Economic and environmental catastrophes unavoidable unless rich countries cut consumption and global population stabilises. World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid “a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills”, warns a major report from the Royal Society.--John Vidal,
The Guardian, 26 April 2012
A United Nations meeting on the environment opened Monday with an official forecast that the world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now. Lack of such action would bring "by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust" --
Ecological Disaster Feared, Reuters, 11 May 1982.
African leaders have expressed concern about European efforts to seek binding targets on sustainable development, fearing brakes would be applied to their economies by rich countries. --
Euractiv, 25 April 2012
The Royal Society has embraced Malthus, just as it has embraced the malthusians. And in doing so, the Royal Society abandons its claim to be a scientific authority. It has embraced a particular ideology… a nasty, anti-human perspective on the world. The object of its ‘science’ is now the human world, and control over it. Science has nothing to say about the rights and wrongs of inequality, the rights of women, and the material entitlements of people. And only a fool could think that science could make such an argument. The plight of poor people, and people who live without the freedom to determine their own future are not the concern of people who hide their politics behind ‘science’. In their narrative, the Royal Society make instrumental use of the poor, to make a political argument for their own ends. Just as Malthus did. --Ben Pile,
Climate Resistance, 26 April 2012
John Sulston's committee argues that the more people there are and the richer they are, the more resources they consume. True. But it does not follow that the damage they do to the planet is greater. In important ways it gets less. Why are many ecological and conservation problems worst in poor countries? Haiti is 98% deforested, and parts of Africa are seeing the devastation of wildlife populations, whereas in Europe and North America, forests cover is increasing, rivers and lakes are getting cleaner and deer numbers are rising... Above all, economic growth leads to a more sparing use of the most important of all resources - land. --Matt Ridley,
The Guardian, 26 April 2012
Around the world, the population control movement has resulted in billions of lost or ruined lives. We cannot stop at merely rebutting the pseudoscience and recounting the crimes of the population controllers. We must also expose and confront the underlying antihumanist ideology. If the idea is accepted that the world’s resources are fixed with only so much to go around, then each new life is unwelcome, each unregulated act or thought is a menace, every person is fundamentally the enemy of every other person, and each race or nation is the enemy of every other race or nation. The ultimate outcome of such a worldview can only be enforced stagnation, tyranny, war, and genocide. The horrific crimes advocated or perpetrated by antihumanism’s devotees over the past two centuries prove this conclusively. Only in a world of unlimited resources can all men be brothers. --Robert Zubrin,
The New Atlantis, Spring 2012
Twenty years ago, the Earth Summit in Rio resulted in a Convention on Biological Diversity, now signed by 193 nations, to prevent species loss. But can we tell how many species are becoming extinct? One statement on the Convention's website claims: "We are indeed experiencing the greatest wave of extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Every hour three species disappear. Every day up to 150 species are lost." It is possible to count the number of species known to be extinct. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) does just that. It has listed 801 animal and plant species (mostly animal) known to have gone extinct since 1500. According to IUCN data only one animal has been definitely identified as having gone extinct since 2000. It was a mollusc. --Richard Knight,
BBC News, 25 April 2012
Mining asteroids may sound like one of those ideas guaranteed not to get off the ground anytime soon, but Eric Anderson and his comrades say they have detailed plans, and deep pockets as well. What's more, Anderson and his founding partner, Peter Diamandis, have a track record. "Everything we hold of value on Earth -- metals, minerals, energy, water, real estate -- are literally in near-infinite quantities in space," said Diamandis. --
ABC News, 24 April 2012
