Dear Friends, this is a little summary of the current state of the planet that Ive compiled for my political project The Greater Earth Movement. I know the text is long, but I think it is worth spending a little bit of your time on it, because it affects you and will affect you and everyone around you even more if you choose to close your eyes to it. At the end there is a summary of the ideas of the movement. Ive also published the page for the movement for you to follow. THE HUMAN POPULATION Starvation is now past a billion people according to Oxfam, and an estimated 6 million children could be saved from easily preventable diseases each year for a negligible cost. This equals the reported numbers of the Jewish holocaust of the Second World War and it can easily be stopped, if the current monetary system controlled by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is replaced. This debt and interest based system rewards selfishness and withholding cures for economic profit, and has created a world where the worlds 85 richest persons hold more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion. “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” – Nelson Mandela The human population was pedagogically compared by Jared Diamond to bacteria in a Petri dish. A bacterial culture can live in great prosperity for a short time by consuming at a greater rate than the nutrition can be replenished, but ultimately it will lead to a collapse when the nutrition descends to lower levels than what is needed to sustain the culture. In the bacterial world it leads to the death of the bacteria. For us, starvation and conflicts for resources will be a natural symptom. When we find a natural resource it is already at a certain level, and then it might appear as if there is a lot for all, and in the beginning there is, but the key is to investigate at which rate it regenerates and adapt to the that level or find a new source that meets the same needs before the first one runs out, or we’ll face the same destiny as the Easter Islanders. Today we need 1.5 Earth to support our current way of life and if we keep on business as usual we’ll probably need 2 by the year 2030 and 3 by 2050 – So we’re already living beyond the means of our environment to sustain us, and thus we’re heading for collapse, and thus immediate action must be taken. The WWF Living Planet Report shows that if everyone in the world lived like the average citizen of the European Union, the equivalent of 2.8 Earths would be required to keep up with current natural resource depletion rates and carbon dioxide emissions. In a BBC Horizon documentary Sir David Attenborough mentions that If we had an impact on the environment such as the Indians the Earth could support a population of 15 billion, 18 billion if we lived as in Rwanda. 2,2 as in Britain 1,5 billion population if all lived as they do in the US. He also mentions that there are 3 ways to change this trend; 1. Consume less 2. Technology 3. Limit population We probably need to do all three. THREAT OF EXTINCTION A third of the worlds amphibians, a fifth of all mammals and 70% of all plants are currently under threat of extinction. By 2030 the lions may be gone. OCEAN LIFE Literally the oceans are the support system for all life on earth. In the oceans we have depleted fish stocks massively. 10 % of the worlds coral reefs are estimated to be degraded beyond recovery. WWF estimates that if nothing is done 60% of the world’s coral reefs will be lost by 2033. CO2 increases acidity in water affects carbonate which corals need to create skeletons. Acidification is the greatest threat facing oceans today. Even if we stopped our carbon emissions now it would be many centuries before the oceans returned to full health. A 2003 CENSUS of marine life in the Science Newspaper NATURE report says that in little over 50 years, 90% of top predators such as tuna, shark and marlin had been fished from the sea. CENSUS of marine life predicts that If present trends continue commercial fishing as we know it will have collapsed by the year 2050. The CENSUS reported in 2010 that there was still hope of ensuring the survival of the marine eco-system. If we are to save the commercially important species of fish that are currently under the threat of extinction we must act with the data we now have. Do nothing and the implications are inevitable the loss of dozens of species of marine fish around the world. BOTTOM LINE: We cannot afford to lose the oceans. FORESTS Forests cover 31% of the land area on our planet. They produce vital oxygen, soak up CO2 and provide homes for people and wildlife. Many of the world’s most threatened and endangered animals live in forests, and 1.6 billion people rely on benefits forests offer, including food, fresh water, clothing, traditional medicine and shelter. Yet we seem delightfully ignorant to their destruction since between 119-150 thousand square kilometers of forest are lost each year. This equals 36 football fields every minute. It is estimated that 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions are the result of deforestation. Deforestation is a particular concern in tropical rainforests because these forests are home to much of the world’s biodiversity. For example, in the Amazon around 17% of the forest has been lost in the last 50 years, mostly due to forest conversion for cattle ranching. Deforestation in this region is particularly rampant near more populated areas, roads and rivers, but even remote areas have been encroached upon when valuable mahogany, gold and oil are discovered. There is also a strong correlation between debt and deforestation because countries with high debt have to pay in natural resources when they are unable to pay back debt using money. Even here the actions of the World Bank and the IMF have a clear impact. THE CLIMATE Warming of the climate system is undeniable, and human involvement is extremely likely the most dominant cause. The total natural contributions from solar irradiance changes and stratospheric volcanic aerosols have only made a small difference. Data from the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is staggering. Since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years. Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide, and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent. Mean Arctic sea ice extent decreased over the period 1979 to 2012 with a rate that was very likely in the range 3.5 to 4.1% per decade (range of 0.45 to 0.51 million km2 per decade), and very likely in the range 9.4 to 13.6% per decade (range of 0.73 to 1.07 million km2 per decade) for the summer sea ice minimum. According to the IPCC there is a high confidence that the rate of sea level rise since the mid-19th century has been larger than the mean rate during the previous two. Over the period 1901 to 2010, global mean sea level rose by 0.19m [0.17 to 0.21] There is high confidence that sustained warming greater than some threshold would lead to the near-complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet over a millennium or more, causing a global mean sea level rise of up to 7 m. Current estimates indicate that the threshold is greater than about 1°C (low confidence) but less than about 4°C (medium confidence) global mean warming with respect to pre-industrial levels. The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial times, primarily from fossil fuel emissions and secondarily from net land use change emissions. Annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production between 2002 and 2011 were 54% higher than the 1990 level. Methane has increased by 150% and nitrous oxide by 20%. The ocean has absorbed about 30% of the by humanity emitted carbon dioxide, causing the before mentioned ocean acidification. It is also likely that human influences have affected the global water cycle since 1960 and that the global ocean will continue to warm during the 21st century. Heat will penetrate from the surface to the deep ocean and affect ocean circulation. There is also a positive feedback between climate and the carbon cycle on century to millennial time scales, meaning that an increase in temperature will by itself increase CO2 in the atmosphere. The IPCC concludes that continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. And even though actions are taken, most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries even if emissions of CO2 are stopped. MY PLAN FOR CHANGE I have decided to create an ideological popular movement with global intentions for a united, sustainable society aiming for the future. This movement is called The Greater Earth Movement (GEM) is intended to highlight the situation above and hopefully create the change that is so urgently needed. It starts with you. A plan that involves an entire population must necessarily be easy enough for everybody to understand and follow. Because of this I have chosen to design a straight forward two-step plan which will be the over-all guiding star of our movement. The purpose of the first step, called the GLOBAL TIME OUT, is to slow down the world to a sustainable pace and find a secure foothold. The purpose of the second is to aim for the future. STEP 1: THE GLOBAL TIME OUT 1. Ban wars. 2. Nullify international debt and remove the interest based economy. 3. Limit personal wealth and distribute assets among the entire population of the earth and create a system based on a Resource Based Economy. 4. Limit the population of mankind to a level able to be sustained on the earth together with a rich bio-diversity of other organisms. 5. Criminalize monopoly of physical assets, technology and information which, if kept egoistically, will cause the loss of lives or health. 6. Minimize activities that are harmful to the eco-system of the earth even though this limits economic growth. 7. Prioritize technological progress to that which is necessary to achieve a sustainable life in balance with the world around us. 8. Establish equal rights for all humans.* STEP 2: THE FUTURE - To be revealed WHAT YOU CAN DO: Search for and follow The Greater Earth Movement on facebook and start sharing. Only when enough people join and share the vision, the necessary change can be achieved.
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 22:05:06 +0000
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