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The Royal Society had just released a very important report entitled People and the Planet. This is something that affects every person alive. Is it normal that mainstream newsmedia runs these stories on the back pages to dumb down the population?
If we bring people out of poverty wouldn't they just consume more thus increasing global consumption?
This is a concern that is raised in this report. This is why it is important that these people are educated, such that they recognize the dangers of uncontrolled and explosive population growth. It is also recognized that people who live in abject poverty today, need not take the same (wasteful) steps in their development. We would need to make a commitment to use technology to develop new energy and resource efficient societies.
I've never heard of this... I do think poverty should be put to a end. I think allot of problems could be ended, but maybe some new ones would also emerge?
Rapid and widespread changes in the world’s human population, coupled with unprecedented levels of consumption present profound challenges to human health and wellbeing, and the natural environment. This report gives an overview of how global population and consumption are linked, and the implications for a finite planet.
Working Group chair Sir John Sulston FRS, Chair of the Institute for Science, Ethics & Innovation, University of Manchester.
Key recommendations
Key recommendations include:
The international community must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day out of absolute poverty, and reduce the inequality that persists in the world today. This will require focused efforts in key policy areas including economic development, education, family planning and health.
The most developed and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce material consumption levels through: dramatic improvements in resource use efficiency, including: reducing waste; investment in sustainable resources, technologies and infrastructures; and systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact.
Reproductive health and voluntary family planning programmes urgently require political leadership and financial commitment, both nationally and internationally. This is needed to continue the downward trajectory of fertility rates, especially in countries where the unmet need for contraception is high.
Population and the environment should not be considered as two separate issues. Demographic changes, and the influences on them, should be factored into economic and environmental debate and planning at international meetings, such as the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development and subsequent meetings.
Other recommendations made in the report focus on:
the potential for urbanisation to reduce material consumption
removing barriers to achieve high-quality primary and secondary education for all
undertaking more research into the interactions between consumption, demographic change and environmental impact
implementing comprehensive wealth measures
developing new socio-economic systems.
Just teach em to put a rubber ring on it... wait, that's not how the song goes... oops...
:3
There are too many people on this planet for long-term sustainability. We need to control our population growth, energy and resource consumption.
Or find another planet, but whose to say that the humans won't destroy it as well?
This is why it is important that we learn to preserve the planet that we are on. We will actually learn how to build planets suitable for us, in the distant future. The problem is that we will destroy this planet in only a couple of generations, if we continue to overpopulate it.