Does anyone else think we have killed the planet?

[Jughead]

I don't mean to get on my high horse but does anyone else think that people in cars are partly responsible for the
current weather? I'm of an age where I remember winters meant snow. Nowadays, the norm is flooding. In the Independent
it mentioned the current weather is the new norm. If reputable companies like VW are telling fibs about emissions. will our gener ion be remembered for killing the planet? Just thinking......
Admittedly I am a cyclist and do not drive. Maybe I'm biased.

Gerry

[Colin_P]

Yes we are killing the planet.

But I don't blame cars or any particular industry or any particular activity.

I blame it on continued and exponential population growth which drives consumption. There are simply too many people and it is not sustainable.

The problem is that this is never spoken about, it never seems to be even mentioned let alone anything done. Saying that, the Chinese did have a go with their one child policy though.

[toomsie]

Socialism and central management wastes resources.

What individual is going to build houses with their hard earned cash and not live in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyDqE-iWrBs

Freeways and roads was subsidised by non tax pays. So long distance travel encouraged. It can waste human capital( travel time) and gasoline. Everyone is forced to pay for that waste. Some communities may prefer unpaved roads and to travel locally, used trains are 4x4 or mountain bikes to get around. Eventually over time people will find the cheapest( most efficient) to get around.

Here in London, apartments and infrastructure is built in a city that produces nothing, but shifts money around and calls It wealth creation. Londoners spend a higher percentage of their time commuting. Poor folk are forced to commute to London also because the government stops them from working locally because hyper regulation make it hard to start a business. Money is stolen from common folk, by money printing inflation. The bankers waste that money and build tall building in London.

[toomsie]

Yes we are killing the planet.

But I don't blame cars or any particular industry or any particular activity.

I blame it on continued and exponential population growth which drives consumption. There are simply too many people and it is not sustainable.

The problem is that this is never spoken about, it never seems to be even mentioned let alone anything done. Saying that, the Chinese did have a go with their one child policy though.

They said that years ago. The question should be is how many people will die because of environmental factors relate to over population and how many people will die due to population control. Ironic though is the fact that Socialism in Europe has meant European population is declining. In Germany many it is really bad.

[Vorpal]

Ironic though is the fact that Socialism in Europe has meant European population is declining. In Germany many it is really bad.

How does that work? What is the correlation between socialism and population decline?

[Vorpal]

I don't mean to get on my high horse but does anyone else think that people in cars are partly responsible for the
current weather? I'm of an age where I remember winters meant snow. Nowadays, the norm is flooding. In the Independent
it mentioned the current weather is the new norm. If reputable companies like VW are telling fibs about emissions. will our gener ion be remembered for killing the planet? Just thinking......
Admittedly I am a cyclist and do not drive. Maybe I'm biased.

Gerry

If you really want to help the planet, become a vegetarian...
https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/file ... oggatt.pdf

[Bonefishblues]

Yes we are killing the planet.

But I don't blame cars or any particular industry or any particular activity.

I blame it on continued and exponential population growth which drives consumption. There are simply too many people and it is not sustainable.

The problem is that this is never spoken about, it never seems to be even mentioned let alone anything done. Saying that, the Chinese did have a go with their one child policy though.

Don't worry too much about population growth per se, it's going to slow and peak. Hans Rosling is simply brilliant on this:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=han ... &FORM=VDRE

[beardy]

Speaking as a vegetarian, I think that (in Vorpal's post) argument is somewhat flawed.
I suspect that animals used in companionship with arable, in the good old fashioned ways are not going to be anywhere near as damaging to the environment and are time proven as sustainable (for their inputs, at least).
The rearing of animals in a mass produced industrial manner is as detrimental to the planet as any other fossil fuel powered industry and large because it is a much wanted commodity.

The planet is far from dead but we are steadily working towards it and would achieve it eventually if we carry on as we are, for now it is only slightly wounded.

[al_yrpal]

We havent killed the planet just yet. Its easy to believe that in overcrowded cities but there are still vast tracts of unpopulated wilderness everywhere. What you see in China and India is deplorable, too many people, the Peking smog an example. But… we do need to take care and generally we are. Britain could do with 15 million less people it would then be a more pleasant place.

Al

[Psamathe]

I don't think we have killed the planet. I don't think we are going to kill the planet.

I do think we are rapidly killing off ourselves.

I think the underlying problems come down to "human nature" or rather those aspects of "human nature" that are really quite avoidable. Things like greed, self interest, etc. I agree that things like population are causing ever increasing damage, but the reasons for that problem is that despite knowing the damage we are doing, individuals think only of themselves and what they want rather than being able to act for the common good. Same with burning fossil fuels - people accept the damage but refuse to act in their personal lives just expecting everybody else to take the burden. In this day and age that we still find it necessary to resort to horrendous wars and destruction (killing each other) to me suggests there is something badly wrong. Yet there seems little interest in doing things differently.

And maybe it is another example of natural selection. That our nature will mean that we self-destruct and eradicate ourselves.

Ian

[b1ke]

We're not killing the planet, but we are killing the life forms that give it the biodiversity on which life in it's current forms depends.

Burning fossil fuels, habitat destruction, population growth, unsustainable industrial practises all contribute to a greater or lesser extent. And we see the effects in climate change, flora and fauna extinction, increasing drought, floods etc..

I'm vegetarian, don't drive, avoid flying, buy second hand, etc, but I achieve nothing more than a tiny bit of peace of mind through these actions. On a planet with 7 billion people (and increasing by approx 200,000 per day), how can personal action achieve anything unless it's multiplied by 7 billion?

I'm not optimistic about the human race's ability to solve this one. It's not easy to be the problem and the solution at the same time.

[Vorpal]

Speaking as a vegetarian, I think that (in Vorpal's post) argument is somewhat flawed.
I suspect that animals used in companionship with arable, in the good old fashioned ways are not going to be anywhere near as damaging to the environment and are time proven as sustainable (for their inputs, at least).
The rearing of animals in a mass produced industrial manner is as detrimental to the planet as any other fossil fuel powered industry and large because it is a much wanted commodity.

They also eat lots of byproducts from food processing that would otherwise be waste. That isn't accounted for by my link. One of the problems with considering the impact of diet on the climate though, is that much of the information available is little more than propaganda. That paper was one of the least propagandised presentations I could find (lest I be accused of being a leftist greeny freak, or something )

[squeaker]

Don't worry too much about population growth per se, it's going to slow and peak. Hans Rosling is simply brilliant on this:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=han ... &FORM=VDRE

Good presentation, but a couple of big IFs in there though

To answer the OP, it ain't dead yet, and probably won't be until the sun dies, but I'm not so confident about the medium term prospects of us and other warm blooded mammals

[beardy]

I am using and producing more than my (globally) fair share. This is mostly because of the country that I live in and my share of the emissions of that society plus my direct individual contribution.
Having accepted there was a problem decades ago I am "minimising" my emissions, which doesnt really mean cutting them to a minimum so much as avoiding the wasteful excesses that are routine in our society.
One enormous barrier to cutting emissions is that resources are so cheap in comparison to the financial values put on human labour rates. It is swimming upstream to act environmentally in the face of the economics which has near religious status in the developed world.
It makes economic sense to drive instead of walk or cycle because time is money.
It makes economic sense to replace rather than repair because time is money.

None of the politicians at the summits are ready to tackle this cause as it is a core of their market, ever-increasing growth religion. Even while they make targets at the summits, the laws of their countries force people through economic and legal pressures to continue the maximisation of consumption.

[iviehoff]

When the Roman Empire collapsed, the economic system that supported a substantial wealthy, urban population in many great cities of the empire, based in part on large-scale shipping of food, collapsed. Necessarily the standard of living of many people collapsed. In many areas, especially the great cities, the population must have collapsed. Probably this was mainly seen as a temporary increase in the rate of infant mortality, which was probably the main response to variations in resource availability in those eras. Sometimes genocides occurred - the earlier Roman conquest of Gaul, for example, killed off about a third of the population, largely violently. Other major population adjustments have occurred through disease. About a millennium later, the Black Death resulted in the death of up to 70% of the population in some countries in Europe. This also substantially reduced the availability of resources which were providing the requirements of many urban societies. Nevertheless these events, and many others like them, did not kill off the human race. But they generally made life a lot more unpleasant. There was typically a lot of conflict and death follwing them in the subsequent reorganisations of society.

At a population growth of 1% per year, a common rate in many countries in recent times, the population increases a billion-fold in a mere 2083 years. So evidently the human population has not been able to sustain such apparently modest rates of growth for much of its history. It seems likely that a combination of technology limitation and societal governance has resulted in populations that have been resource constrained for extended periods of its history. Major die-offs from conflict and disease also intervene fairly frequently.

It is in such context that we should see major climate change. There are fossils of Nothofagus (southern beech) shrubs in Antarctica from as little as about 3 million years ago, so the earth has seen much warmer conditions in the pretty recent past, and of course things were much warmer still if you go back further in time. Life on earth survived major mass extinction events, notably the Permian-Triassic extinction event when around 83% of all genera were lost: it is estimated to have taken around 10 million years for biodiversity to recover from this event, but a slight pause in the 3,000million+ year history of life of the earth, but of course many times longer than the existence of Homo sapiens. Thus life on earth will continue and recover with who knows what great wonders. But rearranging human life may well result in large conflicts, major reductions in the standards of living, and it would also be unsurprising if population levels also fell. Given how populations are falling in many advanced countries at the moment, we can see that population reductions do not have to be catastrophic. We can also see, from for example Japan, how reducing populations, aging societies, etc, can mediate a gradual economic senescence.