Earth's ecological debt crisis: mankind's 'borrowing' from nature

[cal04]

Earth's ecological debt crisis: mankind's 'borrowing' from nature hits new record
Today is a bleak day for the environment, the day of the year when mankind over-exploits the world's resources - the day when we start living beyond our ecological means.

Evidence is mounting that rapid population growth and rising living standards among the Earth's six billion inhabitants are putting an intolerable strain on nature. For the first time an organisation ­ a British think-tank ­ has sought to pinpoint how quickly man is using the global resources of farming land, forests, fish, air and energy.

The new economics foundation has calculated from research by a US academic group, Global Footprint Network, that the day when we use more than our fair share of the Earth ­ when "humanity starts eating the planet" ­ is October 9.

In other words, assuming that the world has a certain quantity of natural resources that can sustainably be used up each year, today is the date at which this annual capacity is reached. And environmentalists warn that just as a company bound for bankruptcy plunging into the red or a borrower " maxing out" on credit cards must face the consequences, so must man.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1822171.ece

[Richard D]

1. "borrowing" . . .

. . . means that you intend to pay it back. Wrong word here. Raping is more like the correct word to use.

[carzen]

3. "plundering"

[pooja]

2. In an ecological model, you have to have the same ammount of

input as output. The so called "green" farming has nothing to do with being earth friendly. It takes huge amounts of energy to grow, which saps the land.

If you grow a garden, think: Do you change out the plot? No.. You spread composting dirt and till it into the soil... and then you lay a barrier overtop...(hay is a good one) and let it rest for wintering. In the spring your garden plot is ready for planting. With Monsanto gm seeds, they require lots of fertilizers.. These fertilizers come from phosphate plants... This system is completely unstable. At some point the land will be left completely desertified. Larger farms need to switch fields and let the soil replenish itself.

My uncle spread maneur in the field for the haying season. Nothing like smelling shit for a week waifing through your window. But the maneur from his milk cows made the hay better when it was time to bail in the late summer. And this process has occured like this for generations. My grandfather did the same thing for pasteurs. He would spread manuer.. let the field come up and then move his horses to that field to graze, while letting the other pastuer rest. I hated spreading shit.. I usually asked to hold the reins on the work horses...

[Gregorian]

4. Finally! The unspeakable is spoken! K/R

I post and post on this, and I tell everyone I know about this. And yet is goes in one ear and out the other. Even those who have been hearing it for decades.

The right to give birth is supreme over any other right except to one's own survival. And yet it has caused so much trouble.

Thanks for posting this link. I know of nothing more important.

People laugh when I start to draw conclusions based on how many people there are. More people- more wars.

[ramapo]

5. I'm surprised

I would've guessed that debt day is much earlier in the year.

The burden of the Earth's exploding human population should be obvious to anybody with even semi-critical thinking skills. I remember when the total population was 3 billion. To think that it has doubled in less than my relatively short life is amazing...and all at the expense of the crashing populations of so many other species.

The population problem has been effectively dismissed by most. Many use the discredited Erhlich book on the then-coming population bomb. Well his timing may have been off but how can anybody think that the Earth can support limitless growth? I guess the same people who think that our economy can continue to expand forever.

The expected "shrinking" populations of many European countries contribute to the misnomer that there is not an over-population problem.

It is difficult to imagine what the next 25-50 years will bring....