Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030 738
An anonymous reader writes "A recent report warns that humans are overusing the resources of the planet and will need two Earths by the year 2030. The Living Planet Report tells that the demands on natural resources have doubled in the past 50 years and are now outstripping what the Earth can provide by more than half."
Noo! (Score:3, Funny)
I told you not to take the axiom of choice!
Why?! (Score:5, Funny)
Why, slashdot, do you insist on posting article after article wrote by Al Gore and the global conspirators of Climate Gate. Clearly if just drill in the Arctic it will solve ALL of our environmental woes.
Re:Bull (Score:3, Funny)
As we begin to run lower on a given resource it becomes increasingly more viable to recycle it or look for alternatives.
Quite so. Supply and demand will sort everything out perfectly, as a famous 1973 documentary film explained [imdb.com].
We need two earths? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Noo! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, we DO have both "Earth 2" and "Bizarro Earth", right?
I read through much of this thread, and am pretty well convinced that we must be living on the cube-shaped alternative...
Re:Bull (Score:3, Funny)
This is somewhat true.
We are out of $30 a barrel oil. Some other countries still have $10 a barrel oil.\
However, oil takes on the price of the most expensive barrel pumped and sold.
The U.S. has a ton of oil that would take about $90 a barrel to get out.
And other alternatives at $90 to $100 a barrel equivalent price.
Still, population is getting too high. Ocean fishing areas are out and out collapsing (not fishable-- doesn't mean lifeless- would recover completely in 20-30 years if fishing was banned in those areas).
Same for grains.
But.. we can choose to exist at much leaner levels of existence. A tiny percentage at the top will live well while most live on food of low nutritional value that is a bit tasteless. There will be various problems (celiac disease, possibly autism, other nutritional issues) but the deer over breeding where we all die off quickly is probably 40-50 years away. At that point, one little war and billions will die.
Re:Shameless self promotion (Score:3, Funny)
The overpopulation myth [simplyshrug.com]. Bottom line - we could provide for every single person living on this planet with just the resources inside the US. Never mind the rest of the world. We're a LONG way from overpopulation... We have a distribution - not resource - problem to solve.
If people were boxes that needed to be stored in a warehouse, then the math would be solid. But that's simply not the case. Furthermore, even if such a state is possible and sustainable, that in no way means that it's desirable. I don't want to live in Texas with the population density throughout the entire state as dense as NYC. That sounds horrific.
Another thing that is completely neglected is future population growth. The reason people like you think that overpopulation is a myth is because you're only thinking within the timeframe of your own life. It's that old, "won't be a problem until after I'm dead" shrug off of a problem. Some people actually care about future generations, even if they won't be around to enjoy their company.
And finally, the environmental impact isn't taken into account at all. Waste management, air pollution, water pollution, and the preservation of natural ecosystems are all neglected.
Quality of life is important. It's not like growing corn where the more you can grow in a single field the better. Ears of corn don't have feelings and desires and integrity and morality. My favorite quote from that paper is in the very beginning:
I am an engineer, so I actually understand numbers, rather than merely pushing them around.
His definition of 'understand' and mine must be different.