Perhaps the contradiction between fantasy and reality is better posed in the form of a question about oil deposits.

Is oil a depletable natural resource with limited availability for human consumption in our time or is oil an essentially unlimited product of a planet that indefinitely can produce resources for human benefit without regard to Earth’s physical limitations?

Lee Iacocca Says:

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course’

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned ‘Titanic’.

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up.

These are times that cry out for leadership. But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: ‘Where have all the leaders gone?’ Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage………. and common sense?

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone’s hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn’t happen again. Now, that’s just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you’re going to do the next time.

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening.

Hey, I’m not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I’m trying to light a fire. I’m speaking out because I have hope……………….If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:

You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action….. It’s not too late, but it’s getting pretty close.

http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinion/letters/story/14447 …

Humankind inhabits a tiny celestial orb that is miraculously set among of sea of stars. As far as we know, life as we know it exists nowhere else in the universe. Perhaps we of the human family have the responsibility of assuring the security for the future of life in our planetary home.

April 22 was Earth Day. Our many Earth Day celebrations focus attention on the pressing need for human beings to protect and preserve the finite resources of Earth and its frangible ecosystems. If we fail to achieve this goal, then an unimaginably bleak future awaits our children.

If 6-plus billion human beings live on Earth now and 9-plus billion are expected to populate our small planet by 2050, then we simply cannot keep doing what we are doing now because the Earth has limited resources. Without adequate resources and ecosystem system services of Earth, life as we know it and human institutions would collapse.

Some portion of the world’s human population conspicuously over-consumes the resources of our planetary home. Other people, in charge of huge multinational conglomerations, are doing business in a way that recklessly dissipates natural resources. Still others in the human family are overpopulating the planet. The leviathan-like scale and rapid growth of global human consumption, production and propagation activities are putting the Earth, life as we know it, and the human community in grave, clear and present danger.

Since Chapel Hillians live in the overdeveloped world, we are among the people who are ravenously over-consuming Earth’s resources. We could choose to consume less. People in the developing could choose to limit overproduction of unnecessary things and contain industrial pollution. People in the underdeveloped world could limit their number of offspring. Perhaps these are ways the family of humanity begins to respond ably to the human-induced global challenges that loom so ominously.

– Steven Earl Salmony, Chapel Hill

Please consider the exemplary work of a splendid scientist, Martha M. Campbell, Ph.D.

Her 2005 presentation has been ignored and yet it is particularly timely in 2008, especially in the light of so many of the world’s major polluters avoiding their duties and responsibilties to protect human wellbeing and to preserve the integrity of Earth and its ecosystems.

Please click on the following link,

http://www.populationandsustainability.org/papers/campbellagm.pdf

Thanks to all,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

Fisher people demand justice for climate refugees

South Indian fishing community conference on Climate change and
Fisherpeople’s livelihood was held on 17th April 2008 at Rotary Community
hall,Nagercoil, Kanyakumari district. This event was organized by
TamilnaduFisher workers Union (TFU), Kerala Independent Fish workers
Federation(KSMTF) and Voices from the Margins (VFM).

Mr. T. Peter Dass, President,Tamilnadu Fish workers Union (TFU) delivered
welcome address and he pointed out that fisher people are facing sea erosion
as a result ofclimate change. This public event is recognized as the first
one organized by the affected community against Climate Change and fisher
people have decided to launch public protest for their sufferings as a
result ofclimate change.

Mr.M.Pakkirisamy, district revenue officer inaugurated this workshop and in
his Chief Guest address said that sea level is rising in the last pastdecade
at an unimaginable rate of increase. Sea level is expected raise 5 meters in
the next 50 years and it is going to affect the fisher people.There is a
need to change the consumption pattern to avoid the expansion of the hole in
ozone layer.

Mr. K.P. Sasi, activist film maker wondered what the government is doing to
stop the carbon emission? There is a need to change the production process
of the industries, agriculture and the energy systems. Nothing is done so
far to the people affected by climate change and marginalized people who are
becoming refugees as a result of ecological impacts thrustupon them.

Dr. A.D.Shobana Raj, ecological researcher highlighted the factthat the
coastal Kanyakumari district has 56 km long coast with apopulation density
of 1500 per sq.km; and the coast line is vanishing. 80% of the water
resources in the coastal area have become saline and peopleare facing water
crisis because of the intrusion of sea water. 132 coastal sea weeds have
disappeared in the last 10 years. If the global temperature rises 2 degree
Celsius then it will have impact on micro organisms leadingto several
contagious diseases affecting coastal people.

Dr. S.P.Udayakumar social activist demanded that our energy consumption
pattern should change. The solution for climate change lies in shifting our
energy sector from fossil fuel dependent sector to renewable energy. Our
transportation pattern should move towards effective and efficientpublic
transport system rather than promoting cars which will lead toincrease in
carbon emission and vehicular pollution.

Mr. Sathya Sivaraman,journalist & film maker stressed the need to pinpoint
who emits more carbon and who should pay for carbon credit. USA is
responsible for 25% ofcarbon emission and it should take the responsibility
in compensation to the victims of carbon emission and climate change. The
relationship of Human species to Earth should be the equivalent to child and
mother, but this species has taken up the role of the destroyer of the earth
and other species. Carbon emitting industries should be changed and if this
is not possible all such industries should be closed.

After the people’s response, Mr. T.Peter president KSMTF demanded that
chemical farming practices, polluting industries and carbon emitting
lifestyle should be stopped since the fisher people are the most affected
bythe climate change. Today, this public event is organized with the
conviction that the affected communities can not remain in halls but there
is a need to launch mass public protest not just for their survival alonebut
for the entire humanity locally, nationally and internationally.

In the concluding session Mr. S.M.Prithiviraj, Convener, Voices from the
Margins explained how the marginalized farmers of the Tamilnadu are affected
by climate change in recent heavy rains as a result unusual low pressure in
Arabian Sea. Fisher people are affected by changes in pattern of fish catch,
reduction in fish wealth, and loss of working days as a result of climate
change and tidal waves and their houses are washed away by intruding sea in
many places of South India. Why should the fisherpeople pay for the impacts
of climate change entirely created by other vested interests? The conference
ended with a resolution questioning the polluting industries, chemical
farming practices, non-renewable energy sectors,carbon emitting life style
and the need for taxing the polluters to paythe price for ecologically
affected fisher people and other marginalized communities.

Press release issued byTamilnadu Fisher workers Union (TFU)
Ph:09443294198
Kerala Independent Fish workers Federation (KSMTF)
Ph:09447429243and
Voices from the Margins
(VFM)Ph:09843080963____________________________________

I am imagining that your questions are rhetorical ones.

You ask,

“Why are politicians and skeptics so willing to risk their future and everyone else’s future on blindly clinging to a course of action that has a high probability of leading to a seriously crippled future? If you even suspect that global warming represents a serious risk to your survival (and we have far more than suspicion these days), why wouldn’t you do everything protect and conserve your planet?”

It would please me to hear from others; but from my humble perspective the “answers” to your questions are all-too-obvious.

First, the leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, of increasing per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are evidently insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors.

We religiously promote our shared fantasies of endless economic growth and soon to be unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction oand overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources upon which the survival of life as we know it depends.

Second, my not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves. We are the “what’s in it for me?” generation. We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the understanding that we are no more or less than human beings with “feet of clay.”

We live in a soon to be unsustainable way in our planetary home and are proud of it, thank you very much. Certainly, we will “have our cake and eat it, too.” We will fly around in thousands of private jets and live in McMansions, go to our secret clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold the much of the wealth and the power it purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our ‘rights’ to ravenously consume Earth’s limited resources; to expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; to encourage the unbridled growth of the human species so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire.

We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. We have no regard for human limits or Earth’s limitations, thank you very much. Please understand that we do not want anyone to present us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making…… a manmade world filling up with distinctly human enterprises which appear the be approaching a point in human history when global consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species become unsustainable on the tiny planet God has blessed us to inhabit….. and not to overwhelm, I suppose.

Third, even our top rank scientists have not found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at a breakneck pace toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.

Sincerely,

Steve

Is it somehow harmful to ask direct questions like this one regarding good scientific evidence of the potential for either apocalyptic climate change or pernicious impacts from the rapidly growing, colossal presence of the human species on Earth?

Are willful blindness, hysterical deafness or elective mutism ever acceptable “defenses” for scientists who choose to deny evidence derived from good science?

Is there some reasonable, sensible or moral foundation upon which faithful scientists can stand upright and say, “I refuse to acknowledge carefully and skillfully gained scientfic evidence if I cannot refute it?”

Are scientists who present good evidence of climate change and human population dynamics, even though their research is plainly unforeseen and surely unwelcome, entitled to have their evidence openly discussed by professional colleagues with established expertise?

If the global challenges looming before humanity are as formidable as the best available scientific evidence indicates, then is the family of humanity not well-advised to begin widely sharing in open discussions in the mass media, not just in blogs like this one, what is to be done in order to avoid whatsoever is unmanageable, while managing and mitigating everything else?

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001

“Ethical” Coercion and OCPF Implementation

We exist in strange times. Rapid population decline, (RPD) rather than rapid population expansion, ensures the good future. Universal “one child per family (OCPF) behaviors earns the human community tremendous benefits. If we don’t implement OCPF very soon, the window for obtaining these benefits closes.

The people who have come to this point of view have assumed the responsibility of trying to obtain these benefits for everyone’s children. Which means obtaining OCPF practices from all future parents on the globe.

SKIL Notes 41- 44 outline processes for implementing OCPF. However, as soon as they were circulated friends correctly identified ethical complications.

The only ethically uncomplicated way to get every person to come to a OCPF behavior is for each to come to that conclusion using their own commonsense. That is, they have the minimum levels of cognitive ability which help them conclude OCPF is their best alternative.

By “minimum level,” I mean “analogous to” the minimum levels of cognitive ability that keep a person from stepping in front of a rushing bus. Obviously, at that level of cognition no external coercion is required to get people to choose the best alternative.

However, RPD and OCPF only appear as the best alternative when using levels of temporal inference cognitive abilities, which appear absent in most individuals (see SKIL Note 10 and 15.) Absent these abilities, the “second-child-behavior” does not create a view of a horrendous future and the best alternative remains more than one child per family.

Therefore the plan, outlined in SKIL Note 41, followed the “stop smoking on airplanes model of change.” In this model, a subgroup of airplane riders developed a working (if not absolute) majority to ruminate (if not vote) for no smoking on airplanes. Their argument was the air inside an airplane is shared and it is inappropriate for the smoking subgroup to foul it. It took a while but the non-smokers eventually coerced the smokers to stop smoking on airplanes.

The question is, “Was it ethical to take away the smokers’ rights?” It seems, at least to most people today — using whatever cognitive abilities they have to reference the injuries caused by second hand smoke, that the smoking ban was less unethical than the smoker’s unethical behavior that polluted shared air.

There is a parallel ethical construction connecting the act of ” smoking on airplanes” and the act of “having a second child.”

If the second child creates terrible future conditions, which are not seen by the procreating parent, then these parents think it is unethical for the group to ban their behaviors to have a second child.

On the other hand, the group, who sees the terrible conditions produced by having the second child, thinks it is unethical for the parent to saddle everyone’s progeny with the problems of a system overloaded with the consumption of second children.

There are unethical aspects to both behaviors. The quandary is to find which act is more unethical.

Using a majority, simple might makes right seems to be operational here.

If we had a vote today, normal people (voting as if the future liability of the second child was non-existent) would conclude that any parent, without hindrance from the group, should choose the number of children that seems best for them as individuals.

If the plan in SKIL Note 41 creates a majority of people who believe “having a second child creates a bigger liability in future conditions” than “the liability created by parental lose of procreative choice,” then a new vote would elevate social, physically, or operationally coercive OCPF policy above individual rights.

Democracy creates ethics. At one extreme it works wonderfully well. Traffic laws control driving speed, and intersection behavior for the common good. At the other extreme, drug and prostitution laws control behavior that has little to do with the common good.

In between these extremes, when democracies elect leaders on a near 50-50-vote, it means near half of the people in the US had to accept the ethical decisions of the other half. To pick easy examples from the current Bush administration consider the curtailing of federal funding for abortion and stem cell research. The ethics of nearly half the nation were subordinated to the ethics of the other half.

In this light, are RPD/OCPF policies resulting from a majority vote so different? Does the group, directing personal procreative decisions of individuals, suddenly overstep some line drawn in the sand established at birth? I don’t think so. Especially since having a second child has so much to do with the common good (see SKIL Note 31.) However, lets look at some of the hard choices that will have to be made using a majority established ethic.

The mechanics of implementing RPD/OCPF means influencing 60 million new potential parents that come of age each year. After an RPD/OCPF majority exists, many of these potential parents will join the moral and intellectual high ground of their community and choose OCPF. However, there will be individuals whose procreative choices will not be affected by this RPD/OCPF culture. What are the ethical, or on balance ethical, policies that might be used to alter their behavior?

Is it ethical to give OCPF families more goods and services than multi-child families. Is it ethical to take away goods and services when a family has a second child? Both of these have been used in China.

Is it ethical to isolate the RPD/OCPF communities from the communities that allow “two or more children per family” (see SKIL note 6? Is it ethical to watch as OCPF communities rise endlessly to better times while the others fall to ever more terrible conditions?

What is the relative ethics of forcing a couple living in the RPD community to move to the other, possibly more miserable community, if they have a second child? Is it ethical to force a child in an RPD community to join his parents in the distressed community? Or is it more ethical to separate them and not force the innocent child into worse conditions.

What is the relative ethics of universally vaccinating everyone with birth control? Then, when a couple wants to produce their single child, they could obtain from the group a one-time antidote, which would allow pregnancy.

These are only a few of the many unethical behaviors associated with implementation of OCPF. But then again multi child family behaviors, which create civilization collapse and the death of 90% of the global population, seem pretty unethical too.

12/14/07
http://www.skil.org

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

Please take note of the remarkably large number of well-established incentives propelling our human-designed, pyramid scheme, global economy that are patently perverse for most of the family of humanity because the standard incentives favor not more a small minority of people at the top of the global economic pyramid.

As everyone who looks already knows, that pyramid is displayed on every One Dollar Bill(US).

If we project the fully anticipated growth of increasing and unbridled per-capita consumption, of rampantly expanding economic globalization and of propagating 70 to 75 million newborns per annum, will someone please explain to me how our seemingly endless growth civilization proceeds beyond the end of year 2012.

According to my admittedly simple estimations, if humankind keeps doing just as it is doing now, without doing whatsoever is necessary to begin modifying the business-as-usual course of our gigantic, endless-growth-oriented global economy, then the Earth could sustain life as we know it for a time period of about 5 more years.

It appears to me that all the chatter, including that heard in most “normal science” circles, of a benign path to the future by “leap-frogging” through a ‘bottleneck’ to population stabilization, and to good times ahead in 2050, is nothing more than wishful and magical thinking.

Unfortunately, even top rank scientists have not found adequate ways of communicating to humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of Earth’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

Because the emerging global challenges that could soon be confronted by humanity appear to so many responsible, able and courageous scientists to be human-induced, many of our political leaders and economic powerbrokers have evidently been eschewing unwelcome responsibilities and unexpected duties which must be assumed now if life as we know it and the integrity of Earth are to be preserved for our children and coming generations.

Scientific evidence is springing up everywhere that indicates the massive and pernicious impact of the human species on the limited resources of Earth, its frangible ecosystems and life as we know it.

Guided by mountains of carefully and skillfully developed research regarding climate change, top rank scientists like Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Hans J. Schellnhuber and Dr. Christopher Rapley issued a Climate Code Red emergency declaration this month to leaders of governments and to the family of humanity proclaiming the necessity for open discussion and action by politicians and economic powerbrokers.

From my humble perspective, many leaders of the global political economy are turning a blind eye to human over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities that can be seen recklessly dissipating the natural resources and dangerously degrading the environs of our planetary home. The Earth is being ravaged; but it appears many leaders are willfully refusing to acknowledge what is happening.

Because the emerging global challenges that could soon be presented to humanity appear to so many fine scientists as human-induced, leaders have responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, ready or not, like them or not.

Perhaps leadership in our time has too often chosen to ignore whatsoever is somehow real in order to believe whatever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially agreeable, religiously tolerated and culturally prescribed. When something real directly conflicts with what leaders wish to believe, that reality is denied. It appears that too many leaders are content to hold tightly to widely shared and consensually validated specious thinking when it serves their personal interests.

Is humanity once again finding life as we know it dominated by a modern Tower of Babel called economic globalization? That is, has human thinking, judging and willing become so egregiously impaired by our idolatry of the artificially designed, manmade, global political economy that we cannot speak intelligibly about anything else except economic growth and profits without sounding like blithering idiots?

Humanity is the greatest challenge

VIEWPOINT
John Feeney

The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet’s ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week’s Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences.

We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first.

Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we’ve created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound and the time for reticence is over.

We’ve outgrown the planet and need radical action to avert unspeakable consequences. This – by a huge margin -has become humanity’s greatest challenge.

If we’ve altered the climate, it should come as no surprise that we have damaged other natural systems. From deforestation to collapsing fisheries, desertification, the global spread of chemical toxins, ocean dead zones, and the death of coral reefs, an array of interrelated declines is evidence of the breadth of our impact.

Add the depletion of finite resources such as oil and ground-water, and the whole of the challenge upon us emerges.

Barring decisive action, we are marching, heads down, toward global ecological collapse.

Web of life

We’re dismantling the web of life, the support system upon which all species depend. We could have very well entered the “sixth mass extinction”; the fifth having wiped out the dinosaurs.

Human activity is threatening the web of life, warns Mr Feeney
Though we like to imagine we are different from other species, we humans are not exempt from the threats posed by ecological degradation.

Analysts worry, for example, about the future of food production. Climate change-induced drought and the depletion of oil and aquifers – resources on which farming and food distribution depend – could trigger famine on an unprecedented scale.

Billions could die. At the very least, we risk our children inheriting a bleak world, empty of the richness of life we take for granted.

Alarmist? Yes, but realistically so.

The most worrisome aspect of this ecological decline is the convergence in time of so many serious problems. Issues such as oil and aquifer depletion and climate change are set to reach crisis points within decades.

Biodiversity loss is equally problematic. As a result of their ecological interdependence, the extinction of species can trigger cascade effects whereby impacts suddenly and unpredictably spread. We’re out of our league, influencing systems we don’t understand.

Any of these problems could disrupt society. The possibility of them occurring together is enough to worry even the most optimistic among rational observers.

Some credible analyses conclude we’ve postponed action too long to avoid massive upheaval and the best we can do now is to soften the blow. Others hold out hope of averting catastrophe, though not without tough times ahead.

One thing is certain: continued inaction or half-hearted efforts will be of no help – we’re at a turning point in human history.

Though few seem willing to confront the facts, it’s no secret how we got here. We simply went too far. The growth which once measured our species’ success inevitably turned deadly.

Unceasing economic growth, increasing per capita resource consumption, and global population growth have teamed with our reliance on finite reserves of fossil energy to exceed the Earth’s absorptive and regenerative capacities.

Getting a grip

We are now in “overshoot”; our numbers and levels of consumption having exceeded the Earth’s capacity to sustain us for the long-term.

And as we remain in overshoot, we further erode the Earth’s ability to support us.

Inevitably, our numbers will come down, whether voluntarily or through such natural means as famine or disease.

So what can get us out of this mess? First comes awareness. Those in a position to inform must shed fears of alarmism and embrace the truth.

More specifically, we need ecological awareness. For instance, we must “get” that we are just one among millions of interdependent species.

It’s imperative we reduce personal resource consumption. The relocalisation movement promoted by those studying oil depletion is a powerful strategy in that regard.

We need a complete transition to clean, renewable energy. It can’t happen overnight, but reliance on non-renewable energy is, by definition, unsustainable.

But there is a caveat: abundant clean energy alone will not end our problems. There remains population growth which increases consumption of resources other than energy.

We have to rethink the corporate economic growth imperative. On a finite planet, the physical component of economic growth cannot continue forever.

In fact, it has gone too far already. As a promising alternative, the field of ecological economics offers the “steady state economy”.

We must end world population growth, then reduce population size. That means lowering population numbers in industrialised as well as developing nations.

Scientists point to the population-environment link. But today’s environmentalists avoid the subject more than any other ecological truth. Their motives range from the political to a misunderstanding of the issue.

Neither justifies hiding the truth because total resource use is the product of population size and per capita consumption. We have no chance of solving our environmental predicament without reducing both factors in the equation.

Fortunately, expert consensus tells us we can address population humanely by solving the social problems that fuel it.

Implementing these actions will require us all to become activists, insisting our leaders base decisions not on corporate interests but on the health of the biosphere.

Let’s make the effort for today’s and tomorrow’s children.

John Feeney PhD is an environmental writer and activist in Boulder, Colorado, US. His online project is growthmadness.org

The Green Room is a series of opinion pieces on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

Basically, his work calls out to the human community to immediately begin reversing the current trend of skyrocketing absolute global population numbers by implementing a program of rapid population decline. Rather than near exponential population expansion, he is advocating rapid population contraction.

What his work indicates is the need for a worldwide, “ONE CHILD PER FAMILY” initiative. He is not the only person to be advocating such a plan of action. Alan Weisman, the author of The World Without Us, has come to precisely the same conclusion.

Just for a moment, imagine that the majority plus one of the human community accepted the idea that what we are doing now by adamantly advocating and relentlessly pursuing certain distinctly human overgrowth activities would eventually lead to the collapse of either human civilization or Earth’s ecology or both. Let us also suppose that this majority plus one agreed that the ethical thing to do was not to keep doing what we are doing now, but something different. If having multiple human offspring was unethical and having not more than one child per family was ethical, in part because such a program of action would have survival value for the human species, its global economy, other species and the integrity of Earth, then it seems to me that humanity would naturally and democratically move in a new direction, along another path, perhaps to a good enough future for our children and generations to come.

This perspective makes one thing crystal clear: if humankind chooses to follow the current primorse path of endless economic globalization, endless per human consumption and endless population expansion, a colossal wreckage of some kind is in offing.

In light of the great work being done by the contributors to this discussion by the members of the Orion community, I would like to ask humbly that you turn your attention to a website, one I presented some time ago.

http://www.skil.org

Once there, I would like to suggest that you begin by reviewing what Jack calls SKIL Notes. There are now 45 of them and they are mercifully short. These Notes show a certain careful and skillful development of thinking about resolving THE PROBLEM that presents itself to humanity now as the proverbial ‘mother’ of all global challenges, I believe.

Always, with thanks,

Steve