Sailing the titanic into a perfect storm,

Created by: jerome :: 2 years ago

bruntland, perfect storm, unsustainable development

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Vote: +0

"Professor John Bennington, the UK's chief scientist is warning of a perfect storm of climate change, population, water, food and energy by 2030. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8213884.stm
In that we cannot do anything about the unavoidable climate change we are already commited to upto 2050, how do we avoid the other catastrophes of adaptation, energy supply, water and population? The first warnings will be rising energy prices and inflation, more recession and more debt default and bank failure.

Can democracy solve the problems, if the majority of the voting public do not understand and demand them. This leaves governments are more obsessed with moving the deckchairs on the sinking titanic of economic growth, than managing the controlled descent and emergency landing needed to ensure social cohesion in a resource depleted world? If the necessary solutions required are unelectable, creating immediate hardship to offset greater hardship later, is democracy no longer fit for purpose?

Unfortunately it looks more and more like we will have to rewrite the definition of sustainable development from the idealistic:

"Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs." Brundtland-1987

To the pragmatic:

'Curtailing the demands of the present generation to preserve hope for the next'"

By: jerome :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"No comments on this yet?
Climate change is just one part of the potential disaster the world is facing. Politicians and celebrities discuss Climate Change endlessly and whole industries have sprung up around Carbon trading and offsetting (deckchairs on the Titanic).

The problem is not the political system but the economic one. Infinite economic growth based on resource consumption, requires infinite resources. We have one Earth. At this moment in time there are no easy technological fixes to ward off this "Perfect Storm".
The present economic model is dead, its just that most people don't realise it yet.

The solutions lie in reducing consumption and going for negative population growth. Not vote winners with an electorate brought up to believe that "He who dies with the most toys - wins". In fact as the Hawaiian saying goes, he still dies. There is uproar when the price of fuel rises and the electorate proclaim it is their right to have cheap petrol and to fly unhindered by environmental taxes. The facts are that demand is likely to exceed production of energy, food and water within the next few years. Extinction of plants and animals is accelerating. Yet all the politicians talk about is climate change.

If everyone was to understand the threat posed by resource depletion, then attitudes and behaviours would change. We all need to know more about what the future looks like if we attempt to continue with business as normal."

By: Crunchtourism :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"I have to say that a visual of what the planet would look like, what people would be like, the disease rate, the immigrants flooding our borders because we have messed their countries, the level of asthma sufferers in the UK due to level of pollution, the wars between nations to protect vital water holes...if we could see what the future would be like if we did nothing, then we would all do more"

By: Jessie :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"Good point Jessie. A film set in say 2035 using the projections of population growth and remaining resources by then would be quite scary, when looked at from our present perspective.
Of course we won't all wake up one morning and find that we don't have enough fresh water, food or energy to provide our needs. Between now and then the prices of these commodities will rise. As they rise consumption will fall, as we will not be able to afford to eat imported food, home grown food will also shoot up in price when oil based fertilisers become too expensive.
This is where the predictions get difficult. The increasing world population will become blatantly obvious and probably be already past a tipping point similar to that with Climate Change. Somehow the population of the world will need to adopt one big family planning program. Don't ask me how, but it will have to.
If nothing is done thirst, starvation, disease, people dying of hypothermia, a denuded ecosystem and mass species extinction is what awaits."

By: Crunchtourism :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"I like the idea of the film. I recommend watching Children of Men, a brilliant brilliant film that really captures the potential future in the UK in 2025-2030. The film Doesnt really deal with climate change or peak oil or population per se, but follows the lives of people living in a world shaped by those issues, the abortive fairly fascist measures put in place to limit population growth (England did after all invent the concentration camp during the boer war!) And the fight to retain hope, humanity and humour...life goes on!"

By: jerome :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"Crunchtourism, your point about going beyound tipping points is important. The problem is exponentiality. Shortening doubling times in population and resource consumption can quickly turn an apparent surplus into a deficit.

An old (french i think) riddle talks of a pond with lillies growing. When should you clear the pond? On day one when there is one lilly or day 2 when there are 2? Even on day 10 when the pond is half covered there may still seem to be time, but by day 11 the pond is choked entirely.

While it may seem that we now have sufficient food and resources, with exponential population growth it does not take much to tip that into a accute shortage"

By: jerome :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"Jerome, good point about the exponential growth of population and resource consumption. We were on course to double our consumption of oil every 7 years. One part of the UK government seem to think that there will be twice as many air passengers by 2030. They are planning a 3rd runway at Heathrow to cater for them. Where is the aviation fuel going to come from? If these are the brains planning our future, what hope is there for us?
Another film set in the future is "Solyent Green", it even has elevated temperatures. It came out of the 1970's oil crisis, but hasn't changed the world. What will save humanity?"

By: Crunchtourism :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"WRT your point on airport expansion, This BBC article on aviation and particularly the 3rd runway is very interesting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8243922.stm

Particularly the last paragraph

'The shadow energy and climate change secretary, Greg Clark said: "The Climate Change Committee was established by the Climate Change Act... to give advice to the government, so its recommendations need to be taken seriously.

He added that the government's policy on aviation would "lack credibility" as long as it continued to support a third runway at Heathrow. '"

By: jerome :: 2 years ago

Vote: +0

"The problem is the scizoid relationship between those parts of government who get the point about sustainability, physical resource limits and overshoot and on the other side, the economic growth zombies. The zombies just dont realised that they and the world that created them is dead and that they are killing what is left of the living planet to support their basic instincts of profit profit proft.

Too many politiciants and business people have built careers and empires on the dead paradigm that constant economic growth is possible and desirable, that we can all aspire to wealth. Wealth is always relative. For one to be wealthy, many must be poor. For many to be wealthy the future must be poor.

The comodification of the green message is a prime example. While a few are trying really hard to create and amplify real solutions. Many entrepeneurs and businesses use peoples fear and concience to sell dubious 'planet saving' products at a premium cost, selling eco-bling to 'the green pound'. Withe the best intenstion, my mother-in-law bought loads of expensive solar powered garden lights that she didnt really need, 'beacuse they were solar' !

If you have built an entire career or political empire based on the assertion that economic growth is good, it is very difficult to make the paradigm shift to economic maturity, where GDP per capita remains constant. Ecomonic growth has become self feeding and cancerous, malignantly spreading accross the globe as people and governments see it as a right.

For now, i am working on the inside with politicians and businessmen, while i see some chance of steering and guiding positive change, at least locally. I suspect however that with the very limited time left and the weight of vested interests manacled to the legs of meaningful change, that..

'The Solution is Revolution!'"

By: jerome :: 2 years ago