To F6's 04/06/12 - "MIT team: global economic collapse by 2030"
Including F6's link list, with heading added, below.
By Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows
The following piece is a short synopsis of Limits to Growth: The 30- Year Update. The full length book is available at Chelsea Green’s website .. http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/limitspaper . A Synopsis: Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update
The signs are everywhere around us:
* Sea level has risen 10–20 cm since 1900. Most non-polar glaciers are retreating, and the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice is decreasing in summer.
* In 1998 more than 45 percent of the globe’s people had to live on incomes averaging $2 a day or less. Meanwhile, the richest one- fifth of the world’s population has 85 percent of the global GNP. And the gap between rich and poor is widening.
* In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimated that 75 percent of the world’s oceanic fisheries were fished at or beyond capacity. The North Atlantic cod fishery, fished sustainably for hundreds of years, has collapsed, and the species may have been pushed to biological extinction.
* The first global assessment of soil loss, based on studies of hundreds of experts, found that 38 percent, or nearly 1.4 billion acres, of currently used agricultural land has been degraded.
* Fifty-four nations experienced declines in per capita GDP for more than a decade during the period 1990–2001.
These are symptoms of a world in overshoot, where we are drawing on the world’s resources faster than they can be restored, and we are releasing wastes and pollutants faster than the Earth can absorb them or render them harmless. They are leading us toward global environ- mental and economic collapse—but there may still be time to address these problems and soften their impact.
[...]
Now in a new study, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, the authors have produced a comprehensive update to the original Limits, in which they conclude that humanity is dangerously in a state of overshoot.
While the past 30 years has shown some progress, including new technologies, new institutions, and a new awareness of environmental problems, the authors are far more pessimistic than they were in 1972. Humanity has squandered the opportunity to correct our current course over the last 30 years, they conclude, and much must change if the world is to avoid the serious consequences of overshoot in the 21st century.
When The Limits to Growth was first published in 1972, most economists, along with many industrialists, politicians, and Third World advocates raised their voices in outrage at the suggestion that population growth and material consumption need to be reduced by deliberate means. Over the years, Limits was attacked by many who didn’t understand or misrepresented its assertions, dismissing it as Malthusian hyperbole. But nothing that has happened in the last 30 years has invalidated the book’s warnings.
On the contrary, as noted energy economist Matthew Simmons recently wrote, “The most amazing aspect of the book is how accurate many of the basic trend extrapolations … still are some 30 years later.” For example, the gap between rich and poor has only grown wider in the past three decades. Thirty years ago, it seemed unimaginable that humanity could expand its numbers and economy enough to alter the Earth’s natural systems. But experience with the global climate system and the stratospheric ozone layer have proved them wrong.
Yep, bottom line is our Western eco-footprints are unsustainable over long term. Suggestion was that the earth could carry some 18 billion, toward 7 billion now, if all environment 'shoe size' was roughly that of the average Indian's, at present. There is a state in India where kids are at school at two, women marry about 28 and the average family is 1-2 children, while in other states women marry at 18 and have 5-6... children. Eduction is key.
ECO-FOOTPRINTS AND GLOBAL BIO-CAPACITY The measurement called "eco-footprint" is an abstract size or number based on the earths global bio capacity divided by the number of people living on the planet at any time. Meaning as time goes and we become more people our ideal eco-footprint shrinks, at the same time as our consumption increases and reduces the planets bio-capacity. In 2008 the individual ideal eco-footprint was 1,3 gha (global hectars), while the average Norwegian eco-footprint was 6,8. In the following article I will try to explain the logics behind the eco-footprint way of thinking based on THE LIVING PLANET REPORT from 2008. [...] [...] https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=54672885
Come ON people all over everywhere! .. Don't pay money for this death! come ON! ... YOU know better than this! damnit' And you're worried about Muslims, and Mexicans? Man! are you ever naive/dumb/blind...sheesh WAKE UP! this is what is killing YOU! A "Tidal Wave" of Overdoses is Filling Up This Morgue https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=129860207
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