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The United Nations projects that over the next 50 years, the population in the industrialized world (US-Europe-Japan) will DECLINE, not expand. The population is suffering from growing old and the youth are so burdened with taxes they are not getting married (marriages off by 50%) and are not having children. The decline in birth ratesand the migration of people from the outer regions into the old core is typical.

The UN is now supporting immigration to keep the pension funds alive. They have stated that immigration now “require[s] comprehensive reassessments of many established policies and programmes, including those relating to international migration.”

The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 4

August 19, 2015

The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 4

Blind Alleys and Techno-Fantasies

The majority of proposals made by those who acknowledge limits fail on at least one of the previous criteria, and often several, if not all of them. Solution space is smaller than we typically think. The most common approach is to insist on government policies intended to implement meaningful change by fiat. Even in the best of times, government policy is a blunt instrument which all too often achieves the opposite of its stated intention, and in contractionary times the likelihood of this increases enormously.

Governments are reactive – and slowly – not proactive. Policies typically reflect the realities of the past, not the future, and are therefore particularly maladaptive at times of large scale trend change, particularly when that change unfolds rapidly. Those focusing on government policy are mostly not thinking in terms of crisis, however, but of seamless proactive adjustment – the kind of which humanity is congenitally incapable.

There is a common perception that government policy and its effect on society depends critically on who holds the seat of power and what policies they impose. The assumption is that elected leaders do, in fact, wield the power to determine and implement their chosen policies, but this has become less and less the case over time. Elected leaders are the public face of a system which they do not control, and increasingly act merely as salesmen for policies determined behind the scenes, mostly at the behest of special interest groups with privileged political access.

It actually matters little who is the figure-head at any given time, as their actions are constrained by the system in which they are embedded. Even if leaders fully understood the situation we face, which is highly unlikely given the nature of the leadership selection process, they would be unable to change the direction of a system so much larger than themselves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Paul Ehrlich: The Population Bomb

August 2, 2015

Paul Ehrlich: The Population Bomb

The master predicament that remains unaddressed

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich released his ground-breaking book The Population Bomb, which awoke the national consciousness to the collision-course world population growth is on with our planet’s finite resources. His work was reinforced several years later by the Limits To Growth report issued by the Club of Rome.

Fast-forward almost 50 years later, and Ehrlich’s book reads more like a ‘how to’ manual. Nearly all the predictions it made are coming to pass, if they haven’t already. Ehrlich admits that things are even more dire than he originally forecasted; not just from the size of the predicament, but because of the lack of social willingness and political courage to address or even acknowledge the situation:

The situation is much more grim because, of course, when the population bomb was written, there were 3.5 billion people on the planet. Now there are 7.3 billion people on the planet. And we are projected to have something on the order of 9.6 billion people 35 years from now. That means that we are scheduled to add to the population many more people than were alive when I was born in 1932. When I was born there were 2 billion people. The idea that, in 35 years when we already have billions of people hungry or micronutrient-malnourished, we are somehow going to have to take care of 2.5 billion more people is a daunting idea.

I think it’s going to get a lot worse for a lot more people. You’ve got to remember that each person we add disproportionately causes ecological damage. For example, human beings are smart. So human beings use the easiest to get to, the purest, the finest resources first.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the next threat too many ‘them’ in a resource-scarce future?

June 14, 2015

Is the next threat too many ‘them’ in a resource-scarce future?

Defence planners are haunted by visions of angry, marginalised black people endangering corporate power when climate change topples their governments

Last week, Israel hosted the 15^th Annual Herzliya Conference, run by the Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS), a hawkish think tank specialising in national security.

The conference brought together senior political, corporate, industry and military-intelligence officials from across Western Europe and, of course, within Israel, to discuss the biggest threats to Western and Israeli interests related to Middle East turmoil.

American delegates and speakers included US Secretary of State John Kerry; Tony Blinken, US Deputy Secretary of State; Amos Hochstein, US State Department Special Envoy for International Energy Affairs; Stephen Krasner, former US State Department director of policy planning under Bush; Robert Hutchins, former director of the US National Intelligence Council.

Also present were senior European and other leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of France; Bilahari Kausikan, ambassador-at-large and former permanent secretary at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Daniel Kurtzer, former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt; Lubomir Zaoralek, Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic; Jose Maria Asnar, former prime minister of Spain and a News Corporation board director.

Then there were miscellaneous players from a range of industries: Francois Henrot, vice chairman, Rothschild Bank; Rick Kaplan, head of IBM in Israel; Yossi Matias, vice president of engineering at Google; John Hofmeister, former president of Shell; Peter Clark, former deputy assistant commissioner, and head of the anti-terrorist branch and national coordinator of terrorist investigations for the London Metropolitan Police Service, and many more.

Senior current and former Israeli government, military and intelligence officials also participated.

– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/next-threat-too-many-them-resource-scarce-future-1828774537#sthash.7XKYD5tV.dpuf

Resilient Urban Systems: Where We Stand Now and Where We Need to Go

April 25, 2015

Resilient Urban Systems: Where We Stand Now and Where We Need to Go

By the year 2050, close to seven billion people will be living in urbanized areas worldwide, which is almost double the number of urban inhabitants of today. Provision of adequate infrastructure service to this massive urban population in order to ensure their health, wealth, and comfort is going to be a daunting challenge for engineers, planners, and socioeconomic decision makers in the coming decades. However, the challenges faced by the developing and developed worlds are dissimilar in nature. While the developed world is coping with aging infrastructure, the developing world faces the challenge of keeping up with the brisk pace of urbanization and the consequential rise in infrastructure demand. In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) awarded the US infrastructure an overall grade of D+ and estimated that USD $3.6 trillion needs to be invested by 2020.¹

When considering how to reshape, redesign, or create urban areas to be more sustainable, it is imperative to include urban infrastructure systems (UIS) in the decision-making process. UIS are durable features of the urban form and exhibit a strong form of path dependence. UIS have a pronounced effect on the general topology of the urban system and how the urban area continues to grow spatially over time. UIS, with a typical design life of 50 to 100 years, continue to dominate the urban form and mediate the citizens, goods, services, energy, and resource flows into, within, and out of the urban areas for decades after the design decision has been made. For example, transportation planning often has a prescriptive effect on the growth pattern of an urban region. Empirical estimates suggest that one new highway built through a central city reduces its central-city population by about 18 percent.²

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Overview of Our Energy Modeling Problem

April 23, 2015

Overview of Our Energy Modeling Problem

We live in a world with limits, yet our economy needs growth. How can we expect this scenario to play out? My view is that this problem will play out as a fairly near-term financial problem, with low oil prices leading to a fall in oil production. But not everyone comes to this conclusion. What were the views of early researchers? How do my views differ?

In my post today, I plan to discuss the first lecture I gave to a group of college students in Beijing. A PDF of it can be found here: 1. Overview of Energy Modeling Problem. A MP4 video is available as well on my Presentations/Podcasts Page.

Many Limits in a Finite World

We live in a world with limits. These limits are not just energy limits; they come in many different forms:

All these limits work together. We can work around these limits, but the workarounds are higher cost–for example, substituting less polluting energy resources for more polluting energy resources, or extracting lower grade ores instead of high-grade ores. When lower grade ores are used, we need to process more waste material, raising costs because of greater energy use. When population rises, we must change our agricultural approaches to increase food production per acre cultivated.

The problem we reach with any of these workarounds is diminishing returns. We can keep increasing output, but doing so requires disproportionately more inputs of many kinds (including human labor, mineral resources, fresh water, and energy products) to produce the same quantity of output. This creates higher costs, and can lead to financial problems. This phenomenon is one of the major things that a model of a finite world should reflect.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Only Less Will Do

March 22, 2015

Only Less Will Do

When I’m not writing books or essays on environmental issues, or sleeping or eating, you’re likely to find me playing the violin. This has been an obsessive activity for me since I was a boy, and seems to deliver ever more satisfaction as time passes. Making and operating the little wooden box that is a violin is essentially a pre-industrial activity: nearly all its parts are from renewable sources (wood, horsetail, sheepgut), and playing it requires no electricity or gasoline. Violin playing therefore constitutes an ecologically benign hobby, right?

It probably was, a couple of centuries ago; now, not so much. You see, most violin bows are made from pernambuco, a Brazilian hardwood that’s endangered because too many bows have already been made from it. Ebony, too, is over-harvested; it’s used for making fingerboards, tuning pegs, and bow parts. Some fancy older violin bows are even decorated with tortoiseshell, ivory, and whalebone. And while maple and spruce (the main woods from which violins are constructed) are not endangered, whole forests are being cut in China to meet the burgeoning global demand for student instruments. Modern strings (most of which are made using petroleum derivatives) are often wound with nonrenewable silver or aluminum, and almost nobody tries to recycle them.

You see, the real problem with violins is one of scale. If there were only a few thousand violinists in the world, making and playing fiddles would have negligible environmental impact. But multiply these activities by tens of millions and the results are deforestation and species extinctions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot

March 21, 2015

OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot

William Ryerson’s introduction to the new book OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot.

MOST CONVERSATIONS ABOUT POPULATION begin with statistics—demographic data, fertility rates in this or that region, the latest reports on malnutrition, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and so on. Such data, while useful, fails to generate mass concern about the fundamental issue affecting the future of the Earth.

In reality, every discussion about population involves people, the world that our children and grandchildren will live to see and the health of the planet that supports all life. In my roles as president of Population Media Center and CEO of the Population Institute, I spend most of my time in developing countries, where many of my friends and acquaintances are educated and prospering. But I also know individuals who are homeless, unemployed, or hungry. The vast majority of people in these societies, regardless of their current status, do not enjoy a safety net. They live from day to day in hopes that their economic circumstances will improve. Abstract statistics on poverty are irrelevant to families struggling to secure the food, water, and resources needed to sustain a decent life.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Thought for food | Ensia

December 20, 2014

Thought for food | Ensia.

How on Earth are we going to figure out how to feed the 9.5 billion people who will be inhabiting this planet by 2050? Perhaps by looking to the ultimate problem-solver — nature.

On Jan. 19, the Biomimicry Institute and the Ray C. Anderson Foundation will launch a worldwide design challenge. Their goal? “To show how modeling nature can provide viable solutions to reduce hunger, while creating conditions conducive to all life.”

Scientists, architects, planners, college students, high school students and others are invited to submit their ideas for a marketable solution that uses inspiration from nature to improve the global food system. Challenge participants will have access to biomimicry design resources and expert advice, and will have a chance to compete for cash prices of up to $160,000.

If you have a nature-inspired idea to reduce food spoilage, improve food packaging, boost production or soil conservation, or otherwise enhance food security, gather your forces and get ready to apply to the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge: Food Systems starting Jan. 19.

Hardline Australia, confused Scandinavia and tense Russia: the global immigration picture | World news | The Guardian

December 1, 2014

Hardline Australia, confused Scandinavia and tense Russia: the global immigration picture | World news | The Guardian.

Few issues excite politicians’ and voters’ passions as much as immigration. For decades now, the world has been on the move: last year, according to the United Nations Population Fund, the number of people living outside their country of origin reached 232 million – 50% more than in 1990.

That may feel like a lot of people; in fact, it represents just 3.2% of the world’s population. They are, however, unevenly spread: 60% live in the developed world, including 72 million in Europe, 71 million in Asia and 53 million in North America. Nearly two-thirds of migrants currently living in the developed world came from a developing country.

Logically, the developed world is also where international immigrants represent a larger proportion of the total population: 10.8%, against just 1.6% in developing regions. Migrants, for example, now make up 9.8% of the total population in Europe, 14.9% in North America, and more than 20% in Oceania.

But it seems migration patterns are shifting. While more people still settle in developed countries than in developing, the growth rate is now higher in the latter: 1.8% against 1.5%. Also, overall migration is slowing. From 2000 to 2010, 4.6 million people left their home country each year; that number is now 3.6 million. But migration and its effects, real or perceived, remain one of the defining political and social issues of the day. In Britain and the US, the subject – anti-immigration; Ukip’s onward march; Barack Obama’s decision to give up to 5 million immigrants work permits – dominates national debate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Visualizing Peak Popopulation | Zero Hedge

November 29, 2014

Visualizing Peak Popopulation | Zero Hedge.

Even with having existed for millions of years, the process for humans to reach 1 billion in population was long and arduous. It is only about 12,000 years ago that humans started engaging in sedentary agriculture. This allowed humans to settle and consistently produce food, rather than hunt and gather throughout.

However, it is with the Industrial Revolution that the means for exponential human population increases was created. New technology, boosts in productivity, and the use of energy allowed for a new frontier in increasing health, sanitation, and standard of living. It is also around this time – in 1804 to be exact – that the earth’s population hit 1 billion people.

Fast forward two hundred years, and the impact of the Industrial Revolution is loud and clear. Now with over 7 billion people, global population has risen so fast that by one estimate, 14% of all human beings that have ever existed are alive today.

Based on a recent UN study, by 2100, our global population is predicted to be between 9.6 and 12.3 billion people. The world will be much different than we know it today in the future.

For starters, the vast majority of growth will happen in the less developed regions of the world. As an example, Nigeria’s population will increase five-fold, from around 174 million today to almost a billion people. It will likely be the 3rd most populous country behind India and China in 2100. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole could hold up to almost half of the world’s population in the future.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Green Revolution Trebles Human Burden on Planet – Truthdig

November 23, 2014

Green Revolution Trebles Human Burden on Planet – Truthdig.

LONDON—Humans are changing not just climate overall, but also the difference between seasons in any given year.

Researchers in the US believe they now know why global warming has begun to announce itself both in annual rises in temperature and in the seasonal records of carbon dioxide in the northern hemisphere—the same seasonal variation in atmospheric chemistry that also contains within it the signature of the Green Revolution and the 20th-century population explosion.

And it’s all because the natural swing from high carbon dioxide levels to low each year has become more dramatic in the last 50 years.

Inexorable pattern

Later in the year, as leaves fall, crops are harvested and consumed, and soil is freshly tilled, most of that CO₂ gets back into the atmosphere. It’s an inexorable pattern that follows the seasons.

Systematic measurements of CO₂levels began in 1958, and they show that swings within each year from high to low, and back again, have increased in amplitude by 50%, and go on increasing by 0.3% every year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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