I've repeatedly stressed the dangers we invite if we focus on global warming to the exclusion of other environmental issues. Jared Diamond in his book "Collapse" identifies twelve, serious environmental problems we need to tackle.
1. Destruction of natural habitat. We're causing immense damage and loss to our forests, wetlands, coral reefs and ocean floors. Deforestation is accelerating.
2. Wild foods are being depleted. In particular, global fish stocks are reaching the point of exhaustion through over-fishing and related problems such as enormously wasteful by-catches.
3. Species extinction. "Elimination of lots of lousy little species regularly causes big harmful consequences for humans, just as does randomly knocking out many of the lousy little rivets holding together an airplane."
4. Soil degradation. "Soils of farmlands used for growing crops are being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 and 40-times the rates of soil formation. Other threats included salinization, losses of soil fertility through crop exhaustion, excessive acidification or, alternately, alkalinization."
5. Fossil fuel depletion. We're using far too much fossil fuel, particularly oil and natural gas, and the result is not only excessive GHG emissions but an increasing dependency on coal.
6. Freshwater exhaustion. Both surface water and groundwater resources are overstressed in many parts of the world, a problem that is being compounded by precipitation pattern changes.
7. The photosynthetic ceiling. This is one you don't hear about but it remains an environmental problem. "The first calculation of this photosynthetic ceiling, carried out in 1986, estimated that humans then already used or diverted or wasted about half of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity. Given the rate of increase of human population, and especially of population impact, since 1986, we are projected to be utilizing most of the world's terrestrial photosynthetic capacity by the middle of this century."
8. Soil and water pollution. "The culprits include not only insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides, but also mercury and other metals, fire-retardant chemicals, refrigerator coolants, detergents and components of plastics. We swallow them in our food and water, breathe them in the air and absorb them through our skin."
9. Alien species. These are lifeforms - animal, vegetable, viral, natural and manmade, "that we transfer, intentionally or inadvertently, from a place where they are native to another place where they are not native."
10. Human generated greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, there it is, carbon emissions and global warming.
11. Overpopulation. More people need more food, space, water, energy, and other resources. "There is long built-in momentum to human population growth because of what is termed the "demographic bulge" or "population momentum," i.e. a disproportionate number of children and young reproductive-age people in today's population, as a result of recent population growth."
and -
12. Growing per-capita population impact. "...low impact people are becoming high impact people for two reasons: rises in living standards in Third World countries whose inhabitants see and covet First World lifestyles; and immigration, both legal and illegal, of individual Third World inhabitants into the First world. ...There are many optimists who argue that the world could support double its human population. But I have not met anyone who seriously argues that the world could support 12-times its current impact, although an increase of that factor would result from all Third World inhabitants adopting First World living standards."
After reciting these twelve problems, Diamond points out the obvious - they're all interwoven. Each is linked to and compounds all the others.
"They are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50-years. For example, destruction of accessible lowland tropical rainforest outside national parks is already virtually complete in Peninsular Malaysia, will be complete at current rates within less than a decade in the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, on Sumatra and on Sulawest, and will be complete around the world except perhaps for parts of the Amazon Basin and Congo Basin within 25 years. At current rates, we shall have depleted or destroyed most of the world's remaining marine fisheries, depleted clean or cheap or readily accessible reserves of oil and natural gas, and approached the photosynthetic ceiling within a few decades. Global warming is projected to have reached a degree Centigrade or more, and a substantial fraction of the world's wild animal and plant species are projected to be endangered or past the point of no return, within half a century. People often ask, "what is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem." ...If we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble, whichever was the problem that remained unsolved. We have to solve them all."
"...the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics and collapse of societies."
1. Destruction of natural habitat. We're causing immense damage and loss to our forests, wetlands, coral reefs and ocean floors. Deforestation is accelerating.
2. Wild foods are being depleted. In particular, global fish stocks are reaching the point of exhaustion through over-fishing and related problems such as enormously wasteful by-catches.
3. Species extinction. "Elimination of lots of lousy little species regularly causes big harmful consequences for humans, just as does randomly knocking out many of the lousy little rivets holding together an airplane."
4. Soil degradation. "Soils of farmlands used for growing crops are being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 and 40-times the rates of soil formation. Other threats included salinization, losses of soil fertility through crop exhaustion, excessive acidification or, alternately, alkalinization."
5. Fossil fuel depletion. We're using far too much fossil fuel, particularly oil and natural gas, and the result is not only excessive GHG emissions but an increasing dependency on coal.
6. Freshwater exhaustion. Both surface water and groundwater resources are overstressed in many parts of the world, a problem that is being compounded by precipitation pattern changes.
7. The photosynthetic ceiling. This is one you don't hear about but it remains an environmental problem. "The first calculation of this photosynthetic ceiling, carried out in 1986, estimated that humans then already used or diverted or wasted about half of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity. Given the rate of increase of human population, and especially of population impact, since 1986, we are projected to be utilizing most of the world's terrestrial photosynthetic capacity by the middle of this century."
8. Soil and water pollution. "The culprits include not only insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides, but also mercury and other metals, fire-retardant chemicals, refrigerator coolants, detergents and components of plastics. We swallow them in our food and water, breathe them in the air and absorb them through our skin."
9. Alien species. These are lifeforms - animal, vegetable, viral, natural and manmade, "that we transfer, intentionally or inadvertently, from a place where they are native to another place where they are not native."
10. Human generated greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, there it is, carbon emissions and global warming.
11. Overpopulation. More people need more food, space, water, energy, and other resources. "There is long built-in momentum to human population growth because of what is termed the "demographic bulge" or "population momentum," i.e. a disproportionate number of children and young reproductive-age people in today's population, as a result of recent population growth."
and -
12. Growing per-capita population impact. "...low impact people are becoming high impact people for two reasons: rises in living standards in Third World countries whose inhabitants see and covet First World lifestyles; and immigration, both legal and illegal, of individual Third World inhabitants into the First world. ...There are many optimists who argue that the world could support double its human population. But I have not met anyone who seriously argues that the world could support 12-times its current impact, although an increase of that factor would result from all Third World inhabitants adopting First World living standards."
After reciting these twelve problems, Diamond points out the obvious - they're all interwoven. Each is linked to and compounds all the others.
"They are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50-years. For example, destruction of accessible lowland tropical rainforest outside national parks is already virtually complete in Peninsular Malaysia, will be complete at current rates within less than a decade in the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, on Sumatra and on Sulawest, and will be complete around the world except perhaps for parts of the Amazon Basin and Congo Basin within 25 years. At current rates, we shall have depleted or destroyed most of the world's remaining marine fisheries, depleted clean or cheap or readily accessible reserves of oil and natural gas, and approached the photosynthetic ceiling within a few decades. Global warming is projected to have reached a degree Centigrade or more, and a substantial fraction of the world's wild animal and plant species are projected to be endangered or past the point of no return, within half a century. People often ask, "what is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem." ...If we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble, whichever was the problem that remained unsolved. We have to solve them all."
"...the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics and collapse of societies."
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