28 Sept 2008

The roots of global warming that nobody dare mention

The Living Planet Report (2006) confirms that we are using the planet’s resources faster than they can be renewed. The latest data indicates that humanity’s Ecological Footprint has more than tripled since 1961 and now exceeds the world’s ability to regenerate by about 25 per cent.
Recycling and cutting out the occasional long haul flight are individually responsible actions but are they just colluding with governments and international organisations that refuse to address the core issues?
The two central issues that are virtually never mentioned are irrational and unsustainable economic growth and unsustainable population growth. Recycling and reducing carbon emissions are feeble coping strategies to put off addressing core issues.
All national economies are modelled on the principle of continuously increasing their economic growth – resource consumption, retail spending, building, manufacturing etc; these are the primary causes of global pollution and increased carbon emissions. No government seems prepared to aim for a sustainable economy, which is invariably referred to in the negative terms of stagnation or recession (i.e. non-growth).
Proposed solutions to ‘third world’ poverty are usually couched in terms of increasing their industrial capacity with the environmentally disastrous outcomes so clearly evident in China and India. But why should they develop sustainable and environmentally friendly economies when no ‘first world’ country is prepared to?
The other looming crisis, that has become un-PC to discuss, is over population. United Nations figures estimate that the world’s population is set to grow from six billion to nine billion by 2050, inevitably leading to land and resource wars.
This 50% increase in global population levels will lead to phenomenal levels of pollution, dwarfing all the current proposals (but not implemented) to curb it.
We are being conned into thinking that our political leaders are taking environmental issues seriously. But if we don’t face up to the key global dilemmas there is little hope of any rational action.

Peter Lynch