A couple of years ago population scientists tried to figure out just how many humans the earth could sustain at an acceptable standard of living. The answer they came up with was somewhere between 1 and 1.5 billion.
Another group of scientists were asked to calculate how many resources would be needed if everyone currently on earth were able to attain the current American standard of living. (More)
Their answer was that six billion people living like Americans and Europeans would require the food and raw materials of roughly six (6) entire planet earths. (More)
We all know that's not about to happen. Yet, rather than finding new ways, we continue to insist on finding new ways to maintain our old ways. Electric autos? Forget about it. Why when we can burn food instead of gasoline.
(Dyer Continues)
"... the worst damage is being done by the rage for "bio-fuels'' that supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change. Thirty per cent of this year's US grain harvest will go straight to an ethanol distillery, and the EU is aiming to provide ten per cent of the fuel used for transport from bio-fuels by 2010. A huge amount of the world's farmland is being diverted to feed cars, not people.
Worse yet, rainforest is being cleared, especially in Brazil and Indonesia, to grow more bio-fuels. A recent study in the US journal Science calculated that destroying natural ecosystems to grow corn (maize, mealies) or sugar cane for ethanol, or oil palms or soybeans for bio-diesel, releases between 17 and 420 times more carbon dioxide than is saved annually by burning the bio-fuel grown on that land instead of fossil fuel. It's all justified in the name of fighting climate change, but the numbers just don't add up.
Oh my.
So, will we survive -- just barely -- as we have in the past? Or does Big Bertha Inc. have other plans for us?
Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a Pulitzer.
