Last week, I asked if anyone had noticed a certain similarity between the attitudes of those who created the current U.S. credit crisis … and the attitudes of us in the developed world who each year borrow more Earth resources than Earth has to lend.
The Global Footprint Network has noticed. They earlier brought us the mind-blowing personal footprint calculator, which asks the question: how many planets does it take to support your lifestyle?
Today, the Global Footprint Network announced that - at the current rate humanity as a whole is using natural resources and producing waste - by the early 2030s our human species will require the resources of two entire planets to meet our needs. These estimates are according to new figures released today by Global Footprint Network, WWF and the Zoological Society of London. The email they sent announcing this news was titled Humanity Facing Ecological Credit Crunch.
Every two years, the Global Footprint Network publishes what it calls the (pdf) Living Planet Report, which explores what Earth offers versus what humanity feels it needs. Two years ago, Global Footprint Network data suggested that the human species would need two planets by 2050. More recent data suggests the much-earlier date - 2030 - around the time that children born today will be entering the workforce.
EarthSky’s Lindsay Patterson has interviewed Global Footprint Network director Mathis Wackernagel twice in the past 14 months. Hear the extended interviews:
A tool for understanding human consumption
How we can stay out of ecological debt
According to the Living Planet Report, humanity is now using nature’s resources and producing waste (primarily carbon dioxide) at a rate 30 percent higher than what the planet can renew and absorb each year. That’s why - each year - we reach what the Global Footprint Network calls Earth Overshoot Day, the day on which we begin using more resources and producing more waste than Earth can handle for that year. Earth Overshoot Day comes earlier each year, partly because Earth’s population continues to grow, and also because the standards of the developed world are spreading around the globe.
Why, you may ask, aren’t we seeing the effects of so much resource overuse - plus the excess carbon dioxide - if both are so out of whack? The answer is that we are seeing the overuse in the form of deforestation, water shortages and declining biodiversity, to name a few. And we’re seeing the excess carbon manifest in nature as climate change, whose ongoing effects are bound to alter Earth’s flora and fauna profoundly in this century, according to scientists.
Speaking of its 2008 (pdf) Living Planet Report, the Global Footprint Network said, “this new data comes at a critical time, when the current economic crisis felt around the globe has made it painstakingly clear: debt and overspending can continue for a while, but ultimately they have dire consequences.”
What to do? In the immortal words of Aretha Franklin: you better think.
The image above is from Marcelometa’s photostream.
Also in the immortal words of Aretha: R-E-S-P-E-C-T
So true.
If we order the other planet we need now, maybe we’ll get it by 2030. But I guess the standard waiting time for Earths is a couple billion years. Maybe we need to contact the people on Magarthea.
I really admire the work of the Global Footprint Network for putting the diminishing resources of the Earth in terms people can understand. But it’s still a bit confusing to me… why do people understand economic terms so much better than images of disappearing forests, human misery, garbage islands, even the garbage floating in our own lakes, rivers, and streams? Why haven’t we already recognized what this means around the world?
As George Bush would say, Humans got drunk, and soon we’ll experience the hangover.
I wonder that, too, Lindsay.
When I was a kid, I was really aware of the fact that - when I walked in the grass - the grass was bending and breaking. As a child, I can remember feeling a little guilty about that. Now there are 6.7 billion of us walking in the grass … not to mention drinking the water, chopping down trees to grow crops, spewing our waste products into rivers and the air, criss-crossing the landscape with roads, causing the extinction of other species. So many people! And more to come as this century unfolds.
When you decide to get back to science, let me know. This is a post of self-indulgent nihilist philosophy. Humanity is so terrible…but I’m so wonderful because I feel the grass break under my feet and I’m sorry about it, therefor I’m a good person.
If you want to feel guilty about crushing blades of grass, or about drinking earth’s precious water, go ahead…there’s a parallel to anorexia there.
There will be more grass tomorrow…and what good is grass for, if not to feed cattle, deer, rabbits, and sheep, which in turn give us meat, milk, wool and fertilizer, and something to look at and to look after and to hunt?
You want to make your footprint smaller, feel free. But you have no right at all to tell me I have to do so, or to preach to innocent children that they should feel guilty about living…which is where your “philosophistry” leads.
Hi Doug,
Wow. I’m sorry I made you so mad. I was just waxing sentimental in my advancing years here.
Yes to nearly everything you said. The Global Footprint network is run by Mathis Wackernagel, who has an advanced degree in community and regional planning, according to Wikipedia. Is he a scientist? I would say that his methods are scientific. But you are correct this, as science, this stuff is pretty soft. I’ve never seen it published in a science journal, for example. Someone correct me if I’m wrong about that.
If it’s not hard science - and if EarthSky’s goal is to enable scientists to speak to a larger audience - why are we featuring this work?
It’s because we at EarthSky hear these same sentiments expressed by scientists in all fields of study, day after day.
Earth is finite. As the consumption standards of the developed world spread around the globe, what do you think will happen? I’m curious. What’s your vision of all this? Do you see Earth as providing enough for all of us to live as Americans do now via a technological fix? Or what?
Deborah
I wasn’t mad, just enjoying the opportunity to vent…and I’ve been favorably impressed by some of the realism and science and even optimism that’s crept into parts of your site lately…Commendations are in order! And I get sentimental too…believe me.
Earth is finite, yes…imagination is not, and neither is innovation. We have barely scratched the surface of earth’s resources (literally) and have the potential to discover resources from neighboring planets as well…can we use them smarter and better, with less impact? Yes, and it’s in our economic interest to do so. There are resources within the earth that can be used to make life better if we develop the technology, but we don’t get there by saying “I’m sorry I broke the grass, I’m sorry for living.”
Consumption is of itself not bad…if all the women stopped buying multiple pairs of shoes, how would the Shoemakers’ feed their children? (:-) and men are no better, certainly.)
My point is we are interdependent, with which I’m fairly sure you will agree. As the consumption standard of the developed world have spread, so have the benefits…education, employment, leisure, innovation, health, opportunity, escape from the “nasty, brutish, and short” nature of existence for ourselves and future generations. Bad side effects and mistakes, yes, there are some, and over time we have learned to overcome them and will continue to do so. You can’t do scientific research when all your time is spent gathering nuts and berries to stay alive.
I was trained as a chemical engineer that the “waste” stream from a process should be the “raw material input” and “energy source” for other processes, to produce things that were needed, wanted, or helpful. (And not in a creepy, “Soylent Green” sort of way, either).
I do see earth as providing all that we need if we use our minds and reward those who innovate and make things better, and I do not see that requiring ocean-to-ocean arrays of solar cells and windmills covering the landscape. We can, should, and will certainly preserve nature. As for over-population, the developed, consumer-standard countries are seeing the opposite…when you aren’t dependent on having ten children to feed and take care of you in your old age, you don’t tend to have ten children. Russia and most of Europe are facing population collapse, not overpopulation. America is barely holding it’s own by virtue of ambitious immigrants from less developed, often more crowded countries seeking freedom and opportunity.
If capitalism and consumerism is so bad, why does everybody want to come to America? How many athletes defected to China during the Olympic games?
At another place on your site you talk about hopefulness, and people of good will making things better…those aren’t people who feel guilty about living…they’re too busy making things better, and doing well by doing good. You also talk about the population doubling from the time you and I were young…and there were those folks at that time saying that was impossible, that we would starve and destroy ourselves with wars and disease and pollution. That clearly hasn’t happened, because of these same people of good will using their minds and hands to feed, clothe, house and heal folks.
That’s where I’m coming from. There’s a lot of talk about the “failure of capitalism and the dreadful consumption standard”. Where it’s failed, it’s because it’s been perverted by socialists who say, basically, “Don’t try make the pie bigger, and don’t give people the incentive to do so, just take the big slices away from those who have them and let’s redistribute them as We See Fit.”…conveniently ignoring the fact that those with the bigger pieces of the pie are generally those people of good will working to make the world better and those who are working upward towards those goals…and that when you give someone a fish everyday, they stop fishing.
Why should anyone feel sorrowful guilty for being alive, the greatest miracle there is? Take that gift and do something good with it.
Doug, I was probably about six years old when I felt guilty about the grass. I’m not saying I feel guilty now. I was just remembering being a kid. Gee.
I’m hearing you say you believe we have the technology - or can develop the technology - to use more of Earth’s resources more effectively. I also believe that. And I pray that I will live to see our American standard of living spread around the world, in a way that Earth can support. But we’re not there yet. All the technologies we need don’t exist yet. And in the meantime, the technologies we do have - for heating and cooling our homes, for transportation, for growing our food - are producing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, causing the climate to change. Trees are being cut down. Species lost. Surely you acknowledge those things.
Do I think we should think about our resource use? Yes. I think we should try to bring some awareness to it, and not just think that technology will bail us out later.
Just think about it. That’s all.
Deborah
I say we go ahead and use and consume all we want, when we can use and consume in a way that’s not damaging our planet irreparably.
But like Deborah said, those technologies and methods aren’t here yet. Most of our energy emits greenhouse gases, creating an effect which endangers so many of the resources we’ve come to rely on.
Every scientist I’ve spoken with says that the very first, and most important step to slowing climate change is to cut our energy use. If you knew that, what would you do? Would you go out and buy a Hummer, because you have the freedom to make that choice? Or if you believe in people doing what’s good for humanity, would you choose to be part of the effort to downsize our human footprint?
In one of my favorite recent interviews, biologist Camille Parmesan said, “There’s not going to be techno-fix in the future that will make everything better again… It’s not like one silver bullet. We need to not wait until we already have enormous impacts and people go, ‘Oh, gee, I guess we should be doing something.’” If we wait until then it’s going to be too late.”
I wrote a reply before lunch, but the internet apparently ate my homework, so I’ll try it again.
Let me start with Lindsay’s question…I trained as a chemical engineer, many’s the year ago…I have some hands-on background in chemistry and modeling of chemical processess. To your post, I have to respond, Who decides (or has already decided) what is damaging the planet irreparably, or even “reparably”? Who has decided that energy use harms the planet? Did you know that if a tree grows, gets old, falls and rots, or burns in a forest fire, it returns the same amount of carbon dioxide and energy to the atmosphere as if I burn it in my fireplace, only at a different rate with different timing? Did you know that people who grow flowers and vegetables in greenhouses often put a small propane burner inside, even in summer, simply to raise the concentration of carbon dioxide so the plants will grow better? That’s a chemical and biological fact. Take it from this old chemical engineer, carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant in the earths’ ecosystem, it is a fertilizer. Below a little further, I’ll discuss the “greenhouse” aspect of C02.
Who decides what level of anything is good for humanity? If I choose to buy a Hummer, and can afford it, who has the moral authority to tell me I cannot? If you cede that authority to anything other than the “invisible hand” of the marketplace, you are giving up your economic freedom in principle…so, in principle, what is to prevent that authority from telling me I can no longer eat beef, save for my own retirement, live where I want, do the job I feel I can do best? If the principle of economic freedom is sacrificed for the supposedly greater good, who decides what that good is, and on what basis? No one has that authority, nor should they. No one can force you to buy a Hummer…if the need in the marketplace exists for a large vehicle capable of taking people and equipment off-road to remote destinations, why shouldn’t the market supply that vehicle to anyone who decides for themselves that they want/need that capability, even if it’s only for a possible emergency that never actually happens? Feel free to live as virtuously small a footprint as you choose to, up to the point of anorexia, but no one has the moral authority to tell me I have to give up my freedom of choice in the marketplace. No one should be allowed to make those decisions for me, certainly no scientific committee should be making those choices.
Who decides, and on what basis, that things are “not going to happen until it’s too late?” Only those who want to influence your decisions from what they would normally be. In my lifetime, there have frequently been people saying, in one form or another, “disaster is coming…you have to do what we say or be destroyed”…and when the destruction doesn’t happen, they say “See? We were right!” But the threat of destruction is not real, only their desire to manipulate and control you.
There is no one silver bullet technological fix for energy, I agree, no one mad scientist going to ride into town and solve the problem, the world doesn’t work that way…but a large number of well-funded teams are working on the various aspects of the required technologies on behalf of for-profit private and publicly held companies, and a large number of under-funded entrepreneurs are also doing the same at their own expense,… and between them they will figure out, by competition of ideas and economics in the marketplace, what are the best ways to solve these problems. As for technologies that are not here yet, what do you think will make those technologies arrive…more government funding, or a perceived genuine free-market need for them? If the predicted impacts were real and imminent, do you really think that no one besides the climate scientists would be seeing it and trying to make a buck off of it?
If Exxon and Shell and Mobil and BP figure there’s actually money to be made in hydrogen fuel for vehicles or any other alternative technology, either because oil is actually running out (and thereby getting more expensive) or the technology is getting cheaper and easier to mass-produce (and thereby less expensive than oil), you’ll see them and GM/Ford/Chrysler figure out the last few details of the technology pretty damn quick, without government help, along with a lot of smaller entrepreneurs who see it’s in their interest to participate in the process.
Hybrid cars are hot right now, but they are only marginally economical at best…and by that I mean the additional energy/resource spent in the manufacturing process to make a hybrid is barely less than the energy/ resources the hybrid will save over it’s useful working life, if you include recycling of the worn-out batteries. In dollar terms they actually cost more than they save, at current gas prices around $2.50 a gallon. Eventually they will get better but for now they are little more than a status symbol to show you “care about the environment” without really doing anything to help…but there is a market for them as status symbols right now, and as time goes by they will probably become more cost effective.
It’s not necessary, nor is it effective for the UN IPCC to point these people in the right direction…when there’s an advantage and an opportunity to provide a needed product or service for a perceived good end, the market will provide it in order to reap the profits, unless the government steps in and interferes. The market is still the most efficient determinant of when to switch to new technologies, anything else is wasted money. Meanwhile we are clearly not destroying the planet…it’s simply not happening, nor is it going to happen as long as the laws of physics and chemistry apply.
“…the very first, and most important step to slowing climate change is to cut our energy use. If you knew that, what would you do?”…the whole point is that we DON’T know that…
Second, while the climate is a complicated system, it can be observed and understood to a degree, and measured. This is called science. You build a hypothesis and you test it, and measure the results to see if your hypothesis is correct, and to what degree. Based on this kind of science,the “greenhouse effect” of carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere is utterly swamped and overpowered by the greenhouse effect of water vapor, which is completely ignored in the global warming models…please take the time to see the basics linked here…it would take too much space to include in my already too-long comments:
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
The first one also deals with convection and radiant cooling of the planet, which are ignored in most if not all of the greenhouse-type manmade global warming models. We’re simply not living in a greenhouse.
I’m not a global warming denier, because global warming is simply not a fact….the alarmist climate-doom predictors are in deliberate denial of the facts of a generally stable and temporarily cooling climate, more dependent on solar activity than anything else, whose internal regulating processes have worked for millions of years in spite of multiple and massive volcanic eruptions that spewed more “greenhouse” gases than man has ever done, unchecked forest fires, and even meteor strikes. The climate system appears to have an equilibrium that is bigger than anything short of a fullscale nuclear holocaust can disturb, and even that is speculation.
I’ve studied statistics and modeling of chemical processes years ago, and learned enough to know that in any complex mathematical model, if the results the model gives don’t match what you think they should be, you can adjust or ignore some variables and assumptions until you get the result you desire…and I’ve been around academic halls enough to know that if there’s no crisis, there’s no (or fewer) government grants, no budgets, no fame, no tenure…therefor, there is a crisis. Everything in the way of actual temperature measurements of earth’s atmosphere in recent years tells me there is global cooling going on, not man-made warming, and the most likely culprit is a change in solar output.
I have thought, am thinking, and will continue to think about it, but no committee of scientists is good enough to decide for all humanity what we can and cannot, should or should not do…every person has to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong, as has always been the case.
What about the spread of American style development, worldwide? The benefits have begun to spread worldwide…health, leisure, opportunity, political and economic freedom….Is it perfect? No. Will it ever be? No. Do I think the world can sustain an American lifestyle within earth’s resources? I think it’s entirely possible, provided we employ our minds and reward those who make things better. Keep in mind we live on the surface area of the sphere, and the resources, including minerals and energy, exist throughout the volume of the sphere, in one form or another. Pollution and waste are worst in the undeveloped countries, as is population growth. The developed countries are by and large seeing the opposite, as Swedes and Russians and Spaniards and many others become endanged “species” threatened with population collapse and extinction or absorption by other groups. America is barely holding it’s own in population by virtue of ambitious immigrants seeking opportunity and wanting to pass the benefits on to their children. Development is a good thing.
“Trees are being cut down”…if they aren’t cut they will eventually either burn down in a forest fire or fall and rot on their own, and in developed countries they are being replanted to the extent that we now have more forested acreage and more numerical count of trees in the US than we had in 1776, by combination of man-made planting and natural reforestation.
“Species are being lost”…and new species are constantly “speciating” if you believe in Darwin, as they adapt to their local conditions…we can preserve what we can, but we can never stop the process completely any more than we can cause or prevent new species developing. Creatures have been going extinct since the dawn of life…islands and land bridges rise and fall, climate changes for non-human reasons, Seas form and dry up in geological terms (and neither the long warmth of the Medieval Optimum nor the cold of the last ice age made the polar bears all go away). Do I want to accelerate the process, or wipe out any particular species? No. But we cannot entirely prevent or control it either. The world is not, and never has been, static and unchanging, it only looks that way when you regard it through the very small window of one human lifetime.
If economic freedom, capitalism and consumerism are so bad for humanity, why are there so many illegal immigrants trying to get into this country, and how many athletes defected to communist China during the Olympics? And why has this country produced so many innovations and advances in every scientific field for the benefit of all mankind?
Peace…with Freedom.
Doug, I don’t know why your last comment didn’t post automatically. I had to go in and ‘approve’ it. Anyway, thank you for continuing to comment!
You are, quite simply, wrong that it’s only a small group of scientists who are somehow ‘invested’ in the idea of global warming resulting from fossil fuel burning. Both U.S. candidates for President acknowledge that truth! Even some oil industry execs acknowledge it. As a case in point, please listen to EarthSky’s interview with a Shell exec, who talked to us about what Shell calls the three hard truths.
Deborah
Hi Doug,
I’m not about to get into a philosophical argument about morality. I believe we have to make the best decisions we can based on the information we have. As Deborah just pointed out, the information tells us that fossil fuel burning is causing global warming. The information we have (via scientific efforts) also tells us that there will be huge impacts on Earth, and in some places, it’s already happening. Scientists have studied this from many angles, it’s been a worldwide effort, it’s not a small collective, and they’ve come to a consensus which policymakers and a majority of the general public accept.
No one can tell you what you can or cannot do. That’s our freedom. But there are better decisions and there are worse decisions. Generally speaking, people like to choose better decisions. I think our experience of the current economic crisis would show that when people take the opportunity to make decisions they know are risky, not the best possible decision, there is eventually a fallout for everyone. The Global Footprint Network has been drawing an economic parallel to the ecological crisis, and they’re saying that the same thing is happening to our resources.
The way I see it, it’s not about who has authority. It’s about taking responsibility for what we know is happening to the planet, and doing what we know can help.
From the ‘three hard truths’: “ And the third hard truth relates to rising CO2 in our atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which is leading to a warmer world.”
From what conclusive scientific test did this “third hard truth” reveal itself? Really,…if we’re talking science then how did this become a “hard truth”?
“…they’ve come to a consensus which policymakers and a majority of the general public accept.” Do we just take a poll of scientists (many who have a vested interest in anthropogenic GW) and a majority of clueless citizens to decide scientific truths?
Doug put two links in his post that gave extensive data about greenhouse gases and man’s contribution to it. Did anybody check them out? Shouldn’t we wonder why global warming has paused for the last eight years despite increased fossil fuel burning?
Larry, it’s not possible to conduct a conclusive scientific test that shows climate change is happening. Climate is complicated. The only test will be time. Will scientists’ theories about climate change come to pass? We have to wait and see.
All I can say is that most of the scientists we talk to - virtually all of the scientists we talk to, unless we search for one who disagrees - take it for granted that climate change is real and caused by humans. That’s true now. It was true 10 years ago. And I suspect it will be true throughout this century.
There is no controversy in science about climate change. Anyone who says there is a controversy is not a part of real science. There is no controversy among scientists about this. Never has been.
Frankly, I’m amazed you guys are still beating this drum. You don’t believe even an oil company when it says global warming is real? You don’t believe both U.S. presidential candidates (see question #2)? You don’t believe U.S. agencies like the EPA? Then I’m sure I can’t convince you.
Deborah
“There is no controversy in science about climate change. Anyone who says there is a controversy is not a part of real science. There is no controversy among scientists about this. Never has been.”
deborahbird, I always thought good science provoked and invited controversy, especially on something as complex as climate change. Yet this particular subject is so enormously politically charged that dissenters are aggressively being silenced and disenfranchised from the “in-crowd”. But their ranks are growing, nevertheless: “…a Canadian survey of scientists released on March 6, 2008 offered even more evidence that the alleged ‘consensus’ is non-existent. A canvass of more than 51,000 scientists with the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) found 68% of them disagree with the statement that ‘the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.’” According to the survey, only 26% of scientists attributed global warming to “human activity like burning fossil fuels.” APEGGA’s executive director Neil Windsor said, “We’re not surprised at all. There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of.””
As far as taking an oilman, two Presidential contenders, or a govt.agency as the final word on a scientific puzzle…Sorry, but I pass. And sorry for ‘beating the drum’.[;)]
I think one thing that would help is for birth control and proper sex education to be readily available to all women/men/young people throughout the world. The notion that some people base worth on how many kids you can produce (and that “God” is against birth control) is absurd. It would help the overpopulation problem:) However warming and cooling is a cycle..i think since it happens over a period of time that can’t begin to compare to our lifespans, we take it a little harder. I think if it ever came down to it, we’d wipe ourselves out before we’d destroy the Earth beyond it’s own reparation.
Larry, you pass on the oilman, Presidential contenders and government agency when it comes to believing or disbelieving in climate change. But the link you provided is to the website run by Jim Inhofe, a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, and a well-known and very vocal critic of climate change. Why do you believe the Senator from Oklahoma before the others? Just curious. And yes science does invite controversy. But if the majority of the world’s scientists agreed that an asteroid were headed our way - and a few scientists disagreed, saying their calculations showed it would just miss us - would you really put your faith in the few? Personally, I’d vote for trying to cause that asteroid to veer off course! Would we do that by sending nuclear weapons to space, to explode near the asteroid? In that case - as in the case of climate change - there wouldn’t be a clear answer. Still, if the best minds on the planet say it is happening and say that - if we act - we can ameliorate its effects, I personally would vote to try.
Stephanie, you’ll be happy to hear that birth control and proper sex education are being provided to more women now than ever before. And that’s why - although Earth’s human population is still increasing - our population numbers are expected to peak around the middle of this century and afterwards begin to fall again. Will there be fewer people on Earth in 2100 than today? It’s possible. I could not agree with you more that population is at the root of many problems on Earth today. Decreasing population will bring a different kind of problems, but with fewer people we might be able to create a world that’s more in balance with what Earth has to provide in terms of air, water and other resources. See the Population Reference Bureau website for more about population issues.
Thank you both for commenting!
Deborah
Deborahbyrd- I didn’t present Sen. Inhofe’s article to persuade you to renounce anthropogenic GW but to show you that there is indeed substantial ‘controversy’ about it and it is a part of real science. He didn’t just state his opinion, but gave facts, figures, sources, and links on the growing number of AGW sceptics. I just believe that healthy scepticism drives healthy science. Supressing debates diminishes science.
As far as the “asteroid” analogy…I would research all sides before deciding what I would consider the best and most practical course of action.
BTW-Nice website!
Larry, thank you! We hope you’ll visit often and present your views freely.
Many thanks for visiting,
Deborah
This is Susan Burns from Global Footprint Network, the organization that recently published the Living Planet Report 2008. I wanted to respond to Deborah’s question about whether our work is scientific. For those who want to learn more about our methods, there is an abundance of documentation on our website at http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/reading_and_references/ .
Also, for academics who are interested in the methods and results behind the numbers in our recent Living Planet Report, you can refer to the Ecological Footprint Atlas 2008 at: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2008/
Thanks for the interesting dialogue!
Susan