- The Beast Is Starved: Welcome to the Next Great Depression
Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth's life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, over-consumption and inefficient resource use. Without dealing with those big issues, humanity will need 27 planet Earths by 2050, a new study estimates.
by Stephen Leahy
Published on Thursday, August 4, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English
Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth's life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, overconsumption and inefficient resource use.
Without dealing with those big issues, humanity will need 27 planet Earths by 2050, a new study estimates.
The size and number of protected areas on land and sea has increased dramatically since the 1980s, now totaling over 100,000 in number and covering 17 million square kilometres of land and two million square kilometres of oceans, a new study reported Thursday.
Dealing with failure
But impressive as those numbers look, all indicators reveal species going extinct faster than ever before, despite all the additions of new parks, reserves and other conservation measures, according to the study published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.
"It is amazing to me that we haven't dealt with this failure of protected areas to slow biodiversity losses," said lead author Camilo Mora of University of Hawaii at Manoa.
"We were surprised the evidence from the past 30 years was so clear," Mora said.
The ability of protected areas to address the problem of biodiversity loss - the decline in diversity and numbers of all living species - has long been overestimated, the study reported. The reality is that most protected areas are not truly protected. Many are "paper parks", protected in name only. Up to 70 per cent of marine protected areas are paper parks, Mora said.
The study shows global expenditures on protected areas today are estimated at $6bn per year, and many areas are insufficiently funded for effective management. Effectively managing existing protected areas requires an estimated $24bn per year - four times the current expenditure.
False hopes
"Ongoing biodiversity loss and its consequences for humanity's welfare are of great concern and have prompted strong calls for expanding the use of protected areas as a remedy," said co-author Peter Sale, a marine biologist and assistant director of the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
"Protected areas are a false hope in terms of preventing the loss of biodiversity," Sale said.
The authors based their study on existing literature and global data on human threats and biodiversity loss.
When asked about the 2010 global biodiversity protection agreement in Nagoya, Japan to put 17 per cent of land and 10 per cent of oceans on the planet under protection by 2020, Sale said it was "very unlikely those targets will be reached" due to conflicts between growing needs for food and other resources.
"Even if those targets were achieved, it is not going to stop the decline in biodiversity," he said.
One reason for this is "leakage". Fence off one forest and the logging pressure increases in another. Make one coral reef off limits to fishing and the fishing boats go the next reef.
Another reason protected areas aren't the answer is that fences or patrol boats can't keep out the impacts of pollution or climate change.
Finally, the pressures on the planet's resources are escalating so quickly that "the problem is running away from the solution", he said.
The loss of biodiversity is a major issue because it is humanity's only life-support system, delivering everything from food, to clean water and air, to recreation and tourism, to novel chemicals that drive our advanced civilisation, said Mora. Right now the dominant strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity is with protected areas.
"That's putting all our eggs in one basket," he said. "A major shift is needed to deal with the roots of the problem."
The ever-expanding footprint of humanity is the primary cause of global biodiversity loss. When the world's population was 5bn people in 1985, the amount of nature's resources being used or impacted became more than the planet could sustain indefinitely according to many estimates, said Mora.
The world population, currently at 7 billion, is well beyond Earth's ability to sustain. By 2050, with a projected population of 10 billion people and without a change in consumption patterns, the cumulative use of natural resources will amount to the productivity of up to 27 planet Earths, the study found.
Sustaining the current 7 billion people on the planet requires a major shift in resource use. At present, the average US citizen's ecological footprint is about 10 hectares, while a Haitian's is less than one. The planet could sustain us if everyone's footprint averaged two hectares, Mora said.
If there are more people, then there are simply fewer resources available for everyone, so population control will be needed along the lines of "one child per woman", he said.
"I'm from Colombia, it blows my mind that some governments in the developing world pay women to have more children," he added.
Hardly anyone is focused on the pressing need for a major shift, said Sale.
"The awareness of the public about this is shockingly low," he noted. What is needed is for humanity as a mass to change direction, he said.
"But can we find the hook, the lever that's needed to make that happen?" Sale asked.
- Since Reagan, Republicans have been on a “starve the beast” campaign – by which they mean eviscerate the government by taking away as much revenue as they can.Starving the beast has been the biggest bait and switch con game that has ever been perpetrated on the American people. And the most tragic.
As Paul Krugman pointed out, Republicans offered popular tax cuts so that they could later cut popular government programs “as a necessity.” Oh, we’d love to continue providing low cost, effective medical care under Medicare, but you see, the country just can’t afford it … Of course we can’t. Billionaire hedge fund managers and Wall Street traders pay less in taxes than their secretaries. And most corporations pay little or no taxes.
Starve the Beast was coupled with a clever campaign to make government appear to be a collection of bumbling bureaucrats who wasted tax money for pure pleasure. Long after it became politically impossible to stereotype racial and ethnic groups (with the possible exceptions of Muslims) it was – and is – quite acceptable to characterize government workers as shiftless, lazy and incompetent.
As a result, once the Republicans succeeded in cutting government revenue to the bone and beyond, it became impossible to raise taxes – who wants to give any more of their hard earned money to a bunch of lazy bureaucrats?
Never mind that most big government programs are far more efficient than their private sector equivalents. That’s a mere fact.
- Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.
- In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
- When Texas [Republican] Governor [and Republican presidential candidate] Rick Perry and the ultraconservative American Family Association announced a massive prayer rally, The Response, with the help of figures from the International House of Prayer and right-wing pastors Jim Garlow and John Hagee, the governor’s office denied that their ultraconservative views would be incorporated into the August 6th event. The governor’s spokesperson said that Perry’s “priority with this event is bringing people together.”
- But during an interview with the AFA’s American Family Radio, The Response spokesman Eric Bearse said that the main objective of the prayer rally was to bring people to Christianity. Bearse, who was previously Rick Perry’s Director of Communications, claimed that people “regardless of their faith tradition or background” are invited to The Response to “seek out the living Christ” and feel the presence of Jesus:
- As a native Texan, I’m used to crazy religion and crazy politics. So, the announcement of [Republican] Governor [and presidential candidate] Rick Perry’s plans for “The Response,” a prayer event scheduled for Aug. 6 at Houston’s Reliant Stadium, was not a surprise. [Perry panned this event as a way to ask god for help in the challenges we face, rather than actually deal with the facts that are causing those challenges,; like republican policy ruining the economy, or use of fossil fuels wreaking havoc on our environment, etc.]
- But as a Presbyterian minister and community organizer, it’s part of my job to stand up for my neighbors. The use of the governor’s office to promote one religion in a country with such rich religious diversity is obviously unhealthy politics, but -- if one takes the Christian and Jewish scriptures seriously -- it is also unhealthy religion. Here are five rather important verses of scripture you aren’t likely to hear at “The Response”:
- We have been following the progress of Rick Perry’s prayer orgy in Houston on August 6, and as we last reported, even though a court dismissed the case against Perry’s attendance, only 6-8,000 had RSVPd to attend (the 8,000 figure appears more accurate), along with only one governor, Sam Brownback of Kansas. Now it appears even Brownback is hedging his bets, says Kansas’s Lawrence Journal-World...
- News reporting has to be a public service. Just as no public deserves a state-controlled media in the hands of a totalitarian government, no public deserves media outlets that are the clandestine tools of a king-making billionaire.
- More than 70 people in 26 states have fallen ill, and a Californian has died. Officials say the strain of salmonella is resistant to drugs.
- No state in the union was safe from July's blistering heat wave, according to data from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center.
- The horrible July heat wave, lasting weeks in some cities, the entire month in others, affected nearly 200 million people in the United States at some point. Preliminary data show that 2,712 high-temperature records were either tied or broken in July, compared with 1,444 last year, according to the NCDC. At least one weather station in all 50 states set or tied a daily high temperature record at some point during July.
- The National Weather Service has issued excessive heat warnings for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa and Arizona. Heat advisories were issued for an additional seven surrounding states.
- Whoah. The right has responded with historically incoherent hysteria to a federal move to accept a recommendation from the non-partisan Institute of Medicine that health insurance cover contraception costs, calling it "good medicine, good public policy and good fiscal policy." You'd think they'd approve of something that would likely reduce abortion, the ultimate evil in their eyes. Then again, that position requires logic. Instead, they have ranted that comprehensive contraception coverage is a plot by the left to "eradicate the poor," that it constitutes "messing with God," that women who get pregnant are drunk so won't use it anyway, and that birth control is a "profoundly immoral" part of Obama's culture of death" that will lead inexorably to "a pagan society." We can't wait. Remarkable video of lunatic rhetoric, including Rep. Steve King sputtering that preventative medicine really means preventing a generation - like, us! - which means that even as we speak we're "a dying civilization." The fact that King has access to and is part of our daily political discourse suggests he may be onto something.
- President Obama signed legislation on Tuesday that raises the nation's debt ceiling and cuts trillions of dollars in spending. Keith speaks with former Vice President and Current TV Chairman Al Gore about what's next for the country.
- President Obama signed legislation on Tuesday that raises the nation's debt ceiling and cuts trillions of dollars in spending. Keith speaks with former Vice President and Current TV Chairman Al Gore about what's next for the country.
Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth's life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, over-consumption and inefficient resource use. Without dealing with those big issues, humanity will need 27 planet Earths by 2050, a new study estimates.
by Stephen Leahy
Published on Thursday, August 4, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English
Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth's life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, overconsumption and inefficient resource use.
Without dealing with those big issues, humanity will need 27 planet Earths by 2050, a new study estimates.
The size and number of protected areas on land and sea has increased dramatically since the 1980s, now totaling over 100,000 in number and covering 17 million square kilometres of land and two million square kilometres of oceans, a new study reported Thursday.
Dealing with failure
But impressive as those numbers look, all indicators reveal species going extinct faster than ever before, despite all the additions of new parks, reserves and other conservation measures, according to the study published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.
"It is amazing to me that we haven't dealt with this failure of protected areas to slow biodiversity losses," said lead author Camilo Mora of University of Hawaii at Manoa.
"We were surprised the evidence from the past 30 years was so clear," Mora said.
The ability of protected areas to address the problem of biodiversity loss - the decline in diversity and numbers of all living species - has long been overestimated, the study reported. The reality is that most protected areas are not truly protected. Many are "paper parks", protected in name only. Up to 70 per cent of marine protected areas are paper parks, Mora said.
The study shows global expenditures on protected areas today are estimated at $6bn per year, and many areas are insufficiently funded for effective management. Effectively managing existing protected areas requires an estimated $24bn per year - four times the current expenditure.
False hopes
"Ongoing biodiversity loss and its consequences for humanity's welfare are of great concern and have prompted strong calls for expanding the use of protected areas as a remedy," said co-author Peter Sale, a marine biologist and assistant director of the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
"Protected areas are a false hope in terms of preventing the loss of biodiversity," Sale said.
The authors based their study on existing literature and global data on human threats and biodiversity loss.
When asked about the 2010 global biodiversity protection agreement in Nagoya, Japan to put 17 per cent of land and 10 per cent of oceans on the planet under protection by 2020, Sale said it was "very unlikely those targets will be reached" due to conflicts between growing needs for food and other resources.
"Even if those targets were achieved, it is not going to stop the decline in biodiversity," he said.
One reason for this is "leakage". Fence off one forest and the logging pressure increases in another. Make one coral reef off limits to fishing and the fishing boats go the next reef.
Another reason protected areas aren't the answer is that fences or patrol boats can't keep out the impacts of pollution or climate change.
Finally, the pressures on the planet's resources are escalating so quickly that "the problem is running away from the solution", he said.
The loss of biodiversity is a major issue because it is humanity's only life-support system, delivering everything from food, to clean water and air, to recreation and tourism, to novel chemicals that drive our advanced civilisation, said Mora. Right now the dominant strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity is with protected areas.
"That's putting all our eggs in one basket," he said. "A major shift is needed to deal with the roots of the problem."
The ever-expanding footprint of humanity is the primary cause of global biodiversity loss. When the world's population was 5bn people in 1985, the amount of nature's resources being used or impacted became more than the planet could sustain indefinitely according to many estimates, said Mora.
The world population, currently at 7 billion, is well beyond Earth's ability to sustain. By 2050, with a projected population of 10 billion people and without a change in consumption patterns, the cumulative use of natural resources will amount to the productivity of up to 27 planet Earths, the study found.
Sustaining the current 7 billion people on the planet requires a major shift in resource use. At present, the average US citizen's ecological footprint is about 10 hectares, while a Haitian's is less than one. The planet could sustain us if everyone's footprint averaged two hectares, Mora said.
If there are more people, then there are simply fewer resources available for everyone, so population control will be needed along the lines of "one child per woman", he said.
"I'm from Colombia, it blows my mind that some governments in the developing world pay women to have more children," he added.
Hardly anyone is focused on the pressing need for a major shift, said Sale.
"The awareness of the public about this is shockingly low," he noted. What is needed is for humanity as a mass to change direction, he said.
"But can we find the hook, the lever that's needed to make that happen?" Sale asked.
Sean
