Secular Café: Ten Billion

Secular Café For serious discussion of politics, political news, policy, political theory and economics and events happening round the world

Ten Billion Aug 5th 2012, 01:31 Quote: This is one of the most disturbing evenings I have ever spent in a theatre. Stephen Emmott, an acclaimed scientist, stands in a re-creation of his cluttered Cambridge office and delivers, under Katie Mitchell's astute direction, an illustrated 60-minute talk on the consequences of over-population. He tells us that we are facing "an unprecedented planetary emergency" and, under his calm exterior, you sense a concealed fury at our failure to address the crisis. Emmott uses an array of statistics to reinforce his argument that the current global population of seven billion will grow to 10 billion, maybe more, by the end of the century and that is unsustainable. We are facing a crisis with ecosystems being destroyed, the atmosphere polluted, temperatures rising and a billion people facing water shortage. "Things," Emmott sombrely reminds us, "will only get worse" as the demand for food doubles by 2050, climate change intensifies and the transport system that sustains our needs grows. Describing himself as "a rational pessimist", Emmott says there are two solutions. We can "technologise" our way out of trouble, through building things like solar shields, or we can change our behaviour – by consuming "less food, less energy, less stuff". Emmott sees little chance of this happening. I think he is too scornful of energy-saving gestures. He tells us he's fed up with reading about celebrities giving up 4x4s in favour of an energy-saving car and says it's not going to affect the world's water supply if we wee in the shower rather than the loo. But at least every little helps. Cont... http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012...ew-royal-court Quote: snip--- Taken singly, few of these facts would be new to even the most casual Monbiot reader or the least faithful friend of the Earth, but their accumulation and the connections between them are terrifying. Rarely can a lay audience have heard their implications spelled out so clearly and informally: a global population that was 1 billion in 1800 and 4 billion in 1980 will probably have grown to 10 billion by the end of this century; the demand for food will have doubled by 2050; food production already accounts for 30% of greenhouse gases – more than manufacturing or transport; more food needs more land, especially when the food is meat; more fields mean fewer forests, which means even more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which means an even less stable climate, which means less reliable agriculture – witness the present grain crisis in the US. On and on he goes, remorselessly. It takes 3,000 litres of water to make a burger and the UK eats 10bn burgers a year. A world population of 10 billion will need 960 new dams, each of them the size of the world's largest in China's Three Gorges, plus 15,000 nuclear power stations and/or (my note-taking in the dark isn't up to his speed) 11m wind farms. The great objective of intergovernmental action, such as it is, has been to restrict the rise in average global temperature to no more than 2C, but a growing body of research suggests a warming by 6C is becoming more and more likely. In which case, Emmott says, the world will become "a complete hellhole" riven by conflict, famine, flood and drought. Go to a climate change conference these days, he says, and as well as all the traditional attendees there will usually be a small detachment of the forward-looking military. cont.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...on-ten-billion Over Population, Global Warming, Peak Oil... Not looking good, is it?

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