August 13th was Earth Overshoot Day. The correct date, if calculated precisely, would come earlier and earlier each year, the current choice is just an approximation.
This year, the year 2015, by sometime around August 13th, humanity had consumed as much of what we require from the lands and seas as our planet can sustainabley provide in an entire year. That is another way of expressing the fact that at current consumption rates, humanity requires 1.6 planet earth's worth of fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood and other organic materials. It is a remarkable annual deficit, and if it is not reduced to zero, we will simply run out of things vital to our survival. That is the simple arithmetic of "unsustainable".
But what does "unsustainable" look like?
Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot by Tom Butler, William Ryerson, et al (Goff Books, March 2015)
One of the (very few) perks of blogging is the occasional free book offer that comes to my inbox. I don't often take advantage of them mostly just because of personal disinterest in whatever specific topic is at hand. Out of those offers that are interesting to me, I have to be realistic about what I am going to have time to read. An offer came to me a while ago that finally ticked those boxes. It was about an interesting, if bleak, subject: the mark humans have made on this planet through overpopulation and over consumption, and it was promising to be readable without a large time commitment since it was primarily a book of photography. I'm talking about the extraordinary book, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot by Tom Butler, William Ryerson, et al published by Goff Books, March 2015.
Because of this promotional book, I can show you, in the most graphic manner you might want, the answer to my rhetorical question above: what does unsustainable look like? The book is filled with high quality images from around the world. Images "framed with essays by renowned women’s rights, population and conservation experts," images that illuminate "the depth of the damage that human numbers and behavior have caused to the Earth — and which threaten humanity’s future prosperity."* Some of these images are awe-inspiring, some rather horrifying, but almost all of them are disturbingly compelling. Below are some examples reproduced here with permission of the publisher. I recommend buying the book and seeing them all.
Images are linked to higher resolution versions, please click.
Air pollution, C02, and water vapor rise from the stacks at a coal-burning power plant in the U.K.; © Jason Hawkes.
Tar sands-related tailings ponds are among the largest toxic impoundments on Earth and lie in unlined dykes mere meters from the Athabasca River; indigenous communities downstream are fearful of being poisoned by toxic seepage into the food chain. Alberta, Canada; © Garth Lentz.
Trucks the size of a house look like tiny toys as they rumble along massive roads in a section of a mine. The largest of their kind, these 400 ton capacity dump trucks are 47.5" long, 32.5" wide, and 25" high. Within their dimensions you could build a 3000 square foot home. The scale of the Tar Sands is truly unfathomable. Alberta Energy has reported that the landscape being industrialized by rapid Tar Sands development could easily accommodate one Florida, two New Brunswicks, four Vancouvers, and four Vancouver Islands.
On Midway Island, far from the centers of world commerce, an albatross, dead from ingesting too much plastic, decays on the beach; it is a common sight on the remote island. © Chris Jordan.
Indonesian surfer Dede Surinaya catches a wave in a remote but garbage-covered bay on Java, Indonesia, the world’s most populated island; © Zak Noyle.
Sprawling Mexico City, Mexico, population 20 million, density 24,600/square mile (9,610/square kilometer), rolls across the landscape, displacing every scrap of natural habitat; © Pablo Lopez Luz.
“American suburbia represents the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. the far-flung housing subdivisions, commercial highway strips, big-box stores, and all the other furnishings and accessories of extreme car dependence will function poorly, if at all, in an oil-scarce future.” —James Howard KunstlerLos Angeles, California, population 15 million typifies America’s consumption-oriented and car-dependent culture; © Mike Hedge.
Suburban Sprawl: “Human agriculture and industry are embedded in and supported by the natural ecosystems of earth.... Yet modern societies heedlessly displace, poison, overharvest, and directly assault natural ecosystems with little thought for their importance in their own sustenance.” —Paul and Anne Ehrlich aerial view of landscape outside Miami, Florida, shows 13 golf courses amongst track homes on the edge of the Everglades; Google Earth/NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO.
To give a better sense of what you are looking at just above, right below is a full resolution enlargement of a small section from the center of this image:
Detail from Suburban Sprawl: Google Earth/NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO.
Delhi Grid: “Humans evolved in wild nature. Only relatively recently in our time on Earth, roughly ten to twelve millennia ago, did we begin to domesticate other species—and ourselves. That first agricultural revolution set humanity on a trajectory of population growth and settlement-based land use. Increased social organization and the invention of cities went hand in hand to allow development of increasingly complex economic and political systems. In 2008, for the first time in history, the majority of humans on Earth lived in cities. We had become, at least superficially, urban animals.”Aerial view of New Delhi, India, population 22 million, density 30,000 per square mile (11,700/km2); Google Earth/2014 Digital Globe.
As with the image of Florida, below is a full-resolution enlargement of a small section from the center-bottom portion of the New Delhi image above:
Delhi Grid: Detail from center, bottom of Aerial view of New Delhi, India, population 22 million, density 30,000 per square mile (77,700/km2); Google Earth/2014 Digital Globe.
Megalopolis: Shanghai, China, a sprawling megacity of 24 Million; © Mike Hedge.
“I don’t understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it progress.” —Ed Begley, Jr.Depleting oil fields are yet another symptom of ecological overshoot; Kern River Oil Field, California, U.S.; © Mark Gamba/Corbis.
Cattle gather near a watering pond as fires set to clear and rejuvenate the land burn on a ranch in Sao Felix Do Xingu Municipality, Para State, Brazil, Aug. 12, 2008.Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace
Cattle ranch in Agua Boa, Mato Grosso, Brazil, August 8, 2008.Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace
Desolate landscape of working oil pumps on the Kern River Oil Field --- Image by © Mark Gamba/Gallery Stock/Galeries/Corbis
Sometimes called the Brazil of the North, Canada has not been kind to its native forests. Image of clear-cut logging on Vancouver Island, © Garth Lentz.
Views of the PSA container port in Singapore, the world's largest and busiest port in the world.
* Quotes borrowed from some of the promotional materials that came with the book offer.
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apropos?
for our sons and daughters too
when all of what we are today
is dim dim distant past
a racial memory mostly myth
known to the shaman caste
i wonder what they'll think of us
when sitting by the fire
and hearing of the things we did
like gods but so much higher
"the great great gods of long ago
they walked upon the moon
they drank the very blood of earth
from death they were immune"
"they did not walk upon the ground
but through the air they flew
and everything there is to know
the ancient gods they knew"
i guess the stories that they tell
the children will devour
they'll dream that they were just like us
and had enormous power
i doubt they could imagine though
the real truth to tell
of how we raped their planet
and we made our lives a hell
they'll never know the polar bear
the tiger or the crane
and countless other creatures
to which we were the bane
they'll also never know the stars
because we stole their chance
because we'd rather party on
and live upon advance
oh what a sad sad species
we "gods" of planet earth
we stupid kings of overshoot
what really are we worth?
just look around at what you see
and ask yourself "where now?"
and if you have an answer
it better tell you how
'cause i can't see a future
that is anything but grim
and even bare survival chances
often seem so slim
i hope that future stories
are told around the fire
that kids enjoy just living
and old folk just retire
i hope we're not the last of us
i really really do
i hope that there's a future
for our sons and daughters too
These shots are crazy good
At some point we have to face up to this:
Overpopulation.
Regardless of "American lifestyle," every human needs X liters of water per day, Y calories per day, and Z square feet of space to sleep in, as well as Q amount of sewage to be disposed, and R amount of space in common rights-of-way to enable movement from one place to another. And, density beyond a certain point produces breakdown in public health leading to deadly disease outbreaks.
The two most important causal factors for lower birth rates are female equality and economic security. Both of these can, should, and must be made non-negotiable demands in all international treaties, trade agreements, and disaster interventions.
Actually, unless you're going to kill people off, birthrate reduction will take several generations to show an effect. China has just such a policy and it's taken 70 years for it to show results.
Meanwhile, that elephant in the room is burning fossil fuels. Stopping is doable and will have an effect on how much CO2 is being added as soon as the reductions are done and to the level at which those reductions are done.
Changing the number of babies being born will have no effect unless you kill the ones currently alive.
IOW: a 100% reduction in the number of babies being born will reduce the CO2 output at the rate at which people die off,which is a hell of a lot lower than 100% of the population annually.
But population means that you, in the first world, where population is already even or on a slight decline, won't have to change, whereas the third world, who are still rising, even if that rate is falling, will be to blame for not changing.
THAT is the sole and only reason for this "population scare" being touted.
WoW - serious question:
How can we deal with populations whose leaders (in most cases "the rich") have determined that growth of wealth means growth of population until the nation's resource limits are reached? What happens when those impoverished masses see emigration as their only hope? I see this as the root of the refugee problem Australia faces, and to some extent, the refugee problem faced by the EU, even if war is the proximal cause. I know this is kind of simplistic, but there you are.
Greg, NONE of that has anything to do with "population growth/size".
Currently we have more than enough to feed everyone. INDIA produces more food than they need, including their export goods. Starvation isn't from food or resource shortage but from a complete failure to send those resources where they need.
And, no impoverished immigrants coming over and stealing everything not nailed down is as fabricated a tale as any you'd get from the rag media.
"What do we do about it" has bugger all to do with anything about global overshoot day. And will never be solved by two buggers yakking on an obscure blog infested by a twat of an 8 year old.
GregG as well as wow: you both failed to illuminate your very personal opinions with the hypothesis of Earth overshoot day. Even worse, you two failed to match your very personal opinions of the refugee 'problem' (why the fuck "problem"??) with the second main hyopthesis that every "problem" today has at least some relationship to the hypothesis of "climate change".
I predict that you two will fuckingly fail to relate your very personal fucking opinions to the two hypotheses mentioned, as you are used to logical fallacies and ideological inconsequencies.
Wasn't August 13th colese to the 45th anniversary of John Ehrlich predicting the world would run out of natural gas 25 years ago.?
Picture , please.
No.
"Even worse, you two failed to match your very personal opinions of the refugee ‘problem’ (why the fuck “problem”??) "
Syria.
Emnestheus. It is Paul Ehrlich you idiot. He wrote: The Population Bomb in 1968
So what are we doing about unsustainable population growth?
Where is the agitation for population control in places that have excessive growth and population reduction for places that have insufficient resources for the population already there?
It's all very well moaning about resource utilisation, but you need to address the cause: populations that can't support themselves.
freddy thinks refugees don't represent a "problem".
Lunatic thinking.
Most conflicts get framed around some sort of ideology, but at their heart they are about resources; food, water, land, cattle, oil, whatever. And competition for those resources arises from population pressures.
And winners imply losers. Losers suffer, die, and/or are driven off and become another land's "invaders"
It's been happening for tens of thousands of years: invaders from the East move West. The Celts, the Mongols, Germans, Magyars, etc... victims begetting more victims.
Syria's population expanded 5-fold in the space of about 50 years, with the predictable implosion we are now seeing.
Yemen's population has followed an even more dramatic trajectory: the median age in that part of the world is now under *19*.
*That* is a problem.
"Where is the agitation for population control in places that have excessive growth"
It's a far less effective way of controlling CO2 than cutting back on it.
Unless you're going to control growth by killing people by the millions.
If population density is a problem, then there are names much higher on the list:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?order=wbapi_data_value_…
Given most have population controls in place, what do you suggest to stop them becoming a Syria? Culling of the excess population?
wowtroll, once and for all, when are you willing to confess under which sock puppet names you constantly cheat and deceive the public? Be honest, troll!
Coby, please tell the thread and boris/kai/freddy here who has been posting under sock puppets and pretending he wasn't.
And feel free to confirm his accusation is a lie here.
freddy, you are the one caught using a sockpuppet on this blog. Any further denials or deflections of that will be deleted.
"Wow
October 29, 2015
If population density is a problem"
That would not be a sensible way of looking at it - difference climates and different geographies have different population-carrying capacities.
Singapore is dense, but has a well-ordered society.
Yemen is not so dense, and has a disordered society which has now resulted in utter chaos.
Places like Yemen need to be depopulated one way or another. Leave it to natural forces and the depopulation will be far less kind than, eg, China's extremely successful planned strategy which has arrested growth and would - if they so chose - in future lead to depopulation.
A 1-child policy enforced on the entire middle-east and India would be excellent.
"That would not be a sensible way of looking at it "
Why? Because it doesn't fit your desired outcome?
You need food. Food requires land.
You need a home. Homes require land.
You need water. Water requires treatment on land.
A million people in the USA is unpopulated.
A million people in the Vatican state is crowded.
Population density is precisely the way to look at it.
Unless you want to use the unoccupied third world land to grow your food, while they cut their population so you can keep running your car and blaming them for AGW... Then it kinda sucks.
"Places like Yemen need to be depopulated one way or another."
Woah.
"You need food. Food requires land.
...
You need water. Water requires treatment on land."
I think you've somewhat missed the point - different geographies and climates allow different population-carrying capacities for the very reason that differing amounts of water are available per km2 and food production is similarly variable per km2.
So population density is not a metric that tells you whether a place is over-populated or not.
Syria has recently been significantly depopulated - you tell me: do you think a planned depopulation might not have been a whole lot better than sitting back and allowing climate change, civil war, and a take-over by mass-murdering religious fanatics to carry it out?
"I think you’ve somewhat missed the point "
Nope.
I think you did.
Land. Per person. It's not just a luxury, it's a necessity. Drink seawater if you like, but you'll find it unpleasant for a while. And the plants won't like you much either.
"So population density is not a metric that tells you whether a place is over-populated or not"
The total count is far worse.
"Syria has recently been significantly depopulated"
Yeah. So what.
wowbrat, again you present your poor education “drink seawater”: drink it yourself, moron and see how you die quickly. You are a catastrophe, as you are not even aware, that before the 1950s the were no temperature records of whole antarctica, therefore a calcaulation of a fucking global temperature was NO GLOBAL TEMPERATURE!!!! Can you give the audience here a hint, when you will be willing to wash your brain with some reasonable insights instead of your deplorable blather. Why the fuck are you so stubborn!!!!!!
wowtroll, when are willing to face your next lesson: refugees from Syria are NOT climate change victims! Accept this, understood. You should defeat your ideologies in your parallel universe and face the world as is.
In addition I want to know from you how many days of climate change tourism you will spend in Paris to get frozen arms and hindlegs to acclaim COP21 amidst your pagan warming acolytes. Confess now!
"wowbrat,"
Booorrrriiiinnnnggggg.
"wowtroll, when are willing to face your next lesson:"
What lesson?
" refugees from Syria are NOT climate change victims!"
Yes they are.
So were Mt Fleming used in the climate trend calculation?
You have avoided that question for weeks now.
He freddykaiboristroll, how many days did you spend over in Paris before you started killing people to shut down the COP talks?
wowbrat, why the fuck are you fighting against moslems?
It is very easy to demonstrate the low level of education and information of 5th row peripheral and totally irrelevant climate warming blatherers like wowbrat etc., as they cannot answer even very simple questions on climate science, e.g.: wowbrat, explain to the audience here, how much the altimetry measurement satellites fall down to earth within 2 weeks.
I predict that you are totally unable to answer even such a primitive question. Try to save your face, troll.
Listen, wowtroll, what disappoints me most about your intellectual posture is that your brain performance level is even lower than that of most teabaggers. Most of the teabaggers know that no correct global temperature can be calculated for the years 1850 to 1900, but YOU don't.
"wowbrat, why the fuck are you fighting against moslems?"
Freddiekaitrollbot, why are you pretending to be a muslin just so you can bomb people who want to stop AGW from getting worse?
"as they cannot answer even very simple questions on climate science, "
I did.
YOU however, are a lying sack of crap and don't care or know better.
"Most of the teabaggers ignorantly insist that no correct global temperature can be calculated for the years 1850 to 1900, but YOU don’t."
FTFY, dearie.
You see you teabaggers live in a fantasy world. I live in the real one where you CAN calculate a "correct global temperature".
I also know that your claims are bullshit because warming doesn't require a "correct global temperature" but a consistent measurement of the temperature around the globe that is done as time passes so you can see the CHANGE in global temperatures.
But you're a moron and a retard as well as insane, and do not know or care to accept reality.
"I predict that you are totally unable to answer even such a primitive question."
Wow us with an answer, oh full-of-shit one.
I predict you cannot.
wowtroll, you were given a very simple question: "wowbrat, explain to the audience here, how much the altimetry measurement satellites fall down to earth within 2 weeks"
and as predicted you were again totally unable to answer that very simple question. You will be given now a second chance to demonstrate your stupidity and I predict, that you will again be far too stupid to find the correct answer. Try it troll, and show the audience what an idiot you are, you lying sack of a teabagger.
Get that ballsack out of your mouth, you cretin.
Wow, people get really rude on this blog. Is that really necessary? Great photos.
it's about as neccesary as that post was, Relayer.