is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.
~ James Lovelock (born: 1919-07-26 age: 92)

The Earth’s population will be culled from today’s 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes — Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.
~ James Lovelock (born: 1919-07-26 age: 92) on the effects of global climate change.

Economies are supposed to serve human ends… not the other way round. We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.
~ Amory Lovins (born: 1947-11-13 age: 64)

It might take another 30 Kyotos over the next century to cut global warming down to size.
~ Jerry Mahlman (born: 1940-02-21 age: 72), director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton (born: 1940-02-21 age: 72)

There is compelling evidence to indicate that climate change is occurring and that the atmosphere will continue to warm at an unprecedented rate throughout the 21st Century. A scientific consensus holds that a large part of this warming is attributable to human activities, primarily through the concentration of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases. Change will be intensified and accelerated by the diminution of natural carbon-capture processes (such as forests and marine life) and the reduction of the polar ice-caps. Uncertainty remains as to the precise rate and character of expected changes over the next century. Climate science is complex, with linear cause and effect relationships not yet readily apparent; therefore, the consequences of climate change will vary in their impact in time, incidence and geographical extent. It may be a very unstable and unpredictable process, involving both progressive evolution and sudden instabilities. Major consequences are likely to include melting icecaps, thermal expansion of the oceans, and changes to ocean currents and flows, with seawater becoming more acidic as CO₂ transfers from the atmosphere. On land, some regions will experience desertification, others will experience permanent inundation, and tundra and permafrost are likely to melt and release methane, possibly in large amounts. Global climate change will reduce land for habitation and will result in changing patterns of agriculture and fertility, while tropical diseases, like malaria, are also likely to move North and into temperate zones. There will be an increased risk of extreme weather events, threatening densely populated littoral, urban and farming regions with eccentric growing seasons, flooding and storm damage. Climate change will remain highly politicized: although the relationship between causes and effects is likely to be increasingly understood as more evidence and computing power becomes available, responses will be contested and affected by self-interest.
The British Military DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
~ Joni Mitchell (born: 1943-11-07 age: 68), Big Yellow Taxi

Until now I believed that the nation which has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.
~ George Monbiot (born: 1963-01-27 age: 49) The Urgent Threat to World Peace is… Canada 2009-12-01

A 1.5 litres/100km (3 mpg) increase in the auto and light truck fleet is worth 158,968,347 litres (1,000,000 barrels) of oil a day.
~ Ernest Moniz , Professor of Physics, born 1938

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
~ Ralph Nader (born: 1934-02-27 age: 78) 1980

Loads of chemicals and hazardous wastes have been introduced into the atmosphere that didn’t even exist in 1948. The environmental condition of the planet is far worse than it was 42 years ago.
~ Gaylord Nelson (born: 1916-06-04 died: 2005-07-03 at age: 89)

Technological possibilities are irresistible to man. If man can go to the moon, he will. If he can control the climate, he will.
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 50)

We can’t drive our SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle)s and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 22°C (72°F) at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 50)

Climate change is real.
~ Marvin Odum (born: 1958-12-13 age: 53), CEO Shell Oil, in CBC interview with Peter Mansbridge, 2010-05-01

Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It’s time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth’s climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.
~ Naomi Oreskes , 2004-12-26 science historian

We shouldn’t be feeding corn to SUVs when people are starving.
~ Oxfam

Pangloss is admired and Cassandra is despised and ignored. But as the Trojans were to learn to their sorrow, Cassandra was right, and had she been heeded, the toil of the appropriate preparation for the coming adversity would have been insignificant measured against the devastation that followed a brief season of blissful and ignorant optimism… Today, Cassandra holds advanced degrees in biology, ecology, climatology and other theoretical and applied environmental sciences.
~ Dr. Ernest Partridge (born: 1935-05-14 age: 76) Perilous Optimism

When a women breast feeds her infant, she is dumping her lifetime supply of pollutants into her baby. If she were to bottle her breast milk, it would be illegal to carry it across state lines because it is so polluted. Pollutants concentrate with each level of the food chain. Every time you eat a pound of swordfish, a fish 6 levels up the food chain, you eat the concentrated contaminants collected from the sea water by 453.59 tonnes (500 tons) of diatoms.
~ Dr. Roger Payne in the Sir David Attenborough documentary Planet Earth

I think there are a substantial number of [climate change] scientists who have manipulated data, so that they will have dollars rolling into their, to their projects.
~ Rick Perry (born: 1950-03-04 age: 62) source.

Perry later admitted he had no evidence to support this claim. Can you trust someone who makes such serious accusations based on a hunch as a president?

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.
~ Michael Pollan (born: 1955-02-06 age: 57) Farmer In Chief New York Times 2008-10-12

America ships tons of sugar cookies to Denmark, and Denmark ships tons of sugar cookies to America. Wouldn’t it be more efficient just to swap recipes?
~ Michael Pollan (born: 1955-02-06 age: 57) author of In Defense of Food .

population elephant

Climate change, energy depletion, food shortages, resource wars, species extinction — these are not the problem, they are only the symptoms. The singular root problem that causes all these horrifying threats to mankind is overpopulation.

So — logically — the solution that will eliminate these threats is simply to reduce the population of humans on this planet to a sustainable number.

Yet, no one proposes this obvious solution. No one is even willing to discuss it.

It is the elephant in every room.

Except here.
~ PopulationElephant.com

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
~ Native American proverb

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.
~ Native American Proverb

If you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all.
~ Ronald Reagan (born: 1911-02-06 died: 2004-06-05 at age: 93)

The environment should be put in the priority category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?
~ Robert Redford (born: 1936-08-18 age: 75) Yosemite National Park dedication 1985

Colorado has a 3 percent growth rate. That’s like a third world country with no birth control.
~ Jim Reidhead Larimer County Land Use Center, Denver Post 1998-05-02

Rising ocean temperatures linked by some studies to tropical storms are very likely a result of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research. The lead author of the new study, Benjamin D. Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the Energy Department, said the findings suggested that further warming would probably make hurricanes stronger in coming decades… The researchers compared a century of observed temperature changes with those produced in more than 80 computer simulations of how oceans respond to natural and human influences on the climate. The simulations were generated on 22 different computer models at 15 different research centers. The simulations correctly mimicked the cooling caused by plumes from volcanic eruptions, which temporarily block the sun. At the same time, the authors said, the only warming influence that could explain the changes in the oceans was the buildup of heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases in the air.
~ Andrew C. Revkin Study Links Tropical Ocean Warming to Greenhouse Gases, New York Times 2008-09-06

2/3 of the land in Los Angeles is covered in roads and parking lots. Further the asphalt absorbs almost all of the sun’s energy, warming the city by 10.0°C (18.0°F) relative to the surrounding areas. Even a child could come up with a more efficient transportation system.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

2005 was the most destructive hurricane season on record. 2008 was second. The longest lived hurricane on record was Bertha in 2008. Hurricanes are fueled by warm ocean water. In 2004-03 the first-ever reported hurricane in the South Atlantic hit southern Brazil. The record 11 hottest years have all been in the last 13 years. It amazing how many people pretend to deny global warming in the face of such facts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

4% enriched uranium cost about $1,000 per pound or $2,200 per kg. (In contrast, weapons grade is 90% pure U-235.) Why is it so expensive? Because it takes so much fossil fuel energy to mine it and enrich it. The process is just as dirty and emits just as much greenhouse gas as any other use of fossil fuels. It also implies, we can’t currently mine and enrich uranium without oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

54% of greenhouse gas emissions are under municipal control. Even if you can’t get county, state, province, country or the international agencies to act, there is still plenty you can do locally.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

9/11 killed 3500 people. In response, the USA spent over a trillion dollars. In 2005, global warming killed 14,000 people in France alone. In response, the USA decided to pretend there was no such thing as global warming so they could procrastinate any action.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

95% of Canada’s budget in Afghanistan is for killing Muslims and destroying buildings. 5% is for clinics and schools. Guess which part gets 95% of the TV coverage. If you are cynical, you might think even that 5% is purely for P.R. to sell the war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A car could be thought of as an artificial horse. You would think as such it would be smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient and pollute less that a natural horse. Yet even a Smart Car weighs 0.73 tonne (0.80 ton) whereas a horse is only about 400 kg (881.85 lbs). It sounds like car manufacturers have been coasting.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A car weighs 20 times more than its passenger. Get serious! Imagine an egg cup that weighed 20 times more than an egg. Imagine a bicycle that weighed 20 times more than its passenger. Imagine a canoe that weighed 20 times more than its passenger. Imagine an elevator that weighed 20 times more than its passengers. Imagine an horse that weighed 20 times more than its rider. There is no need for cars to be anywhere near that heavy (and hence consuming anywhere near that much fuel). Some bicycles weigh as little as 1/50 the weight of the passenger and use no gas at all.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A coal-fired electric plant in the USA burns an entire trainload of coal every 12 hours.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A commercial for Zurich insurance intones “The Panama canal must triple its capacity” as if it were a pregnant elephant. This is foolish. As oil runs out, as we accept we can’t expel CO₂ anymore, we have to stop shipping so much tonnage all around the earth. We need instead to figure out how to acquire locally the things we need.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A corporation will happily bribe politicians to enact policies that will make earth uninhabitable if they think it will improve the next quarter profit by 1%. They are like children with super powers and no conscience or thought for the morrow.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A disposable diaper takes 236.59 mls (8 fl oz) of crude oil to make the outside cover. It sits at least 500 years in landfill, far longer than the child will live. It requires felling four mature trees to create the absorbent pads for one child’s supply of diapers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64), source National Geographic video The Human Footprint.

A documentary promoting nuclear power explained that we have no choice but to go nuclear because we need to increase electric production by 50% in the next few years. Granted, if we destroyed the environment to produce this electricity, we would have no trouble selling it. On the other hand, if production dropped by 50%, nobody would die. We would simply find ways to use electricity more efficiently.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A few generations ago, parents would sacrifice everything to give their children an education, a farm or a new country with political freedom and economic opportunity. However, today, parents seem unwilling to make even the most minor sacrifices for subsequent generations, most notably sacrifices to deal with global warming, alternative energy and pollution. What changed? One factor is the rise of Christian end-of-times cults. These loons believe God is about to destroy the world, so there is no point in doing anything to sustain it. Another is the generation gulf. Young people’s fashion, speech, tattoos, piercings, music etc. are so repulsive to their parents, parents come to hate their kids.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A Jeep Grand Cherokee has a 3.6 litre engine. That is 70 times bigger than needed to transport a human. Americans stress that a vital part of defence is reducing dependence on foreign oil. Why is a Jeep Grand Cherokee owner not pelted with eggs as a traitor?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A lawnmower produces more emissions per hour than a car. They have no emission controls.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A major block to solving the energy crunch is confusing energy wants with energy needs. We humans have been hosting an extravagant energy party. We burn energy primarily for demonstrating status with conspicuous consumption, e.g. 400 horsepower cars to transport a single human to work. Those are energy wants, not energy needs. We idiotically equate parsimonious use of energy with lack of manliness.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A nuclear power plant contains as much radiation as 250 nuclear bombs. To prevent the stored spent fuel from releasing radiation requires it to be continuously cooled with refrigerated water. Without an uninterrupted source of electricity, the water will boil off in a few days and the spent fuel will overheat and vent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A parable: Miss Canada was traveling across Canada by train. She was doing her nails when the train derailed. The conductor appeared through the smoke and debris and said, Miss, you must get off the train immediately. There was a chlorine tank car and it is leaking the deadly poison gas. Miss Canada whined, But I can’t. I’ll ruin my high heels and my nails aren’t dry yet. The conductor shouted, Look you stupid bimbo. You don’t understand. If don’t get out of here pronto, you will die! No, you don’t understand. Do you know how much these heels cost?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

The parable is about the bimbo reaction of the average Canadian to global climate change.

A parable: There was once a man who sold one of his kidneys for $50,000 US. He was very enthusiastic about this as a way of earning money. He was planning to sell his organs one by one. His friends pointed out, Don’t be an idiot. You can’t donate your other kidney or your heart or your liver… You will die! You are such a worry wart! I read on the Internet you don’t need any of your internal organs. Senator Jim Inhofe and D*** Cheney both survive without a heart… No they don’t. That is just a figure of speech. They don’t even have artificial hearts. By the time I sell my heart they will have perfected artificial ones. You can always count on scientists to invent anything we need.

This parable is about twits who want to continue using fossil fuels even in the knowledge it will be fatal. They just can’t give up the money.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A simple chemistry lesson: The basic building block of nitrogen fertilisers is ammonia NH₄ . Ammonia is created by the Haber process, discovered in 1908. The nitrogen N₂ comes from the air. The hydrogen comes from methane (natural gas)CH₄ . They are combined under high temperature and pressure in the presence of various catalysts. The important point to take away from this lesson is, when you run out of natural gas, you run out of cheap fertiliser.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A single virus or bacterium can’t hurt anything, but when they multiply into the billions, all doing the same thing, purely as a side effect of their existence, they bring down elephants. Similarly, when humans breed into the billions, our daily activities kill a planet in a couple of centuries.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A squirt of water and a blast of warm air, would be more effective, and environmentally friendly than a wad of toilet paper.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A technological high wire balancing act has allowed us to push the population well beyond what is sustainable. It is criminally irresponsible to encourage couples to balloon the population further. Further, we must stop harassing those responsible people who forgo having children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A tiny foreign species of water plant invades your pond, and it doubles the area covered each day. Let’s say it takes 6 months to cover half the pond. How long will it take it to cover the entire surface? Answer: one more day.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

A traditional society uses carrots and sticks to ensure its members act in ways that help that society to flourish. However, in North America, corporations have usurped this function for the goal of increasing profit. They teach that disposable is cool, and conspicuous waste is how to prove your worth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

About 1/3 of the CO₂ greenhouse gas we pump into the air dissolves in the ocean making a weak carbonic acid solution similar to Coca-Cola. It dissolves the tiny skeletons of the plankton that produce most of the world’s oxygen. If you have ever kept tropical fish (marine or fresh) you know how exquisitely sensitive they are to pH (acidity). We are foolishly flipping off the switch to life.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

About the most damaging thing you can do to planet earth is to have a child.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

According to Dr. Peter D. Ward in Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future one of the great mass extinctions of the past was triggered by global warming stopping the ocean conveyor (large ocean currents). The oceans stagnated and gave off hydrogen sulphide H₂S , (a gas more toxic than hydrogen cyanide HCN) in such massive quantities that it killed off 90% of all life on earth, both plants and animals.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

According to Nova, all the world’s mountain glaciers will be gone in 50 to 100 years. Glaciers store water and release it evenly throughout the year. Without them, you have alternating floods and droughts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

According to Nova, over the next 100 years, as the oceans warm, they will expand, raising the ocean level by about 33 cm (12.99 in). All the mountain glaciers will melt, raising it by another 33 cm (12.99 in). Much of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will melt raising it by another 33 cm (12.99 in), for a total of 1 metre (39.37 in). That does not sound like much until you consider that 100 million people will be flooded out. It will cost trillions to built coastal defences. There will be millions of refugees creating political turmoil. And that is the most optimistic scenario.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

According to Nova, today’s CO₂ levels are much higher than they have been at any time in the last 500,000 years. We are in no way prepared to put up with even a tiny fraction of the crazy weather that came down during the last 500,000 years and we are begging for much worse with our utterly out-of-control CO₂ emissions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

According to the History Channel, one of the few things man will leave as a legacy that will last more than 1000 years after he goes extinct is the Andalusian sheep dog, which will keep on herding and protecting sheep.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Addiction to oil is an apt term. A heroin addict is concerned only with the short term pleasure of consuming his drug. He ignores the fact his habit is destroying his health and will eventually kill him. He discards all decency in his quest for the drug, and has no concern for the effect his habit is having on others. The oil-addicted society is concerned only about the price of gasoline and tooling around in cars today, deliberately ignoring the fact they are killing the entire planet with the consequent greenhouse gases. They send soldiers into third world countries to steal oil from people who have nothing else, then deliberately waste it with status displays such as gas-guzzling SUVs or Hummers or commute to work alone in overpowered vehicles capable of seating eight, like a heroin addict going on a binge.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Adolph Hitler and Ronald Reagan each lead the world off for a decade chasing his personal delusions. Hitler’s were racial; Reagan’s were environmental. Reagan will do far more lasting damage.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Airlines are a buggy whip industry. They use huge amounts of fuel to transport people about. They can’t survive as fuel prices continue to rise. Cars are almost as bad, requiring several tons of metal overhead for just a single passenger. Trains, in contrast, are the most fuel-efficient vehicles we have yet invented, save the bicycle, especially when the engine is not on-board. We should stop using planes, except for intercontinental flights. We should stop subsidising them and put that money toward modernising trains (including light rail and automated subways). Even for intercontinental holiday flights, we should give up planes for more efficient and much more comfortable ships.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

All modern humans descended from a group of 2000 people who lived 70,000 years ago, and most of us descended from an even smaller group of 150 people. 2000 is about the enrollment of my high school. It amazing how so few people notice how alike we all are and that you can’t help but marry a not-that-distant cousin.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

All the fish and crabs have died in a dead zone off the coast of Oregon. The problem is not pollution, but hypoxia — lack of oxygen O₂. Global warming is interfering with the processes that oxygenate the oceans and stimulating bacteria that consume oxygen. The oxygen levels are zero on the bottom. For details see the Changing Sea One Ocean episode of the The Nature Of Things.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Amateurs spend untold hours building and restoring custom cars. The results are usually flashier and faster, but almost never lighter, more fuel-efficient or cleaner.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

America and China’s massive increase in coal-burning and consequent CO₂ emissions and pollution is an act of war against the entire planet. Purely out of self defence, it is necessary for other countries to unite to derail both the American and Chinese economies. What America and China are doing is as foolhardy as smoking in a fireworks factory. American industry, out of short term financial gain, coal-burning on a stupendous scale is safe. Americans are so besotted with Christian wishful thinking, they believe the lies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

America is going to need some massive kick in the ass to make it abandon fossil fuels and get on with clean energy. If they don’t get that kick, they are going to kill themselves off with global warming. So ironically, a massive terrorist attack that destroyed all the oil refineries, pipelines and fossil fuel electric generation plants in the country would be a blessing in disguise.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

American are such fools they attempt to settle scientific questions by political affiliation. Republicans are dragging their country to hell simply because reject anything that liberals believe. Liberals are generally well educated and believe science. Republicans thus mindlessly reject the findings of science on such matters as peak oil, global climate change, water conservation and extinction of species, because they are liberal ideas and liberal ideas have cooties.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

American potato farmers, more than anyone, know how saturated their products are in pesticides. They don’t eat them. They grow organically for their own families.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans (and Canadians) are hell bent on extinguishing themselves via global climate change. They refuse to take even token action to save themselves. If vandals figured out how to simultaneously destroy all the passenger cars in North America, they might save these idiotic lemmings from themselves. That would never happen, but I doubt anything less would snap North Americans out of their stupor.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans are extremely reluctant to embrace green technology. The bright side of this is the world will leave them in the dust — a nation of candle and buggy whip manufacturers. They have been too powerful in the past, throwing their economic and military weight around.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans are like a woman with diabetes who has just discovered a cache of chocolate caramels. She can’t eat them anyway. Americans imagine if they scrounge enough oil or natural gas, they can still get for the next century. They close their eyes to the reality that they can’t burn those fossil fuels because of the absolutely unacceptable effects of the greenhouse gases.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans are slaughtering sea lions because imagine they are responsible for the decline is salmon stocks. Sea lions eat the slowest and sickest fish. This helps improve the stock and stop the spread of disease. Fisherman catch the biggest fish. This degrades the stock. 200 years ago the rivers wore so thick with fish you could walk across them. The sea lions were obviously no problem then. Why would they suddenly become a problem? In contrast look at all the insane things Americans have done to do to wipe out the salmon:

* Open ocean salmon farming that introduces disease and lice.
* Commercial fishing practices that wipe out entire schools.
* Meddling with the salmon genome by effectively cloning inferior fish.
* Building dams that block salmon streams.
* Dumping silt, pesticides and agricultural waste into salmon streams.

What slimy bastards the American are to blame the seal lions for they own mayhem, and that includes the aboriginal people in the USA suing to kill more seals!

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans have sealed their doom. Of out stupendous greed and stupidity they refused to act on global warming. Now Russia is building giant fleets to extract arctic oil and gas, and China is consuming even more fossil fuels than the USA. What the USA does now is more or less irrelevant. It could not happen to more deserving fools. They are as stupid as monkeys who refuse to let go of a banana to escape a trap. Canada, especially Prime Minister Steven Harper, deserves the same cow pies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans imagine that green technology is some mysterious uncharted rocket science. They forget the Danes, Dutch, Germans and Japanese have been using it successfully on a massive scale for decades. Americans could implement it next month just by phoning in an order.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans imagine they own the Louisiana wetlands and they have the right to destroy them with oil, pesticides, fertiliser runoff… in their insane drive for production. Americans are the sons of illegal immigrants from Europe who came in droves and robbed, killed and enslaved the people who were there already taking reasonably good care of the land.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans pride themselves on being the most innovative people in the world, yet they are behind China, India, Europe and the OPEC nations in developing solar technology. American are clinging to the energy technology of the 19th century. They even cling to the inefficient reciprocating combustion engine invented in 1862. Their stupendous conceit and pride hides their predicament from them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans pump 80,000 different industrial chemicals into the environment. They don’t seem to get it that their food and water comes from that same environment they are treating as a toxic dump site. They close their eyes tight and even refuse to even test the effects of the chemicals. It is like someone pouring their waste household chemicals into the cornflakes and wondering why they don’t feel as chipper as they used to.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans refer to Canada’s tar sands as “our oil sands”. Excuse me, but the last I checked, Canada was still a separate country. The sands are coated with bitumen tar not oil. These Americans are trying to make it sound as if the oil is just lying on the ground waiting to be scooped up. It requires astronomical amounts of natural gas to make steam to melt the solid tar. This is low grade, high-environmental impact fuel.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Americans think the best way to prove you are red-blooded American male is to waste gasoline. Nothing is more harmful to their country.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Amphibians (frogs and salamanders) are the barometer of environmental health. 1/3 of all amphibian species are facing imminent extinction. There has not been such a mass extinction in 65 million years, since the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

An African uses 15.14 litres (4 US gallons) of water a day. An American uses that much every time he flushes the toilet.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

An American is someone who takes his children on a road trip by bundling them in the back of a gas-guzzling SUV, and driving them thousands of miles while they watch cartoons on DVD (Digital Video Disk).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

An environmental traitor asks himself, how big a car can I afford? An environmental patriot asks himself, how small a vehicle will get the job done? Americans live under the delusion a pickup truck is a suitable commuter vehicle and an SUV is necessary to buy groceries.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)

Andrew Weaver is a famous global climate change scientist from the University of Victoria who has suddenly reversed his position and become an apologist for exploiting the tar sands on the grounds that coal is even worse. He told one major lie on the CBC The Current and committed one major piece of dissembling. I don’t dispute his statistics, just his dishonest interpretations.

The lie was this: He pointed out that if all the tar sands were burned it would raise the average global temperature of the earth 0.36°C (0.65°F) . He then dismissed this as insignificant, even though he knew full well even 2.0°C (3.6°F) is unacceptable. That represents a massive and disproportionate global contribution from a tiny nation like Canada. It is not as though we Canadians are the only ones responsible for greenhouse gases. It all adds up. Canada is only 0.4% of the world’s population. We have no business contributing more than 0.4% of the world’s pollution.

Weaver’s dissembling was more subtle. He compared the burning all the tar sands with burning all the coal anywhere on earth. At the current rate of consumption, coal will last for 238 years. Unlike the tar sands, nobody is going to burn all the world’s coal in one decade. The effects of global warming will become so severe that most of that coal will never be burned. Weaver wants his audience to believe that the alternative to burning the Alberta tar sands is to burn all the coal on the planet. This is nonsense. Weaver is comparing apples and oranges. He is playing a psychological trick on his audience to convince them to approve of the tar sands. He knew perfectly the well the only honest way to compare coal and tar sands would be to compare a quantity of coal containing equal energy to the tar sands, not the entire world’s supply. Using his crooked methods, he could claim apple juice had way more vitamin C than orange juice. All he would have to do would be compare 100 litres (26.42 US gallons) of apple juice with 1 litre (1.06 US quarts) of orange juice.

Reference Link:
http://mindprod.com/quote/environment.html