Human Population Pushes Earth to its Limits … But We Can Do Better
By Our Green Team | Nov 6 2009, 18:40

Are humans - or, to be more specific, an exploding overpopulation of humans - to blame for the planet's environmental woes? For many, that's a question fraught with unpleasant, even dangerous implications. But considering that Earth's human population now stands at nearly 6.8 billion, it's also a question we need to consider.

A few statistics first:

• Despite living on this planet for tens of thousands of years, humans didn't pass the 1 billion mark until 1804.
• Since then, our population growth has accelerated. It took 123 years to go from 1 billion to 2 billion people, about 33 years to go to 3 billion, a little over 14 years to hit 4 billion, 13 years to hit 5 billion and just over 12 years to reach 6 billion.
• While that growth rate has slowed a bit since 1999, we're expected to cross the 7 billion-person threshold by early 2012. Current estimates have the global population stabilizing at just over 9 billion by mid-century.
• Population growth might have slowed in much of the developed world (women in Canada, for example, now have an average of just 1.6 children), but it's still skyrocketing in poorer countries that are least able to support so many people. In Niger in Africa, for instance, women still bear an average of 7.1 children each.

People, of course, don't exist in a vacuum. Each of us needs food and water, energy and space. We meet those needs by taking advantage of natural resources like rivers and aquifers, fish and animals, plants and trees, as well as land. And the higher up the economic ladder our societies rise, the more resources we extract from the planet and the more space we take up.

In fact, if development continues at the current pace, we would need two planet Earths to support our lifestyles by the mid-2030s, the latest "Living Planet" report from the WWF warns.

And that's just the consumption end of the equation. Every person on Earth, to a greater or lesser degree, also produces things that affect our planet. Everything from farming and transport to commerce and industry has an impact: from fertilizer runoff that causes ocean "dead zones" to livestock production, coal-fired power plants and millions of cars, trucks and planes that spew out ton after ton of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

Every day, more science emerges to tell us we can't continue along this path. Climate change is already making its presence felt through more erratic weather and extreme storms, droughts and heat waves. More and more species are being pushed to extinction. Industrial agriculture, overcrowding and overuse of antibiotics are leading to new, more virulent diseases and a growing risk of global pandemics. Humanity's impact on our planet is fast approaching - if it hasn't already passed - the point of unsustainability.

Some believe Earth itself might be trying to tell us that. For instance, the chemicals we've spewed into the air and water are now being blamed for growing reproductive problems in humans. Environmental writer and consultant Guy Dauncey, in fact, speculates that chemical pollution might prove "the ultimate contraception."

British scientist James Lovelock goes even further, theorizing that the damage our huge and reckless population has done to the planet will lead to "The Revenge of Gaia," in which negative environmental feedbacks lead to runaway global warming and widespread die-off of humans.

What’s the answer? For the well being of every person already on this planet, as well as for other life forms and the planet itself, we need to start living more responsibly, more sustainably. We might also need to start cutting back on our numbers worldwide.

That's the conclusion of the UK-based Optimum Population Trust, which recently released a report finding that "contraception is almost five times cheaper than conventional green technologies as a means of combating climate change." For every $7 spent on basic family planning over the next 40 years, the study said, we could reduce our global carbon dioxide emissions by more than one ton. Using low-carbon technologies to reduce emissions by the same rate would cost at least $32 per ton.

"The truth is that the only factor or species we can manage on Earth is us," write scientists David Suzuki and Faisal Moola. "We have no choice but to address the challenge of bringing our cities, energy needs, agriculture, fishing fleets, mines, and so on into balance with the factors that support all life."

We need the planet more than it needs us. It's time to start living that way.

Design by Nature Nurtures The Nature of Design
By Our Green Team | Nov 13 2009, 17:36

Most of us have probably reached the point of green awareness where we feel guilty about throwing an empty juice bottle or Sunday paper into the trash instead of the recycling bin. But going truly green will require more than just a change in individual habits.

We need to realize that the elements of design for the products we use also need to change. We must find ways to sparingly use the resources we have - and reuse them again and again in an endless loop; creating products that are infinitely recyclable or leave no waste by biodegrading and returning value to the Earth.

This is what we must do if we want to preserve life as we know it on this planet.

Why? One, because we're using up many of our natural resources to the point where we could soon run out of some: we're talking everything from obviously crucial resources like oil (which not only powers our cars but provides the materials for telephones, toothbrushes, garden hoses, toilet seats, heart valves and even your credit cards!) and fresh water to minerals like gallium (used in solar cells and energy-efficient LED lights) and indium (used in LCDs). We are just creating some of these things and the resources are already becoming unavailable.

And, two, because the things we now throw away or wash down the drain could be better reused or recycled instead of ending up as pollutants in our water supplies or as marine-life-killers in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

So what can we do? The traditional green three Rs - reduce, reuse, recycle - are a good start. But those guidelines are nearly 30 years old. As we rapidly approach the year 2010, we must do more. Ultimately, the ideal solution would be to a) eliminate waste completely and b) ensure that every resource we use is used in a 100-percent sustainable manner, with no harm to other people, other living things or the environment itself.

That's the thinking behind concepts like "Cradle to Cradle" and "SMaRT" (for "Sustainable Materials Rating Technology").

First conceived of in the 1970s, the Cradle to Cradle philosophy argues that people should take a cue from nature whenever designing a product or system. For example, in nature, a dead tree is never "waste": it becomes home to a variety of life, food for generations of microbes and – eventually – a rich source of nutrients to fuel the growth of future trees and plants. Cradle to Cradle says the things we use should be viewed in the same way, and the companies that make those things need to make that a goal.

One way is by "C2C Certification," a process created by the organization MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry). To be C2C Certified, companies and the products they make must meet MBDC's specific standards for environmentally safe materials, material reuse, resource efficiency and social responsibility.

The C2C Certification standards are based on five different assessments. First, how does the material used rank on a scale of low risk to high risk, and does it need to be phased out? Next, how is the material reutilized - that is, recovered and recycled at the end of product life? Third, how does energy use factor into production? (The highest level of certification in this area requires at least 50 percent of the energy for all parts and subassemblies to come from solar power.) Fourth, how is water used (and what's the quality of any water that's discharged)? And, finally, how does the product rate in terms of "social responsibility" and labour practices?

The standards also use these concepts, as defined in Wikipedia:

• Technical nutrients are basically inorganic or synthetic materials manufactured by humans - such as plastics and metals - that can be used many times over without any loss in quality, staying in a continuous cycle.
• Biological nutrients and materials are organic materials that can decompose into the natural environment, soil, water, etc. without affecting it in a negative way, providing food for bacteria and microbiological life.
• Materials are usually referred to as the building blocks of other materials, such as the dyes used in colouring fibers or rubbers used in the sole of a shoe.
• Downcycling is a term used to describe what is conventionally known as recycling, which is seen as "downcycling" materials into lesser products, a plastic computer housing becomes a plastic cup, which then becomes a park bench, eventually becoming waste.
• Waste = Food is a basic concept of organic waste materials becoming food for bugs, insects and other small forms of life who can feed on it, decompose it and return it to the natural environment which we then indirectly use for food ourselves.

Another way to assess a product's sustainability is via the SMaRT standard, developed by the Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS). Rather than being the creation of a single organization, the SMaRT standards were established by a consensus of numerous groups: not just manufacturers, but government agencies and environmental NGOs as well. The people behind SMaRT also point out that their standard is both transparent - with the public able to comment on the criteria and suggest changes - and third-party-verified through auditing by Ernst & Young.

While both standards have their adamant supporters, the bottom line is it's clear today that we need such systems to make sure the things we use are as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible.

It's like the old saying goes: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

It's our responsibility to make sure the companies we buy from know that's important to us... or we won't buy from them anymore.

Forget Hollywood-style Apocalypses: Climate Change Remains the Real Threat
By Our Green Team | Nov 20 2009, 17:40

Despite some reports to the contrary, the threat of global warming is far from over. If anything, the science grows more dire every day. For whatever reason, though, the public's concern about climate change appears to be on the wane. Lately, it seems like more people want to talk about Mayan "prophecies" and Hollywood films about a 2012 apocalypse than about the very real threat of global warming.

Earlier this fall, a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that just 65 percent of US residents considered global warming a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem - down a full 10 percentage points from a similar survey two years earlier. A recent poll by Rasmussen Reports also found that the number of US citizens who believe humans are causing climate change has dropped significantly over the past year - from 47 percent to 37 percent.

Why? Any number of things could be to blame:

• The chorus of climate change deniers, which continues to sing loudly from many quarters;
• The mainstream media, which keeps writing "he said, she said" articles that put established science on equal footing with contrarian opinion; and
• Normal climate variability, or "noise," which can mask the signs of ongoing global warming.

Some of the growing apathy could also be due simply to fatigue: the steady drumbeat of (mostly bad) climate news can tend to leave many of us feeling increasingly weary and even numb.

While such fatigue might be understandable, it's also exactly the wrong response. Global warming is all too real, the risks are all too great, and the need for action is all too urgent for us to stop caring now.

More of us might feel differently if we lived in places already experiencing the traumas of a changing climate. The Arctic, for example, has experienced some of the greatest warming on the planet in recent years: roads and houses are crumbling as the permafrost below melts, whole towns are being relocated as sea levels rise, plumes of methane are starting to bubble up from the ocean and subsistence hunters can no longer go out onto the thinning ice in quest of food. The Yup'ik Eskimos for example, have become the first climate change refugees.

Meanwhile, vulnerable people in other parts of the world are also starting to feel the impact. In Bolivia, water levels in Lake Titicaca are dropping by two to three centimeters a week thanks to reduced rainfall and increased solar radiation. Ever more erratic rainfall in Ethiopia is hurting crop production, causing livestock to die and children to become malnourished. And the IUCN’s latest Red List of Threatened Species has found that nearly one-third of the 47,000-plus species studied are at risk of extinction, with climate change being one of the likely causes.

From Inuit hunters and polar bears to African farmers and plants and animals across the globe, plenty are already suffering because of global warming. The fact that they're not the ones responsible for our planet's growing fever makes it even worse. It's time we do more to prevent the risk of even more catastrophic climate change, no matter how "fatiguing" the news might seem sometimes.

Clearly, there's a mood in the air indicating that people are worried about the future and potentially cataclysmic events. But we could do more to protect our future by foregoing the movie theaters and conspiracy-loaded page-turners for real action to slow global warming now.

Our Starving Oceans: Carelessness and Consumer Culture to Blame
By Our Green Team | Nov 27 2009, 17:10

While most other animals instinctively know not to foul their own nests, humans have managed to find ways to pollute both the places they live and the remaining 70 percent of the world - the planet’s oceans – where they don't.

We’re desecrating the oceans - the main food and livelihood source for hundreds of millions of people - largely through carelessness. In doing so, we're also starving the seas of the clean water, balanced nutrients and minerals needed to support marine life.

A vast swath of the Pacific Ocean, for example, is choked with plastic waste. And then there are the world's expanding ocean "dead zones," caused in part by agricultural runoff from farming areas far from the coasts. This nitrogen-rich runoff provides a rich food source for large blooms of algae in seawater. When the algae die and begin to decompose, oxygen is sucked out of the water, making it impossible for other marine creatures in the region to survive.

The pollution we send into the atmosphere also contributes to troubles in the oceans. Climate change and warming waters, for instance, are being blamed for expanding swarms of jellyfish across the globe. And acidification caused by the oceans' rising uptake of carbon dioxide is reducing the amount of calcium carbonate available to shellfish and other animals, threatening whole marine food chains.

Even some types of seaweed long found in some regions are showing signs of nutrient stress.

But the problem extends beyond what we're sending into the seas. It's also a matter of what we're taking out: far more fish and other seafood than can be naturally replaced as quickly as we catch them.

The rising demand for canned tuna and sushi has led to dramatically dwindling tuna populations in places like the Philippines. As tuna and other species are being fished to their limits, fishermen and food companies are actually being forced to switch to other catches once considered less palatable: hoki, for example, a deep-sea fish that's now one of the key ingredients in McDonald's Filet-o-Fish sandwiches.

When popular fish species are caught in greater numbers, they also have less time to grow to maturity, meaning the fish that are left are younger, smaller and less able to reproduce in meaningful numbers.

The problem extends even into freshwater parts of the Earth's hydrosphere. Salmon, which spawn in rivers, are at population levels just a small fraction of what they once were in parts of the Pacific Northwest. In some cases, the juveniles have all but disappeared from some runs, and scientists aren't sure why.

Large fish predators like sharks are also vanishing - the increase in finning for shark fin soup is one reason (see Sharkwater ) - and that's not a good thing. Believe it or not, predators are important for the health of other species in the ocean, as they help keep populations in balance and even keep diseases from spreading by preying upon sick fish.

It's not just fish that are having troubles, either. Whales, turtles, marine invertebrates and even seabirds are in decline in many regions of the sea. Sadly, the only life forms enjoying population increases in some ocean regions are jellyfish, invasive species, bacteria and other microbes.

Why aren't more people concerned about the impact we're having on the world's oceans and all the life contained within them? Social critic James Howard Kunstler pins the blame on our modern identity as "consumers" rather than "citizens."

"Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings," Kunstler said a while back in a talk called, "The Tragedy of Suburbia." "And as long as you are using that word 'consumer,' you will be degrading the quality of the public discussion as we go into the very difficult future that we face."

While Kunstler was applying that argument to the uninspired architecture of modern suburban living, it's not much of a leap to extend that logic to the world - oceans included - as a whole. It's time to realize we need to create public spaces, and protect natural ones, for the common good... to recognize that there are places worth caring about and preserving.

We'll have to, if we're to face a future molded by dwindling fossil fuels, an economy in crisis and other threats, Kunstler believes.

“We're not going back to a 'consumer' society," he says.

If we're going to build a decent future for all, it looks like we'll have to learn to become responsible citizens again, not just consumers. What do you think a responsible citizen looks like? Post your feedback to: feedback@globalforcenetwork.com.