The recent influx of seniors and retirees into the population has nursing homes severely overcrowded and Americans asking themselves in record numbers: “Just what is adult day care and how can it help me?” To answer this we will look at the problem as logically as we can, in a manner that can be easily understood by anyone, regardless of experience in the field or practical life experience.

Considering that the the Baby Boomer population, (the largest single demographic in the nation for many years now) will hit retirement age in force within the next 3 to 5 years, The United States Department of The Census has determined that by the year 2020, the number of US citizens over the age of 65 will surpass the number of US citizens under the age of 5 for the first time in our country’s history.

These seniors can best be described in 3 basic need categories:

1. Predominantly Healthy – very active and needing no assistance with life skills such as cooking, grooming, bathing and toileting. These seniors suffer no sign of dementia or cognitive dysfunction.

2. Moderately Healthy – Still very active but requiring some life skill assistance. These seniors are largely alert and lucid and can still actively participate in most normal social activities, and most personal care practices. but may require limited assistance with cooking, grooming, bathing, or toileting.

3. Significantly Impaired – These seniors suffer from severe medical conditions or are in the advanced stages of progressively worsening illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s Diseases, or any other chronic, incurable, or ultimately terminal illness which requires constant or almost constant supervision by medical staff and medically trained personnel. These seniors are not capable of providing for most of their significant daily needs and cannot function in most social settings, even with minimal or periodic assistance.

Traditionally in America, when our grandparents, parents, spouses or siblings begin to become a burden on our personal lives, or develop a dependency on us for any or all of life’s basic necessities, we have developed a propensity to deposit them into nursing homes, intermediate care centers, or assisted living repositories.

Leaving moral and ethical issues aside, this fact gets even more significant when we take into account that the resources and facilities which currently exist to serve seniors in America are already inadequate for the existing senior population. Facilities and programs simply do not exist to handle the eminently impending influx of Baby Boomers who are about to retire, most of whom have nothing specifically constructive to do with their time. Those are the exact types of situations and scenarios which adult day care facilities were created to address.

Far less costly than nursing home care, intermediate care, or assisted living participation, adult day care programs are almost always at least partially covered by private insurance and medicare/medicaid, and in many cases, can be provided to qualified registrants absolutely free of out of pocket expenses.

When registered in an adult day care facility, you or your loved ones are picked up directly at your door at a pre-determined time, and transported to an established adult day care facility. Once there, various structured and supervised activities are provided to the registrants to fill their days with purpose and to allow them to mingle amongst their peers. At least one, and often two meals are provided at no additional cost during a typical program day. Since all activities are facilitated by trained staff and take place in a controlled environment, adults fitting either of the first two categories can benefit largely from participation in an adult day care program.

These adult day programs not only provide much needed function and interaction between the registrants, they also provide much needed respite for caregivers and family members who can easily grow exhausted by the increasingly demanding needs of a declining loved one.

Once the daily program is over, the registrants are redelivered directly to their homes, often with a take-home meal or snack for later in the evening sothat they can maintain a sense of self-sufficiency, and not be dependent on someone else at home to prepare an additional meal for them, particularly after returning home fro ma busy day at work or school.

As you can see, there are tremendous benefits to participating in adult day care programs. These programs help keep families together until there is absolutely no other choice, and help to preserve space in Nursing homes and medical care facilities for those people who desperately need that type of elevated care. Many programs have excellent curriculums which allow their participants to remain invigorated and vital in their daily lives and activities, but there is much more work to be done in this field to guarantee our aging loved ones are receiving the very best care and programs they can get. New facilities need to be constructed using state-of-the-art equipment and technology, and curriculums need to be established which can be customized to maximize the experience on an individual basis so that each participant maintains the potential to reap the maximum benefit from their individual adult day care experiences.

Please stay tuned for more on my series of articles pertaining to issues on aging.

(english below)

Le rapport 2009 du FNUAP (Fonds des Nations Unis sur la population) a été publié le 18 novembre dernier. Il s’intitule “Face à un monde qui change: les femmes, la population et le climat“. Il place les femmes au centre des tentatives visant à affronter les changements climatiques et maintient que les politiques, les programmes et les initiatives diverses auront plus de chances d’atténuer les pires effets de ces changements s’ils prennent en compte les droits et les besoins des femmes.

Selon le rapport, l’émancipation des femmes et des filles, notamment par des investissements dans la santé et l’éducation, contribue à stimuler le développement économique et à réduire la pauvreté, ce qui permet de mieux faire face aux conséquences des changements climatiques. Les filles plus éduquées auront davantage tendance, une fois adultes, à fonder des familles de petite taille et en bonne santé.

Mme. Obaid, Directrice exécutive de l’UNFPA, a délcaré que « les femmes pauvres des pays pauvres sont les plus durement touchées par les changements climatiques, alors qu’elles y contribuent le moins ». 

The 2009 state of the World Population Report of the united Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was launched on 18 November in Accra, Ghana. It’s title “Facing a Changing World: Women, population and climate” underlines one of the key aspect almost always forgotten when it’sa bout climate change: the crucial role of women.

The report says that technology alone can not solve global climate change and there is a need to focus on role people play by population growth, consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. “As we approach the brink of disaster, our future as humanity depends on unleashing the full potential of all human beings and the full capacity of women, to bring about change,” it writes.    

The report also calls for people-centred solutions alongside technology in the debates and solutions to climate change, stressing that, women should be an integral part of any agreement that emerges from next month’s climate conference to be held in Copenhagen.

Ms Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA Executive Director, urged countries to invest in women by ensuring alternatives to wood and imported fuel, clean water supplies, better roads and mobile phones as well as providing girls with education and health care.

Good morning friends.  Water supply to parched Surendranagar may improve soon.  The waiting of many people in the village will soon end.    

Narmada water set to reach Dholidhaja dam from Sunday 

The drinking water woes of 651 villages and 11 towns of Surendranagar district may come to an end soon, with the Narmada water reaching the Dholidhaja dam from November 29. 

Located at the mouth of the Rann of Kutch, Surendranagar and other towns in the district receive drinking water supply once in five days, making life extremely difficult for locals. The drinking water situation in villages is far worse because of the heavy fluoride content in the underground water, making it completely non-potable. 

But the towns and villages with a population of over three lakh are likely to get daily drinking water supply with the Saurashtra Branch Canal (SBC) of the Narmada main canal carrying the Narmada water to the Dholidhaja dam. From there, the water will be taken to the filtration plants for further supply to the consumers. 

According to Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL) officials, though the filtration plants and overhead water tanks had been constructed, they could not be used properly because of obstacles in transporting Narmada water to Dholidhaja dam. The dam is located at 66 meters above Narmada canal at Kadi, making gravitational flow impossible. 

SSNNL had to construct a total of five pumping stations to lift water and take it to the Dholidhaja dam. According to SSNNL officials, these pumping stations have been set up at Dhanki, Lilapur, Lakhtar, Bala and Sajdhar between Kadi and Dholidhaja. “It was really a Herculean task to construct pumping stations and take water to a higher level and difficult terrains of Surendranagar district,” said Harshad Thakar of SSNNL. 

While taking water to the dam would solve the drinking water problem of most part of Surendranagar district, seven branch canals measuring 759 kilometres are yet to be completed for providing irrigation water to 5.24 lakh hectares of agricultural land in Surendranagar district. – Indian Express

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself”…

-Club of Rome

Barack Obama’s top science ‘czar‘ [or 'Tzar'- the name of the official rulers in Medieval Bulgaria, Russia and Serbia], John Holdren advocate some truly horrific proposals in the 1977 book entitled “Ecoscience“, which he co-authored with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. When reports of Holdren’s book first started to surface, they were quickly dismissed by many because it just seemed so utterly unbelievable that the top science advisor to the president of the United States would hold such frightening ideologies: sterilisation of the population, forced birth control and euthanasia; essentially a Planetary Regime utopia with the power to control life and death over its citizens.

This new environmental religion is coming hard and fast. As Al Gore said in the closing sentence of his statement after he won the Nobel Peace Prize … “This is just the beginning.” I wonder just how many pies Mr Gore is actually sticking his slimy reptilian tentacles in. Most people don’t realise that Gore is set to be the first “carbon tax billionaire”:

The Times report notes how Gore “has a stake in the world’s pre-eminent carbon credit trading market.” As we reported back in March, before he became President Barack Obama also helped fund the profiteers of the carbon taxation program that he is now seeking to implement as law.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has direct ties to both Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for profit and social engineering. Gore’s investment company, Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offset opportunities, is the largest shareholder of CCX. [read more here]

But it is not just Al Gore’s personal war against climate change. We are seeing this growing movement everywhere, from the eyebrow raising “Eco-Friendly Sustainability” inserts in the Sunday Age [the wonderful Fairfax empire] to the rustic pamphlets sent to me by my energy retailer each month [telling me what CO2 reduction measures they could do for me should I feel guilty about my 'footprint' and pay extra: sign up here...] but few people are questioning why. Why now? Cui bono? Some people rarely contemplate beyond the “we have had the hottest summer on record” mantra.

Indeed, we are told that climate change is not debateable. Heaven forbid! from what I understand, the fundamental nature of all science is to above all question and investigate and by that measure any person who calls themself a “scientist” who is not ‘skeptical‘ is not in fact a scientist.

“Science is the engine that drives innovation, the light that shines in the moonless night of ignorance and superstition, and the best hope for solutions to most of the serious problems that plague all people, everywhere. If the presidential candidates don’t understand that, then our future may be bleak.”

-Biomed Central- Genome Biology US

Should we simply sink back into our chair and wince discretely whenever a discussion on ‘carbon footprints’ arises in dinner party conversation? To be seen as anti-carbon tax, anti-humanity, anti-middle-class “‘we care because it’s the right thing to do for our children”. Quite the opposite actually it seems. Do a little bit of research and we find that this environmentalism, touted as the next religion of humanity has those all too familiar ideologies of the NWO: globalism and eugenics. Those liberal Birkenstock wearing environmentalists are being taken for a ride.

The United Nations Population Fund has released its annual State of the World Population Report 2009 entitled “Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate”. This report goes farther than any U.N. report before it by unequivocally linking population growth with climate change, and it suggests that the only way to avoid this global climate “disaster” is to increase “family planning” services around the world, reduce fertility rates and encourage families around the world to have less children. Indeed, the terms ‘climate change’, ‘carbon tax’ and ‘reducing emissions’ and the terms ‘over-population’ and ‘population control’ are being uttered frequently in the same [carbon dioxide emitting] breath.

Not only did the Club of Rome’s 1972 report, “Limits to Growth” call for a reduced level of consumption of resources, it also argued that humankind needs to re-evaluate its exploitative attitude towards humans and the earth itself. The failure to give more foreign aid is indicative of the increased selfishness of rich countries. Meanwhile, the world’s richest 20 per cent of the population consume 86 per cent of its goods and services, over half its energy and nearly half its meat and fish. The Club of Rome has been the prime mover behind the Global Warming scam, using the scaremongery generated by this highly contentious and emotive issue to gain public support for cutting CO2 emissions. While the world’s most powerful nations continue to increase their carbon footprints on a daily basis, developing countries are forced to plough their fields and turn their mills by wind and solar power alone. The perfect scam. In the book “The First Global Revolution“ (1991) the Club of Rome openly admitted, that the whole green ideology is just an artificial hoax serving as a tool to grab power.

It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or… one invented for the purpose.”

In the process of struggling against this implacable enemy, democracy “will be made to seem responsible for the lagging economy, the scarcity and uncertainties. The very concept of democracy could then be brought into question and allow for the seizure of power.”

-Club of Rome

In his memoirs, Rockefeller admits that the goal of all this is to unite the whole planet under a single government:

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Still not convinced?

With the advent of the leaked Climategate emails [Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?] concerning the manipulation of evidence, doubts about whether the world is really heating up, suppression of evidence, fantasies of violence towards climate change skeptics, attempting to disguise the inconvenient truth about the Medival Warm Period (MWP) and discussions on how best to remove dissenting scientist out of the peer review process. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories in the mainstream media. Hopefully more and more people will not be suckered into the painfully propagandizing rhetoric and dare to debate the real ‘inconvenient truth’.

* Please consider the environment before printing

This is a really cool online clock that includes all manner of statistics: diseases, food production, population, etc. You can watch as they grow from the beginning of this year, week, day, or starting….now.

Worldclock

[Thanks, Dad!]

Gordon Brown previously shrugged-off predictions that the UK’s population could sore to 70 million – but new figures revealing more people continue to come than go suggest the Government’s announcement to tighten immigration couldn’t have come at a better time!  

Swamped: immigrants raise fears the UK's population could hit 70 million

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have revealed immigration to the UK continues to rise.

The figures show about 590,000 people moved to Britain in 2008 compared with 574,000 in 2007.

That’s an increase of 16,000 within a year.  

But what makes the UK such an attractive destination to foreigners? We can rule out the weather….or a relaxed, slow-paced lifestyle. 

A BBC analysis of ONS figures from 2007 revealed multiple reasons why people pack-up and head to the UK  – the number one being for work.  

Main reason for immigration to the UK – 2007

So, with work opportunities being the main factor drawing in foreigners, what are the chances of securing employment in the UK?

Under the Brown Government’s new immigration rules, from next year onwards, all jobs must be advertised to British workers for a four week period before companies can seek recruitments from outside of Europe. 

On top of that, the newly revised visa points-based system limits the professions eligible for entry to the UK.

According to the BBC, engineers, chefs and care workers could be among those affected.                    

Opportunities: immigrants flock to the UK for work

And if you’re already in the UK and thinking of staying, don’t think it’s a few forms and you’re done. The revised points-based system requires immigrants from outside the European Union to earn the right to permanently live in the UK.

In his latest speech on immigration, Gordon Brown said people earn this right “not just through their economic contribution, but also by their respect for our [British] values and language and by their wider contribution to society.”

How you prove this is undoubedbly going to be another complicated (and currently unknown) process.

The facts are clear – people continue to flock to the UK…for now. With reduced job opportunities and tougher hoops to jump through to stay in the country, how long will this trend continue?

With fears the UK population will reach 70 million, it seems the Brown Government is doing everything it can to slow the pace of this trend and save the UK from being swamped!

 Related stories: UK tightens immigration

With only a few weeks to go for the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, PM Manmohan Singh gave the assurance: “We are committed to ambitious and time-bound outcomes that will increase energy efficiency of our economy, the share of clean energy including nuclear power in our energy mix, and our forest cover.” But he added, “We will do more if there is global support in terms of financial resources and technology transfer.” This is the bone of contention in the case of developing countries meeting emission standards. Hunger, poverty and disease are more urgent problems for developing countries like India to tackle than emission norms. Therefore, India’s stand has been to do more on climate change if developed nations lend a helping hand by way of financial support and technology.

India-US agree on Climate Change

The reason that climate change effects arise from the global stock of carbon, the distribution across countries of their contributions to that stock, including the initial stock, is totally irrelevant from the perspective of efficiency. Again since only total emissions of each country and hence of all countries together add to the global stock of carbon, whether the same total emissions of a country is the result of low per capita emission multiplied by a large population or vice versa is again irrelevant from the perspective of efficiency.

Population policy choices do affect the welfare of the current and future populations. Any trade-off between larger population and lower emissions or vice-versa would naturally fall under considerations of inter-generational equity within nations and deep philosophical issues are involved in doing so. National welfare becomes the focus of all national policy choices, including population policies, which are reflected through their effects on national welfare in any international agreement that reflects equity consideration across countries appropriately. Thus, from the perspective of international agreement, only aggregate and not per capita emissions are relevant.

China and India are sitting on vast stocks of coal, which push the amount of their emissions above those of older polluters in the west. Forests offer untold wealth to millions in poverty in Indonesia and Brazil, if only trees can be chopped down, and at the very top of the carbon food chain sit western consumers unwilling to part with easy luxuries like cheap weekend flights and two cars. When they stop buying cars or other durables, our economies grind to a halt. The developed world has become accustomed to ever-increasing levels of material consumption. Cutting carbon emissions is therefore inextricably linked with wider questions of the pressure on all natural resources, land and water.

This is a task that only governments can undertake and it is not as if they have not already had enough time to do it. The meeting that created the Kyoto protocol has convened in 10 other countries and cities since. The immensity of the task ahead is probably more apparent to world leaders than it was a decade ago. But time is running out. To prevent the global average temperature from increasing by more than 2C, there will need to be a global cut in emissions within the next five years or so.

Therefore, to reach these reduced levels a country like India needs to use green technology on substantial scale. This is not possible unless the developed countries share their know-how and technology so that India can work towards a cleaner, greener country. However, the need for proactive action from the national and state governments is needed to tackle the problem of climate change. In cities like Kolkata, where auto rickshaws blatantly violate pollution norms and the government dithers on bringing them to book, the road ahead seems treacherous. There should also be a consensus among nations at Copenhagen that developing countries receive the transfer of ‘green technology’ at reduced prices so that they can manage their emissions more efficiently. The more time the world takes to reach a legally binding target the more it will become difficult to meet the target of 2020. Thus, the clarion call is to act fast and act decisively.

However, the argument that the per capita emission levels as the basis for binding emission cuts is of no use is apparently rational but politically loaded. In that sense, the pragmatic approach will still involve a significant cost to developed nations, but will help make some headway in saving the earth from global warming.

However, the disparities in levels of per capita consumption and therefore, emissions, will not go away – unless the entire world commits itself to an unequal international order forever which does not look likely in near future.

I get easily frightened by large quantities. Sure, the numbers in and of themselves don’t really mean much, but once you start breaking things down large (and we’re talking LAAAARGE) quantities of anything become amazingly hard to comprehend. I’m going to be making a lot of assumptions here, and taking those assumptions  and rounding them into numbers that are “neater”. I apologize in advance for my abhorrant laziness, and also for any mistakes I may make.

Firstly, let’s take a quantity that is somewhat easy to grasp: the current population of the Earth.  It’s about 6.8 billion (note the “B”) people. This may seem like a graspable number, since billions has become the new millions (thanks for that, Bill Gates) but let’s look at it further. If you were to meet one person per second, how long would it take you to meet everyone on the Earth (assuming 365 days in a year and 24 hours per day and blah blah blah). It turns out that at the rate of one person per second, it would take over 215 years to meet everyone. 6.8 billion seems a lot larger all of a sudden, doesn’t it?

Do you know how many galaxies there are in the universe? The geniuses behind the hubble space telescope estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe. If you diviied up those galaxies amongst everyone on Earth, you could give each person 18 galaxies. At one galaxy per second, it would take you just short of four thousand years to count all the galaxies in the universe.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars in it. That’s 3170 years of counting at one star per second and a total of 14 stars per person. Now, if we assume that all of those 125 billion galaxies are similar to our own Milky Way that means that there are probably 12,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe.

That’s 396,372,399,797,057 years of counting at one star per second (nearly 400 trillion) and 1,838,235,294,117 stars per person.

So next time you look up to the sky, claim your own star. There’s more than enough to go around. Just don’t claim the one that makes up the nose of aries. That one’s mine.

More Joe Isuzu messages on the health care bill.  Hey, if you push the start date out 4.5 years then the “10 year costs” look more reasonable.

Hat tip: Verum Serum

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A false teacher moves on from God to the self help movement — Hey, that’s Doctor Juanita Bynum to you, buddy.

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Adam Lambert shows how it isn’t just about sex, it is about monogamous relationships.  Oh, wait, no he didn’t.  How classy of him to simulate oral sex on a show that kids watch, and how swell that ABC used his performance to promote the show.

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Dr. Alveda King: Where are the pro-choicers in the case of forced abortion? – They have to try and hide things like this or it might make abortionists look bad.

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Demographic Implosion Spurs Panicked South Korea to Enforce Abortion Ban – interesting.  I wonder if Europe will follow suit in time to avoid being completely overrun by Muslims?

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see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Dublin Vacation
All those who visit Dublin always carry with them sweet memories of this beautiful vacation spot. Dublin as Ireland’s capital city has shown tremendous growth in the last decade. It is located in the East Coast of Ireland and has a population of approximately 1.30 million people. It has been a land of immigration for many years and so it has a mixed population and over 10% of the total Irish population is constituted of immigrants from various parts of the world including, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, China, Brazil, Nigeria, Poland, Russia and Australia. This mixed population makes the Dublin culture more open to outsiders. So everyone who travels to Dublin will certainly have a wonderful Irish vacation.

Besides that Dublin travel is always exciting because it has something interesting for everyone and all age groups will enjoy their trip thoroughly. Beer lovers will have a wonderful time in Dublin with Guinness or the “Black Stuff” which originated in Dublin. Dublin which is ranks fourth among the most popular short break destinations of Europe has many budget hotels and also five star hotels. So you will be able to find a Dublin hotel that will fit within your budget. You will also find a number of bed and breakfasts.

There are number of interesting places in Dublin that you can enjoy such as cultural and heritage sites, historical places such as ancient buildings and castles, famous libraries, beautiful parks, gardens and much more.
If you love history you can spend time at Dalkey Castle which is a tower house belonging to the 15th century. Unlike the many historical centers this spot is just 15 to 20 minutes drive from the heart of the city. You can find a number of cafes and bars that you would love at Dalkey.

For the religious minded tourists, Christ Church Cathedral will be a great feast. This church is as old as 1030. Even non-Christians are welcome to attend the Sunday and weekly services.

For those nature lovers there is Dublin Butterfly House. Here you can enjoy watching the caterpillars turn into colorful butterflies; a rare site for the city dwellers. Even those who are not specifically nature lovers will become one after their visit to Dublin Butterfly House. Next in the list is the Dublin Zoo. Everyone enjoys their visit to the zoo. You will find a wide collection of animals that you can watch and enjoy for a whole day.

Besides these Dublin has literally hundreds of bars and cool places to chill out. The nightlife and the shopping experience will give the tourists an experience of their lifetime. You will enjoy the Irish wit all over the city. The whether in Dublin is generally unpredictable and the best time to visit Dublin is between June and October.

Make sure that you check in advance regarding the visa requirements and other travel documents required so that there is no confusion or unpleasant events at the airport. Make your hotel bookings in advance to avoid last minute anxiety so that you can find a hotel that will fit within your budget.

The Photograph: Taken on National Highway 8 in Rajasthan in India. The man hanging on to the extreme right (in the blue checks) saw me take a photograph a few seconds from when the above one was taken, and he only had a smile to offer.  By Siddharth.

The Poem:  Wonder why the vehicle never breaks down.
If it did, there would be smiles; not all would frown.

Wonder how this country is still up and running;
The people, some like Gandhi and some so cunning.

Wonder how that driver manages to steer,
with the whole nation hanging on his rear.
By Akshan.

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Excerpts from GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH

IS CARBON DI OXIDE THE VILLAIN?

Such terms as carbon credit find a place in newspapers almost daily. I don’t know what is all this about. To me CO₂ sustains life on earth. Has the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere gone up? Has it been proved experimentally?

 Before Industrialization

The whole of America and most of the old world were inhabited by a comparatively small population, a majority of whom depended upon meat and fish. Farming depended entirely on rain water as big dams were unknown. The grasslands of America and Australia didn’t produce food grains. Coal and other fossil fuels were not commercially exploited. In those days we may presume that a proper balance existed between CO₂ and other ingredients of the air like N₂ and O₂ in spite of forest fires, the like of which we witnessed in California recently.

After Industrialization

Commercial exploitation of coal began first followed by oil and natural gas, resulting in increase in the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Simultaneously two other developments followed: increase in population (both human and animal) and corresponding growth in food grains production. Big dams were constructed and more and more areas of land were brought under cultivation. Mechanization and the use of artificial fertilizers made leaps and bounds in production of food grains, fruits and other commercial crops. The Prairies of North America became the granary of the world. Compared to grass, food grains and sugar fix a large quantity of CO₂. The major items responsible for such CO₂ fixation are:

1. food grains like wheat, corn, rice, oats, soybean etc
2. underground vegetables like potato, tapioca, beetroot etc
3. fruits like apple, grapes, banana, dates, cherry, pineapple etc
4. sugarcane etc

Experts can calculate the total quantity of CO₂ produced by industry and that absorbed by vegetation as mentioned above and the marine vegetation in order to find out whether the net balance is favoring CO₂ concentration in the air. An easier way would be to experimentally ascertain the percentage of CO₂ in the atmospheric air (being heavier than air CO₂ is available near the surface of the earth). If CO₂ level increases O₂ level should decrease. In my childhood (I am 70+) O₂ level was 20% as mentioned in my text book. Has it changed? An atom of carbon combines with two atoms of oxygen to form CO₂ which is absorbed by the leaves of the plant to form starch. In the process two atoms of oxygen are released into the atmosphere. We may say that each carbon atom burnt ultimately results in the release of two atoms of oxygen, thus resulting in increase in the level of O₂. Level of CO₂ dissolved in the ocean water should also be checked. If this level increases, fishes would die en mass. Has this happened? If the level of CO₂ dissolved in ocean waters decreases, plant life in the ocean cannot produce enough starch by photosynthesis. This will be a hazard for fishes and other marine life.

The volume of animal and hence plant life in the oceans is much more than that on the continents. This is because the area of the oceans is seven times the area of the continents. Also, the oceans are deep. Hence the volume of water is very much more and can contain a large population of marine life. The necessary starch has to come from plant life. So, the total bio mass in the oceans is considerably higher than that in the continent. The carbon di oxideàPlant starchàAnimalsàCarbon di oxide cycle is there in the watery medium, just as in our atmosphere. All the gases, including nitrogen, will be present in dissolved state in the oceans too. Here industrialization has not affected the ‘atmosphere’ of the ocean. This fact has to be recognized in any discussion on Global Warming.

[The percentage of various components of atmospheric air as obtained from the websites is given below:

Nitrogen 78.1

Oxygen 20.9

Argon 0.9

Neon 0.002

Helium 0.0005

Krypton 0.0001

Hydrogen 0.00005

Carbon di oxide 0.035!!!!!!!! (Poor, innocent CO2 has been maligned unnecessarily)

Methane 0.0002

Ozone 0.000004

This would suggest that the percentage of oxygen has slightly increased. If this is true it augers ill, as forest fires may become uncontrollable with increase in the level of oxygen in the coming years. Therefore, this line should be investigated separately by experts. My guess is that with unchecked use of nitrogenous fertilizers, the total bio mass in the earth could have increased. The requisite extra nitrogen must have been drawn from the atmosphere along with CO₂ releasing extra oxygen into the atmosphere as pointed out above.]

The importance of proper scientific study cannot be over emphasized. Mother Nature maintains her balance, whatever her children may do!

Population growth is such a dilemma for me… I know that if I have more kids I want to have more than one. I have had the experience of raising an only child and wouldn’t want to do it again – siblings are so important to a child’s social growth. But is it worth giving a kid a sibling if doing so could damage the planet they will have to live on after I’m gone? This is especially relevant if everyone thinks the same way and wants lots of kids too. I’m so unsure about how to move forward with that.

I found the most awesome simulation of population growth/decline, relative to CO2 emissions. Check it out at breathingearth.net.

Screenshot of the Breathing Earth simulation.

Basically, it shows how many people are dying and being born, and how much CO2 is being emitted – by country, as you watch. You can hover your mouse pointer over different countries to get statistics at the bottom left. The key at the bottom is pretty easy to follow, and there’s an explanation of where the data came from below the simulator.

This is a stupendous way to really see the impact of population growth and CO2 emissions and how they’re linked. I was surprised to find that even small, apparently eco-friendly countries (like New Zealand, for example) often have something like a birth rate double that of their death rate. And I really thought Australia was at Zero Population Growth (ZPG), but maybe stupid Costello’s 2006 census speech, imploring Australians to have more children – ‘one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country’ – has reversed that. What a twit. Alternatively, maybe I confused ZPG with a downward trending birth rate percentage – it’s still higher than the death rate, but not by as much as it was some years ago.

In fact though, I’ve been hovering over lots of countries in the simulation and Sweden is the only one I’ve found with a ZPG. I’ve found none with a negative growth. It doesn’t seem to matter if the country is rich, poor, at peace or experiencing war, which continent it’s on…

CO2 emissions are consistently high across the board as well, but of course they are higher for larger countries, and particularly larger countries in the west. Although Australia’s seems quite low, when you compare it to the population, it’s actually pretty significant.

This brings me back to the question of what to do about having more children.

• Do greenies (and ultimately everyone) have to be altruistic and give up their dreams of multi-child families? We’ve seen how that works in China, with the One-child policy. Now there are significantly more boys than girls and impacts such as decreased marriage prospects, increased crime and social difficulties are becoming obvious. I don’t think this is the best choice.
• Perhaps international adoption needs to be made easier and more socially acceptable. For example, I would love to adopt, but in Queensland, you need to have been married for at least two years to even be eligible, and since gay marriage is illegal, that’s not going to happen for me. Plus, Australia has limited adoption arrangements with other countries, and many of the countries with an abundance of orphans (such as war-torn countries) are also very conservative and against sending children home with same-sex parents. Even so, in an ideal world there would be no war, no illness and thus much fewer orphans, so ideally, this wouldn’t be a long-term solution.
• Do we need to revisit the idea of a kibbutz, so children get to grow up with ’siblings’ without the corresponding population increase? I’m not the biggest fan of the way the ‘Children’s Societies’ were managed, but some kind of communal living and financial/social equality appeals to me. A lot of eco-villages work similarly, but based on the experiences of similar living situations in the past, it seems that many of these places work well in theory but not so well in practice.

It’s not an urgent issue for me, but dudes, if you have any ideas, I’m open to suggestions.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published 150 years ago Tuesday, opened the book on our evolutionary past, which has since been traced by scientists back to fossil apes.

[Via National Geographic]

But where is evolution taking us? Will our descendants hurtle through space as relatively unchanged as the humans on the starship Enterprise? Will they be muscle-bound cyborgs? Or will they chose to digitize their consciousnesses—becoming electronic immortals?

And as odd as the possibilities may seem, it’s worth remembering that, 150 years ago, the ape-to-human scenario in On the Origin of Species struck many as nothing so much as monkey business.

(Related pictures: “Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: Six Bones of Contention.”)

PREDICTION ONE
Human Evolution Is Dead

“Because we have evolved, it’s natural to imagine we will continue to do so, but I think that’s wrong,” anthropologist Ian Tattersall of New York’s American Museum of Natural History said in an email.

“Everything we know about evolutionary change suggests that genetic innovations are only likely to become fixed in small, isolated populations,” he said. For example, Darwin’s famous Galápagos finches each evolved from their mainland ancestor to fit a unique habitat on the isolated islands in the Pacific.

(Take a Darwin quiz.)

Natural selection, as outlined in On the Origin of Species, occurs when a genetic mutation—say, resulting in a spine suited to upright walking—is passed down through generations, because it affords some benefit. Eventually the mutation becomes the norm.

But if populations aren’t isolated, crossbreeding makes it much less likely for potentially significant mutations to become established in the gene pool—and that’s exactly where we are now, Tattersall said.

“Since the advent of settled life, human populations have expanded enormously. Homo sapiens is densely packed across the Earth, and individuals are unprecedentedly mobile.

“In this situation, the fixation of any meaningful evolutionary novelties in the human population is highly improbable.” Tattersall said. “Human beings are just going to have to learn to live with themselves as they are.”

Steve Jones, a genetics professor at University College London, put forward a similar scenario during a recent lecture series marking the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species at the University of Cambridge.

The human population will become more alike as races merge, he said, but “Darwin’s machine has lost its power.”

That’s because natural selection—Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” concept—is being sidelined in humans, according to Jones.

The fittest will no longer spearhead evolutionary change, because, thanks to medical advances, the weakest also live on and pass down their genes.

When On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, only about half of British children survived to 21. Today that number has swelled to 99 percent.

In developed countries, “the fact that everybody stays alive, at least until they’re sexually mature, means ['survival of the fittest' has] got nothing to work with,” Jones said. “That part of the Darwinian fuel has gone.”

(See “Was Darwin Wrong?” from National Geographic magazine.)

PREDICTION TWO
Humans Will Continue to Evolve

Other scientists see plenty of evidence that human evolution is far from over.

For instance, a study published last month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that women of the future could become shorter and stouter.

A team led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns found that, due to ovulatory characteristics, shorter, slightly plumper women tend to have more children than their peers. These physical traits are passed on to their offspring, suggesting natural selection in humans is alive and well.

Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, believes Darwinian evolution in humans is actually speeding up. He highlighted sexual selection through mate choice as one key driver.

“You still have powerful mate choice shaping mental traits particularly … traits that are needed to succeed economically and in raising kids,” Miller said.

“We’re also going to get stronger sexual selection, because the more advanced the technology gets, the greater an effect general intelligence will have on each individual’s economic and social success, because as technology gets more complex, you need more intelligence to master it,” he said.

“That intelligence results in higher earnings, social status, and sexual attractiveness.”

Miller added that artificial selection using genetic technologies will likely accentuate these changes in the future.

“Parents could basically choose which sperm and egg get to meet up to produce a baby based on genetic information about which genes contribute to which physical and mental traits,” he said.

“If the rich and powerful keep the artificial-selection technology to themselves, then you could get that kind of split between a kind of upper-class, dominant population and a lower-class, genetically oppressed population,” he added.

“But I think it’s very likely the new genetic technologies will be widespread in their use, simply because that’s more profitable. So I think there will actually be a leveling effect, where both the poor and the rich are going to be able to have the best kids they can genetically.

“You will probably see a rise in average physical attractiveness and health,” he added. “You will probably get selection for physical traits that tend to be attractive in both males and females—things like height, muscularity, energy levels.”

But “regular” natural selection will also continue to play a major role, Miller believes.

“What you’re facing now is a global pathogen pool of viruses and bacteria that get spread around by air travel to every corner of the Earth, and that’s going to increase,” he said.

“We’re going to get a lot more epidemics,” Miller added. “That will increase the importance of the genetic immune system in human survival”—and result in a human species with stronger immune systems, he speculated.

(Meet the “other Darwin” in National Geographic magazine.)

PREDICTION THREE
Humans to Achieve Electronic Immortality

A philosophy known as transhumanism sees humans taking charge of their evolution and transcending their biological limitations via technology.

In essence, the old-fashioned evolution of On the Origin of Species may be beside the point: The future may belong to unnatural selection.

Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, said Darwinian evolution “is happening on a very slow time scale now relative to other things that are leading to changes in the human condition”—cloning, genetic enhancement, robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology, for starters.

Transhumanism raises a spectacular array of possibilities, from supersoldiers and new breeds of athletes to immortal beings who, having had their brains scanned atom by atom, transfer their minds to computers.

In addition to living forever, “uploaded” beings would be able to “travel at the speed of light as an information pattern,” download themselves into robots for the occasional stroll through the real world, think faster when running on advanced operating systems, and cut their food budget down to zero, Bostrom imagines in his paper “The Transhumanist FAQ,” available on the Humanity+ Web site.

If that were to happen, a new type of evolution would emerge, Bostrom said.

“Evolutionary selection could occur in a population of uploads or artificial intelligence just as much as it could in a population of biological organisms,” he told National Geographic News. “In fact, it might operate much faster there, because artificial intellects could reproduce much faster.”

Whereas the current human generational cycle takes some 20 years, a digitalized individual could replicate themselves in seconds or minutes, Bostrom said.

Of course copying yourself isn’t without complications, Bostrom acknowledges.

“Which one of them is you?” he writes. “Who owns your property? Who is married to your spouse?”

(Related: “Darwin Devotees Make ‘Father of Evolution’ Facebook Superstar.”)

PREDICTION FOUR
New Era of Evolution Awaits on Off-World Colonies?

“Some major new isolating mechanism” would be needed for a new human species to arise, according to John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Despite up to 30,000 years of partial isolation among populations in places such as Australia and Papua New Guinea, human speciation did not occur, he noted.

But if, in the far distant future, habitable planets beyond our solar system were colonized by Earth migrants, that could provide the necessary isolation for new human species to evolve.

“If we had spacefaring people who went on one-way voyages to distant stars, that might be enough to trigger speciation,” Hawks said.

But, he added, “if you think about it, a small group of people went on a one-way voyage to [the Americas] 14,000 years ago, and then when new people [Europeans] showed up 500 years ago, they were still the same species.”

Slashdot It!

The U.N. Population Fund reveals that true concern for humans on Earth means not producing any.

Forget about saving the environment for the sake of your children. It turns out that if you really care about the planet, you probably shouldn’t have any children to begin with.

That’s the thrust of the 2009 report from the U.N. Population Fund—the people who in 1983 handed China’s then-minister of family planning an award for the “effectiveness” of population control by forced abortion and sterilization. The Fund has long believed that more people are a burden, not a boon, to human welfare. The idea is not new, and over the centuries has taken form in the view that too many people consume too many natural resources, or that more people necessarily means more poverty, or (much more sinisterly) that people prone to having many children are somehow the wrong kind of people.

Now the Fund has gone a step further, arguing that the scourge of reproduction is not just a question of raw numbers, but that humanity itself is destructive. “No human is genuinely ‘carbon neutral,’ especially when all greenhouse gases are figured into the equation,” the report tells us in a section entitled “At the brink.” “Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution.”

That sounds like a somewhat totalitarian formulation to us, even if the Fund goes out of its way to shed its image as a eugenics-advocacy group by swapping the term “population control” for “population dynamics.” Indeed, the Fund—unusually for a U.N. organ—favors efficiency when it comes to culling our ranks, citing one finding that “dollar-for-dollar, investments in voluntary family planning and girls’ education would also in the long run reduce greenhouse-gas emissions at least as much as the same investments in nuclear or wind energy.” Even better, the report says other studies indicate that avoiding one billion new babies by 2050 would save as much energy as building two million one-megawatt wind turbines. The environmental argument extends equally to human welfare—the report notes that “the use of voluntary family planning directly decreases child mortality.”

It’s hard to argue with that logic: Eliminating life surely is the most expedient way to avoid the problems it brings. Of course this rationale ignores the possibility that one of those “prevented” lives might have been the one to cure cancer or HIV. Then again, why cure disease if human life itself is a cancer on the planet?

There are certain rhetorical advantages to the Fund’s position: The Omar Bashirs of the world, for instance, could deflect charges of genocide by claiming that they were merely looking out for the environment. One could equally make the argument that car makers should dispense with seat-belts—the better to rid the world of drivers of carbon-emitting automobiles—or that children should be encouraged to smoke from a young age, the better to shorten the years in which they too might emit untold quantities of greenhouse gas. Smoke, Die and Save the Planet—now there’s a credo for the folks in the anti-population lobby.

Editorial, Wall Street Journal

__________

Full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704204304574545323417792430.html

As judged by the balance of trade expressed in per capita terms, thus adjusting for the sheer size of each nation, the effectiveness of the United States’ trade policies ranks near the very bottom of the nations of the world.  (See U.S. Trade Policy Ranks Among World’s Worst.)  Since the near-total collapse of the global economy last year, most economists who once shrugged off the effects of global trade imbalances now admit that these imbalances were the root cause of the collapse and can’t be sustained. 

The biggest trade imbalance has been between the U.S. and the rest of the world.  In spite of the best efforts of American manufacturers to get leaner and become more competitive, the trade deficit has been worsening for decades.  It begs the question whether there are factors at work that make these trade imbalances inevitable in a free trade environment. 

In Five Short Blasts,  I used U.S. trade data to argue that disparities in population density are a major (if not dominant) factor behind the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods.  But if population density is a factor, then the same impact on trade should be evident in the trade data for all nations of the world.  Densely populated nations should tend to have trade surpluses in manufactured goods while more sparsely populated nations should tend to have trade deficits.   To test my theory on such a global scale, I’ve completed a study of trade data for all nations of the world, using trade data provided by the CIA in its World Fact Book.   I began by breaking down the trade balance into exports and imports.  The following spreadsheets rank the exports and imports of all nations* in per capita terms:

Exports Per Capita, All Nations    Imports Per Capita, All Nations

You can see that the U.S. ranks 46th out of 154 nations in terms of exports per capita, and 118th in terms of imports.  But I soon realized that the top of the exports chart and the bottom of the imports chart were dominated by wealthy, developed nations.  That’s why I included the per capita Purchasing Power Parity (PPP, roughly equivalent to per capita GDP) for each nation in the charts.  To determine whether wealth was a factor, as logic would seem to suggest, I plotted x-y scatter charts for each:

Exports vs PPP Chart    Imports vs PPP Chart

As you can see, the wealth of a nation has a powerful influence on the volume of its exports and imports.  It makes sense.  A wealthy oil-producing nation, for example, may export oil in exchange for imports of manufactured goods.  A poor nation, on the other hand, has little to sell and, thus, has little money to buy.  That’s why this effect wasn’t evident when we looked only at the overall trade balance.  A poor nation is just as likely to have a balance of trade because it has nothing to sell or buy as a wealthy nation that exports and imports a great deal while maintaining an overall balance.

Therefore, it becomes necessary to confine our analysis of trade to developed, wealthy nations in order to avoid having other influencing factors muted by the wealth effect.  So I chose to confine my analysis to those nations with purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita (roughly a measure of GDP per capita) of $25,000 or greater.  (For reference, the U.S. had PPP in 2008 of $47,500.)

The following spreadsheet ranks the balance of trade of the 31 nations with a per capita PPP greater than $25,000. 

Trade Balance Per Capita, PPP GT 25K

I included a column with each nation’s balance of trade in oil and natural gas because I noticed what seemed to be a strong correlation.  High-lighting the net oil-exporting nations in yellow, it becomes easy to see the effect.  Like the effect of wealth, the effect of oil isn’t surprising either.  Naturally, those nations that export huge volumes of oil and gas are going to have favorable trade balances.  (As an aside, I found it interesting that, among developed nations with a deficit in oil and gas, America’s deficit, when expressed in per capita terms, is rather mundane – about the same as other nations.)

Since natural resources tend to be distributed unevenly around the world, trade in resources is vital and beneficial to all.  What’s really important is how nations use trade in manufactured products to offset deficiencies in natural resources and to maintain an overall balance of trade.  Unfortunately, no data for manufactured goods is available.  (If it is, I haven’t found it.)  However, I know from my experience in analyzing U.S. trade data that oil and gas tend to dominate trade in natural resources.  Subtracting them from the overall trade balance usually yields a pretty good approximation of trade in manufactured products.  So, using the CIA’s data and subtracting oil and gas from the overall trade balance, the following is a ranking of developed nations’ balance of trade in manufactured goods:

Manf’d Good Trade Balance, PPP GT 25K

Because my goal in analyzing this global trade data for manufactured goods was to determine whether or not there is any evidence of population density having an effect, it was here that I included the population density data.  And a relationship seems to jump out at you when you compare the population density of the nations at the top of the list (those with the most favorable balance of trade in manufactured products) to those at the bottom of the list.  (Here I should note that the overall population density for this group of 31 nations combined is 30.4 people per square kilometer.  The United States is almost right on this figure, at 31.3.  But the only proper way to determine whether a relationship exists is to plot the data on an x-y scatter chart and then have the computer generate a trend line.  A flat line indicates no relationship while a sloping line indicates the presence of a relationship.  Here’s the chart:

Manf’d Goods vs Pop Density

There is a fairly strong relationship evident.  But the slope of the line is somewhat muted by the presence of what is known in statistics as an “outlier” – a data point that is so far out of the range of the other data points that it’s statistically insignificant.  In this case it’s Qatar, the world’s champ in oil exports, at least in per capita terms.  Qatar exports so much oil that it has no need whatsoever of producing anything else.  They simply kick back and enjoy the good life with a PPP that far exceeds that of any other nation, net oil exporters included.  So, if we delete that data point, the chart changes as follows:

Manf’d Goods vs Pop Density2

Now the trend line conforms more to the data.  And if we were to eliminate Ireland, the data point at the other extreme end of the scale, but not quite an outlier, it’s easy to see that the trend line would conform to the data even more closely. 

It’s also important to note that by confining this analysis to developed nations – those with per capita PPP exceeding $25,000 – I excluded the most dominant player in world trade today:  China.  If China’s data point were included, it would fall right on the trend line, with a population density of 140 people/sq km and a balance of trade in manufactured goods of $351. 

It’s impossible to overstate the significance of this relationship.  Because economists adamantly refuse to give any consideration to the role of population growth in economics, they have completely overlooked the relationship between population density and per capita consumption, and its ramifications for trade.  (To learn more about the relationship between population density and per capita consumption, see “the theory explained” category on this blog.)

Finally, it’s worth noting here that population density also plays a role in driving trade imbalances in oil.  Very densely populated nations tend to be net oil importers, forcing them to export even more manufactured goods in order to maintain a balance of trade, combining with the effect of population density on their low per capita consumption.  High oil consumption and low domestic consumption of manufactured products team up to make such nations heavily dependent on exports of manufactured products. 

Summary and conclusions:

1. The balance of trade of the U.S., a nation with a low population density relative to most other nations, ranks near the bottom of all nations.
2. Global trade is dominated by oil and gas.  Oil exporting nations use their profits to purchase other natural resources and manufactured goods.  Oil importing nations export manufactured goods to fund their purchases of oil and gas.
3. How successful a nation will be in using manufactured goods to maintain a balance of trade is heavily influenced by its population density.  The effect is real and significant. 
4. The practice of free trade between two nations grossly disparate in population density is very likely to result in a trade deficit in manufactured goods for the less densely populated nation. 
5. Failure to account for the population density effect in global trade policies will likely result in sustained trade imbalances. 

—————————————–

* Small island nations, whose economies are dominated by tourism, are excluded.  Tiny city-states are included in their surrounding or neighboring countries.  (Example:  Hong Kong is included in the data for China.)

Biopower is a term invented by the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. It refers to the regulation of subjects of any modern state, and more specifically, to our bodies subjugation through “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the control of populations”. The term first appeared in The Will to Knowledge, Foucault’s first volume of The History of Sexuality.

With the term ‘Biopower’, Foucault designates the set of mechanisms, techniques and technologies through which the basic biological features of the human species become the object of political strategies in modern Western societies.

It relates to the Government’s concern with fostering the life of the population and emphasises the protection of life rather than the threat of death, through the regulation of the body.

But this has resulted in us all being force-fed a check list of responsibilities. From improved eating habits, constant health warnings, ‘correct’ reproductive practices, to rather more ‘PC’ concepts of “family”, “blood“, and “well-being”. Apart from the fact that we might think we know what our bodies need better than the state does – there is an underlying danger in the idea of power serving the ‘protection of the collective body’.

When the state uses its power to protect the health of the population – when the stakes are life itself, anything can be justified. Groups identified as the threat to the existence of the life of the nation or of humanity can be eradicated with impunity. This is indeed a dark side to the notion that Biopower is an effective philosophy of the body.

As someone who is still learning about how my body functions most effectively, and how far I can push myself (and the consequences of burn-out) – I have acquired a better understanding in Sanjuro classes of my limitations, and how to manage my stamina, injuries and attitudes to my health, through an emphasis on the individual. Unlike the concept of Biopower, Sanjuro respects that each body, and each of our strengths and weaknesses can all be used, and can all be rendered effective and understood. We are all the sum of our parts, just as the populations ‘body’ is a constantly evolving thing, which should be not subjugated and tamed, but listened to, instead.

Most people I talk to support “sustainability” and “social justice” goals. Ecology teaches us that we need to frame these human aspirations in relation to the biological capacity of the earth: the energy, and resources that support our burgeoning populations and economies.

As human society sets out to achieve ecological sustainability and social justice on earth, we face two serious challenges: One, humanity already over-consumes the biological capacity of the planet; and secondly, humanity suffers from a vast gap between rich and poor.

Free-market fundamentalists claim we’ll close this gap, and restore the planet, by growing our economies, perhaps with “green” jobs, but this business-as-usual approach fails to account for ecological reality.

Do the Math

According to data compiled by the UN, the Global Footprint Network, and Dr. William Rees at the University of British Columbia, total human consumption already exceeds the earth’s capacity by 30 percent. This is known as biological “overshoot.” The UN estimates that most natural services to human societies – forests, fish, fresh water, and clean air – are now declining annually. As human population and consumption grow, our collective overshoot increases.

Meanwhile, the wealthy 15 percent use about 85 percent of the resources – the total energy and materials, the “stuff,” that Earth provides. The “wealthy” includes anyone who has a home, job, transport, access to education, hot showers, convenient fuel, and food every day: people in the so-called “developed” world. If you have those things, you live among the wealthy 15 percent, who use most of the world’s resources.

There is more to social change than the biophysical numbers, but any serious ecologist or justice advocate needs to know how resource overshoot limits our choices to achieve sustainability and social equality. Let’s do the math.

Nature’s rules

Start with these facts:

1. Total human consumption =

130% of Earth’s capacity

2. The rich 15% use 85% of the stuff;

while the poor 85% use 15% of the stuff

If we define the sustainable, equitable consumption per person as “1 unit” of stuff, the facts above mean that an average 100 people use 130 “units.” To be sustainable, the total consumption of 100 people needs to be 100 “units” of stuff. And to achieve social justice, each person would use 1 unit. But of course, that’s not how our world works.

Total human consumption of a 100 average people equals 130, not 100, and since the rich 15 use 85% of everything, they use 110 units (130 X 85%). The poor 85, meanwhile, use the other 20 units of stuff.

Therefore:

The average rich person uses:

110/15   =    7.333  units of stuff

The average poor person uses:

20/85    =    0.235  units of stuff

How are we doing? Not too well. The average person in the developed nations consume 30-times more than the average working poor, dispossessed, and starving multitudes. And meanwhile, we already use more energy and materials than Earth can annually supply.

So if we want a world of ecological sustainability and social justice, then we must face some difficult facts. To start with, humanity must consume less stuff.

We must reduce the total human consumption for 100 average people from 130 to 100, and then, we must share those 100 units of stuff that the earth can provide.

If we were able to achieve that, then everyone would simply use 1 “unit,” the ecologically sound, socially equitable amount of energy and materials. As we know, in our current situation, we consume more than the earth’s capacity and the rich take almost everything.

Another way to understand this is to imagine humanity as a family of seven people, that earns $100,000 per year but spends $130,000, and one member of the family alone spends $110,000. This family is going broke because one person, 15% of the family, is pigging out.

Dysfunctional? Yes.

Sustainable? No.

Reality bites

By these figures, we see that to achieve sustainability and social justice, the rich would have to consume about 1/7 of what they currently consume. If that happened, the world’s poor could increase their consumption by about 4-times.

That’s the straightforward, biological and physical reality we now face.

Under our current economic system, achieving sustainability and social justice might appear impossible. However, using less and sharing represent nothing more than common decency, the sort of behaviour we supposedly teach our children.

We hear from our alleged leaders, of course, that this is politically and logistically impractical. So, instead, we labour under the delusion that we’ll make the world “equitable” by growing all the economies until the poor, developing countries achieve greater wealth. We’ll make our economies “sustainable” by creating “green” products, hybrid cars, and renewable energy.

If the earth was an infinite storehouse and could provide infinite sinks for our garbage, that would be a reasonable plan. But the earth is not infinite. It remains unequivocally finite.

And Nature doesn’t really care about our social theories, economic presumptions, or our whining about wanting more. Humanity is now like a clever but obsessive adolescent, who must be warned: “Sorry, this will sound really annoying, but there are real limits to your freedom to consume.”

Suppose we soften the blow for the rich world, the spoiled child of humanity. We could live within the earth’s capacity if the rich simply cut their consumption in half and the poor could then double their current consumption. Here is how that would work, by the numbers:

The average rich person would use 3.67 units of stuff, instead of 7.33. And then, the average poor person could use 0.53 units of stuff (slightly more than double), instead of 0.235. This equation alone would feed the 1-billion starving, and end world hunger.

Our equation for 100 average people would then look like this:

Rich consumption:

15   X   3.67   =   55 units of stuff

Poor consumption:

85   X   0.53  =   45 units of stuff

Total  =  100 units of stuff for 100 average people.

In this scenario we would be sustainable and the world’s poor could grow their economies to the point of doubling their use of energy and resources.

If we achieved this simple change in human consumption patterns, we could exist within the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Is this difficult to imagine? Is it fair? The ratio between the average rich and poor would then be about 7-to-1, far more equitable than the current 30-to-1 ratio. To achieve this, the rich only have to give up half their consumption. That could be achieved primarily by eliminating wastefulness, planned obsolescence, plastic packaging, exotic holidays in jet airplanes, and the most wasteful of all human inventions: cars.

Growth fundamentalists will grumble at this because they imagine a world in which they can look forward to being richer, consuming more, not less. However, biophysical reality sets the limits. We do not get to rewrite the laws of biology and physics for our own convenience.

Two problems remain

Even if humanity could make this simple change – the rich cut consumption by half, the poor double their consumption, and we achieve sustainability – we still face two problems.

First of all, we currently add 75 million new people to the planet every year. What stuff are they going to use?

To live decent lives, these new humans would need the infrastructure services roughly equal to a nation such as France, Germany, or Egypt. And then again, every year.

Human population growth proves to be both an ecological and social justice issue. The planet is finite. I’m mystified that some people find this so difficult to accept. Since we have already reached biological overshoot, human population growth pushes us farther out over the cliff.

For example, we now face declining oil and fish yields, but few people realize that oil and fish yields per capita peaked in the 1970s, thirty years ago. Each day, as we add more people and degrade our ecosystem, the average human – regardless of stock market paper wealth – becomes biophysically poorer.

Like the over-spending family, having a new baby every year, and spending more, while degrading their assets, every year we have less to go around and more mouths to feed.

To achieve sustainability and social justice, we must stabilize human population. We are breaking the back of the natural world with our insistence on endless growth of both population and consumption.

Fortunately, we could stabilize human population with three simple and socially beneficial policies worldwide: Women’s rights, contraception, and education.

The second challenge we face is that we share this planet with millions of other species. These non-human earthlings possess a right to life and habitat as much as we do. Furthermore, humanity relies on the benefits of biological diversity and symbiosis within the ecosystem.

We cannot design human culture to devour every last niche of the planet, every river and forest, the last corner of the ocean and stretch of grassland. We need to preserve every acre of wilderness that still exists on the earth.

Living within Earth’s budget

Growth is not evil, it just isn’t permanent.

In nature, all growth stops. New organisms may replace the old, diversity can increase, but there exist no cases in nature of endless growth. As Dr. Albert Bartlett at the University of Colorado points out, “After maturity, continued growth is either obesity or cancer.” In a finite world, we cannot grow ourselves out of overshoot.

Years ago, Canadian master ecological logger, Merv Wilkinson, came to our small, island community in British Columbia to show us how he had managed to earn a living for over 50 years, selectively logging the forest he grew up in, and still retain a healthy forest with more standing timber than the day he started logging. As we walked through the woods, he explained the nuances of soils, natural seeding, tree growth rates, cutting rates, and selection criteria for harvest. Then, he stopped, thought for a moment, and said: “It’s simple really: Just cut below the annual growth rate.”

That is now the lesson for humanity on a global scale. We simply have to learn to live within the capacity of our single island in space, planet Earth. To achieve this, the wealthy must find peace with a lower-consumption lifestyle.

Rex Weyler

You can respond to “Deep Green” columns at my Ecology, where I post portions of this column and dialogue with readers.

Large family vs. Only Child

In the last 24 hours, I have been pondering over the idea of earth’s population, and that we are now at 6.69 billion people. Here is an article that my friend Len found about a man who is about to receive his 3rd child. He is on the “it is okay to reproduce” side of the fence.

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/files/faculty/40_sept98.html

My point of view:

I like Mankiw’s thoughts, but I think it really depends on who is born, smart person or mindless consumer? On the other hand, the mindless consumer could have been better raised, have better education, better parenting, and lived in a better educated society.

“people pay for what they consume”- the western world pays with money but we are not paying the price that the developed countries are, they pay by having to work for next to nothing and having our garbage in their backyard.

If you have thoughts, please post them, I would like to know what you think.