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Human population unspeakable danger
Without shying away from calling a spade a spade. Every intellectual is trying to avoid this issue but let’s just face it this time, of cause I might sound hypocritical but let’s just face it. Human population is equally problematic to global warming. Regardless of having agreed with Al Gore that population stabilization education and family planning accessibility is a solution. I’m still arguing the fact that it seems not working in China. And also with contraception we are not doing enough. There is an urgent need to prepare legislation accompanied by incentives like free education or something of privilege to say; anyone above 20 should give birth to one kid and that kid in 20 years period give birth to one kid that of cause will not reduced any increase of the population but it will slow the birth pace which in a long run can also stabilize population growth.
Human spice is one spice that its growth rate keeps on rising faster than that of any other spices. Al Gore mentioned future estimated population growth of Africa to be far above that of China as a country. How does one, statistically compare a country to a continent, i couldn't understand why? This didn't help me to understand how to measure the impact of population growth in Africa because that doesn't give any statistic that each African country would have contributed on the impact of population growth in Africa. Though population growth still needs argent actions just as global warming so we can't just prioritise global warming while ignoring the other side of the problem this requires a simultaneous equation. Population growth destroys habitats of other spices for our selfishness lifestyle of building big-houses of 15rooms for the family of 4, building roads and other huge space consuming facilities such as stadiums and airports, we destroy forests and occupy massive land for agricultural purposes (livestock and crop farming which consumes a large quantity of water and industrial operations that mainly produces greenhouse gases and waste that contribute to illnesses and land pollution and abuse).
From the work of Free-Thin-King; I think governments like SA which allow Monsanto and GMO foods are contributing harshly on the fertility of the population. SA foods are mainly controlled by corporations that chases profit and that pauses danger of feeding people foods that are influenced by profit making agendas were people get feed food that gets them fertile and sexually active in order to procreate faster in large numbers. Teenage pregnancy occurs mostly in the Sub-Saharan Africa where Monsanto’s GMO foods are mostly supplied from South Africa; i think this is an agenda by food corporations, including pharmaceutical companies and medical aid schemes. The feeding of our society high proteins and other chemicals injected and added into food contribute a lot into the issue of population bust. Of cause proteins are fed to livestock such as pigs, beef, chicken etc for fertility and the other reason is to get these livestock fat for a good price in the market well proteins are also essential for sustain a human body better and longer from hunger but the other side of this is that it gets most teenagers so sexually active and fertile as you can see often people from South Africa giving birth to six infants at once without taking fertility treatment, this doesn’t happen in Zimbabwe because there is limited GMO which are taken from South Africa and there is no Monsanto operations but South African teenage girls are so sexually active and give birth so regularly, and when we look back before the invasion of Monsanto kids were not this sexually active and obese the rate of birth was not this high.
So we must be careful of who controls the feeding of our society (it is called cheap food or food donations which targets the poor). I think it is proper to think that we must guard against profit driven money mongers of this world that they must not implement their profit making agendas that pushes the rapid multiplying of the population growth so that food business can go an extra mile while on the other hand pushing fashionable diseases like cancer, diabetes, stroke and other sickness to spread faster so that medical schemes and pharmacies can make money while our indigenous lifestyle medicines is so highly discouraged and undermine which was the main solutions that Africans set-up as the way to the future. We need to have a way of promoting our traditional lifestyle as part of the solutions which i think this should also form part of the educational solutions for earth sustainability. It was a taboo for any under 25 years to have a kid. That means it was discouraged to procreate prematurely. This means when one becomes 50 years their 25 year old children can have children which prepare them to replace the 50 year olds of the family hence it is predicted that from 75 years upwards the elderly can die. And those new born ones will take space for the elderly on earth this is true population sustainability which many shy away to speak of; including the most vocal, radical and respected modern public figures. I wrote this article and posted it on my facebook page after I attended The Climate Reality Leadership training in Sandton, Johannesburg in 2014 March.
And 12 months later 88 scientists around the world write a letter to the G20 warning them of the danger of boosting the economy through infrastructure expansion plans and they left the main issue; the population growth, that which influences the leaders of the world to go the infrastructure way. Below is the letter addressed to the G20 and there’s nowhere the population growth is mentioned, which is the main challenge.
Scientists warn G20 that $60 trillion infrastructure plan is "doubling down on a dangerous vision"
Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com
March 13, 2015
If there's one thing most governments and even political parties appear to agree on it's a desire for more infrastructure, i.e. more roads, dams, bridges, power plants, airports and seaports, sewers, pipelines, and telecommunication systems. At the most recent G20 meeting in Brisbane, the world's biggest economies agreed on the need for more infrastructure around the globe, including a plan to boost infrastructure spending by trillions of dollars by 2030 and setting up a so-called Global Infrastructure Hub.
Yet, despite its political popularity, there are dark sides to infrastructure. Governments have tended to support monster projects that may sound impressive but don't always meet economic or social goals. Moreover, local people are sometimes left facing direct impacts from mega-projects, including evictions, loss of access to local resources and land, and devastated livelihoods. Then there are the environmental impacts: roads cut into pristine wildernesses, dams flooding primary rainforests, and, of course, the continuing rise of carbon emissions as even today most countries choose fossil-fuel based energy sources, instead of renewable projects.
It's in this context that 88 scientists, environmentalists, and thought-leaders have sent a stern letter to the G20 asking them to rethink business-as-usual when it comes to infrastructure, including focusing on smaller and more decentralized projects, conducting rigorous environmental assessments, and using improved economic assessments that adds in externalized impacts such as pollution.
"This unprecedented level of investment in a 21st century economy must be approached with the highest sense of scrutiny and analysis," reads the letter. "Our survival, or our quality of life, may directly depend on the decisions these investments will set in motion."
While the signatories admit that business-as-usual has raised living standards in some parts of the world and brought about new technologies, it has also left the world with gaping inequality and an increasingly degraded planet.
"Corporate-led economic globalization...has transferred and consolidated power, effectively crippling the people’s governing rights. It has concentrated wealth within the top one percent and caused record-setting gaps between rich and poor," the letter reads, which was organized by Foundation Earth, a think tank established by Randy Hayes, the founder of the Rainforest Action Network. Some signatories include economist Herman Daly, ecologists Paul Ehrlich and William Laurance, environmentalist David Suzuki, author Deepak Chopra, and activist Van Jones among many others.
The letter goes on to state that many of the "accomplishments" from the current economy "have also come at a great price to the health of the planet" and "are not sustainable for another century; let alone for the next few thousand years."
They further warn that increasing climate change and a booming global population could lead to a world of "incalculable tragedy for millions if not billions and much of the web of life." Such statements are not science fiction, but are backed up by decades of research across various scientific fields. Indeed, most of the world's governments have publicly recognized the global threat of climate change, natural resource depletion, and unsustainable practices in general, even as they have moved little toward rectifying them.
"Developing more infrastructure in support of this failed economic model is doubling down on a dangerous vision. We must not lock-in problematic technologies for generations to come," the signatories write.
For one thing, the letter argues that investing what they say could equal $60-70 trillion over the next decade-and-a-half in mega-infrastructure projects could tip the world into catastrophic climate change scenarios. Governments have agreed to keep global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average; however pledges to that end are still wide of the mark.
"The G20 infrastructure framework and action plans could hasten global warming beyond the two degree centigrade average rise that sovereign nations will seek to stay below at the climate meetings this December in Paris," reads the letter.
The letter's authors also criticize proposed financing for the infrastructure boom, including a blend of private and public fundraising to offset financial risks for investors, noting that this plan bears a "scary resemblance to financial schemes involved in the sub-prime mortgage bundles that caused the global economic meltdown of 2008."
Indeed, infrastructure financing is often much more risky than portrayed by economists and governments.
"Studies show that for the past 70 years, nine out of ten infrastructure projects have experienced cost overruns, delays, and benefit shortfalls," argues the letter's authors, who add that "this process is beset with other problems like corruption, cost overruns, fiscal accountability, and human rights abuses."
The letter is all the more timely as the World Bank--one of the biggest funders of massive infrastructure projects--recently admitted after that it had little knowledge of the negative impacts inflicted on local people from its projects, such as resettlements.
"We found several major problems. One is that we haven’t done a good enough job in overseeing projects involving resettlement; two, we haven’t implemented those plans well enough; and three, we haven’t put in place strong tracking systems to make sure that our policies were being followed," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. "We must and will do better.”
For years, activists have been calling out the World Bank for its involvement in controversial projects that have come with large social and environmental impacts, and it appears from the bank's own internal audit that activists may have been right.
So, what can be done?
The letter calls for a slew of changes in how infrastructure projects are evaluated and rolled out. These include rigorous environmental assessments by independent parties with a focus on how new projects may affect the nine recognized planetary boundaries. These boundaries include pollution, climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen cycle among others. In addition, it calls for changes in how such projects are evaluated in economic terms, including full-cost accounting.
"The point is not to internalize pollution externalities, but to eliminate most of those impacts in the first place," the letter reads.
On specifics, the group calls for doing away with most mega-dams, especially in the tropics where they are major emitters of methane; shifting away from industrialized agriculture towards "sustainable agroecological farming"; and focusing solely on renewable energy projects.
"No further coal power plants should be built and all existing ones should be phased out as soon as renewables (including geothermal) can replace them, followed by oil and gas infrastructure," the letter reads.
The signatories are not against infrastructure full-stop, far from it. But instead are advocating for a different type of infrastructure, one they call "smaller-scale, ecologically smarter and more flexible" than the mega-projects that have become increasingly popular in recent decades.
"The G20 must ask the most important questions as to whether these new mega-infrastructure projects will help to heal the Earth or seriously damage life-support systems causing modern civilization to further transgress the carrying capacity of what makes life possible. There is no vibrant economy or coveted economic growth on a nearly exhausted planet," reads the letter.
The G20 is due to meet in November 2015 in Turkey, one month before the Climate Summit in Paris.
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