Saturday, October 6, 2007

The Perfect Storm

I was meditating the other night and a thought hit me concerning this environmental crisis we are in and its something I want to eventually speak about. It has to do with three challenges humanity faces, any one of which could influence how tough things are really going to get for humanity.

I have always been concerned with species extinctions. It is believed that if we continue to drive species and ecosystems into extinction at our current rate, humanity will have an extremely difficult time, if we survive. That's number one.

Number two is over-consumption. At present consumption rates, we would need 1.2 Earths to be sustainable. In other words, at current rates, their will eventually be no more natural resources left. If things don't change, it is believed that by 2050 we will need 2 Earths to be sustainable. If everybody in the world today lived like an american, I believe we would need between 3 and 4 Earths. Any way you look at it, if we don't drastically change, we will run out of Earth. That's the second.

Third is Global Warming. Recent research on polar melts is showing melting rates leaning towards the side of "worst case scenerio". Global Warming is the nuclear bomb of this environmental problem because it dramatically effects my first two points, extinctions and natural resources. Global warming alone may drive somewhere between 14% to 28% of species to extinction (if my numbers are accurate!). Add those numbers to the current species crisis!, and then accelerate the whole thing because of feedback loops! Global warming is to dramatically change weather patterns for the worse: water resouces, cropland, floods, droughts, sea level rise, etc.

Now, if species extinctions alone will do us in, what happens when you accelerate this crisis with global warming? If our natural resources will run out eventually, what happens when you global warming also plays a part in depletion of natural resources? For whatever reason, these 3 studies have not been tied together as a perfect storm scenerio. They are definately not on the mind of public.

I don't like preaching all this bad news stuff, and this whole thing has definately been a catalyst for positive change in my life. I want to talk about all the good that could come out of these challenges, but at the same time, I believe the media sugar coats this bad news. Does the public think we can actually stop global warming like some of the media outlets state? Isn't more of a matter of lessening the damages and preparing now for what is surely coming?

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