Consensus Statement from Global Scientists

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As members of the scientific community actively involved in assessing the biological and societal impacts on global change, we are sounding this alarm to the world. For humanity’s continued health and prosperity, we all –individuals, businesses, political leaders, religious leaders, scientists, and people in every walk of life –must work hard to solve these five global problems starting today:

1) Climate Disruption          2) Extinctions          3) Loss of Ecosystem Diversity          4) Pollution          5) Human Population Growth and Resource Consumption

Consensus Statement from Global Scientists

Endorse the Statement  

As members of the scientific community actively involved in assessing the biological and societal impacts on global change, we are sounding this alarm to the world. For humanity’s continued health and prosperity, we all –individuals, businesses, political leaders, religious leaders, scientists, and people in every walk of life –must work hard to solve these five global problems starting today:

Climate Disruption, Extinctions, Loss of Ecosystem Diversity, Pollution, and Human Population Growth and Resource Consumption

Growing concerns that contemporary patterns of economic development are unsustainable have given rise to an extensive empirical literature on population growth, consumption increases, and our growing use of nature’s products and services. However, far less has been done to reach a theoretical understanding of the socio-ecological processes at work at the population- consumption-environment nexus. In this Research Article, we highlight the ubiquity of externalities (which are the unaccounted for consequences for others, including future people) of decisions made by each of us on reproduction, consumption, and the use of our natural environment. Externalities, of which the “tragedy of the commons” remains the most widely discussed illustration, are a cause of inefficiency in the allocation of resources across space, time, and contingencies; in many situations, externalities accentuate inequity as well. Here, we identify and classify externalities in consumption and reproductive decisions and use of the natural environment so as to construct a unified theoretical framework for the study of data drawn from the nexus. We show that externalities at the nexus are not self-correcting in the marketplace. We also show that fundamental nonlinearities, built into several categories of externalities, amplify the socio-ecological processes operating at the nexus. Eliminating the externalities would, therefore, require urgent collective action at both local and global levels.

To read more, access the full article here.

 April 1, 2013, Denver – Even though sex and global warming are rarely discussed in the same sentence, much less in the same film, the long ignored truth was recently explored in the 2011 award- winning environmental documentary Mother: Caring for 7 Billion.  In celebration of Earth Day, the filmmakers ofMother announced the Internet release of their 2013 “Director’s Cut” of Mother that will stream for free on the Internet from April 19 until the end of May.  Christophe Fauchere, the director and co-producer stated,  “We want Mother to be viewed by as many people as possible for Earth Day because Mother holds up a mirror and shows people a very different way to look at their role on this planet.”  As Lisa Hymas from The Grist went on to say in her article  “This is not your father’s population documentary…  Mother takes a feminist/humanist view as it explores the issues of our exploding numbers.”   

 The journey to make the film was not always easy.  Mireya Navarro in her New York Times Green Blogwrote about the making of Mother  “they (the filmmakers) found some environmental groups reluctant to address the subject for fear of alienating their supporters.  One group hung up on them when they called..”  Writer Sacha Vignieri added to this environmental urgency in her Science magazine review “Our choice to avoid discussion of the population issue, however, will not make the problems disappear. Christophe Fauchere’s film Mother: Caring for 7 Billion encourages us to reengage, both publicly and personally, with the reality of what our increasing population will bring.”   

 Mother: Caring for 7 Billion (2011) is currently being shown in hundreds of classrooms around the country and is being broadcast throughout the world.   The next step in distribution is Netflix, Itunes and Hulu.   Tiroir A Films Productions’ previous award-winning environmental documentaries include The Great Squeeze (2009) and Energy Crossroads (2007). 

Contact:

Joyce Johnson at Tiroir A Films Productions, LLC (TAF)

Joyce@tiroirafilms.net 720 278-5359

www.tiroirafilms.net

Eugene A. Rosa, a pioneer in the environmental social sciences, died of February 21 at age 71.  Gene was committed to linking the leading edge of the social sciences to the ecological and earth systems sciences.  His work was truly interdisciplinary and was influential among scholars spanning the social, ecological and physical sciences.  He was an enthusiastic supporter of MAHB and an energetic member of the MAHB Steering Committee.

Gene’s career was marked by innovative research that opened up new fields of inquiry.  While still in graduate school at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Gene and his major professor, Allan Mazur published one of the first papers to demonstrate that for the industrial economies, energy consumption was decoupled from quality of life.  Their analysis spawned further analysis and started to shift our understanding of energy consumption in contemporary societies.

His lifelong interest in energy technology, and nuclear power in particular, led to an influential series of papers and edited books that helped found a social science of nuclear energy.  This also led to his early engagement in the sociology of risk, where he made immense and wide-ranging contributions.  His cross-cultural comparisons of risk perceptions have been cited as an exemplar of comparative research methods.  Gene made major theoretical contributions to our conceptualization of risk in Risk, Uncertainty and Rational Action (Earthscan, 2001) and The Risk Society (Temple, 2013).  He engaged in risk debates at every level, from his noted arguments about the epistemology and ontology of risk, to his organizing a distinguished group of researchers to critique the logic underpinning nuclear waste policy in the U.S. 

For the last two decades Gene has been a leader of the structural human ecology research program, an effort intended to bridge between the social and ecological sciences in the analysis of human drivers of environmental change.  With collaborators Richard York and Thomas Dietz, Gene established an analytical logic that evaluated the contribution of population, affluence, technology, institutions, culture and other factors in shaping environmental stress.  This was germinal in advancing  a new macro-sociology of the environment.  Gene’s work in structural human ecology has been published in journals across the social and ecological sciences.  His publications in this area have won awards from the American Sociological Association and the Society for Human Ecology, the latter for his book Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability (MIT  Press, 2010).

In addition to his scholarship, Gene was an accomplished artist and was very proud of his appointment as an Affiliated Professor of Fine Arts at Washington State University.  His sculptures, which he described as Ecolage, have appeared regularly in the annual Faculty of Fine Arts Exhibition and was the subject of a solo exhibition at Washington State.  Gene was also an avid collector—he had converted the top floor of his home in Moscow, Idaho into a gallery for his collection of contemporary art.

It is not surprising that so accomplished a scholar won many accolades.  He was the Edward R Meyer Distinguished Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy in the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State,  where he was also the Boeing Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sociology and Regent’s Professor.  He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He was one of only two people to twice win the Outstanding Publication Award of the Section on Environment and Technology of the American Sociological Association.  (The other two time winner is his student, Richard York.)

Gene was an extraordinary friend and colleague.  Whether it was new ideas for research, sage advice about professional life and ethics, or his gourmet cooking and incredible collection of wines, his generosity was unfailing.  Every conversation with Gene would sparkle with new ideas and with his unflagging good humor. 

Coming from a working class family in the Finger Lakes/ Lake Erie region of New York, he was always had a sense of wonder at the social and intellectual journey he was on.  And he was proud of his family and heritage.  He established the Luigi Gastaldo and Flora Brevette Rosa endowment, named for his parents, at the WSU Museum of Art to fund transportation expenses to the museum for children from the region who might otherwise not experience an art museum. 

Join us for a talk with Rob Dietz, co-author of the breakthrough book: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources.

Rob will present a visionary but realistic alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth—an economy where the goal is enough, not more.

THURSDAY, MARCH 28 – 7:00 to 8:30 pm
David Brower Center (Tamalpais Room)
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley
COST: Free to the public / Donations welcome

Read more about the event and book here

Hosted by HowMany.org / Institute for Population Studies
Co-sponsored by Earth Island Inst., Global Footprint Network, Int’l Forum on Globalization, MAHB, Sierra Club Bay Chapter Population Comm., Paragon Media, Transition Albany, Generation Green

All inputs needed to feed each additional person will, on average, come from scarcer, poorer and more distant sources, disproportionately more energy will be used, and disproportionately more greenhouse gases will be generated.

Means to address this growing threat will not be supplied by the market. A popular movement is needed to direct cultural awareness toward providing the “foresight intelligence” and the agricultural, environmental and demographic planning necessary.

Read more here: pdf or at The Daily Star

We are thirsty for more and more electricity. Rather than focusing on reducing demand, more and more creative ways are being explored to satisfy our demand–such as through ‘osmotic energy‘ to generate electricity in Tofte on Oslofjord, Norway.

Where freshwater and saltwater meet, such as where a river flows into a fjord or the sea, the salty water naturally diffuses towards the freshwater. Placing a membrane between the freshwater and the saltwater can capture that energy and convert it into electricity.

The good news is the enormous potential. After all, think about the huge number of locations where membranes could be placed at saltwater/freshwater interfaces to capture the energy.

The bad news is that the technology is in its infancy. There is a long way to go before osmotic energy will be powering many homes.

The membrane is especially challenging. Impressive research continues on manufacturing and maintaining large swathes of the material. We also need to consider the environmental impact of building the plants and distributing the membranes in the water.

Yet the trials are exciting, especially that the ups and downs are being discussed openly. The ongoing tests are showing the potential, and the limitations of, this form of electricity generation.

Maintaining that balanced approach is vital for experimenting with, and analysing all renewable energy forms. Calling it ‘free energy’, as one video does, for example, is wrong. Using energy always costs.

We still need to build, operate, and maintain the plant and membrane. The electricity needs to reach where it is used once it is produced. Pylons, transformers, and wires all require energy to make and each has an environmental impact.

The drawbacks should not stop us from trying. But ‘trying’ to do what? It seems that we wish to consume more no matter how much electricity we produce.

From heated pavements to large flat-screen televisions and computer monitors, our electricity appetite is insatiable. We seem to embrace the flawed idea that energy (and electricity) can be free as renewables increasingly enter our lives, irrespective of the negative effects of those renewables.

Kudos to the innovators who pursue osmotic energy and other renewable sources. But it cannot stop there. Let us apply such effort and creativity to reducing our electricity demand.

A variation of this article first appeared in The Foreigner, an English-language news service for Norway.

Read more here [PDF]

At last, high-level political support for scientific research, backed up with reasonable funds. The U.K.’s Chancellor announces a £21.5 million investment fund for universities.

Will this solve world hunger? Will it cut our fossil fuel consumption by 90%? Will it recommend an effective humanitarian aid system? Will it improve subsistence livelihoods?

None of the above. It will research one specific type of material, called graphene, because it has “great commercialisation potential”.

Kudos to the Nobel Prize winning physicists for ingenious research. No one should begrudge brilliant science or a government willing to support those scientific achievements with serious money.

But money only because the work can be commercialised and produce sellable technology? What happened to science for a better humanity?

Graphene has impressive potential to support sustainability endeavours and for helping humanity out of the sustainability mess that we have created. Perhaps the U.K.’s Chancellor could highlight the need to achieve sustainability goals through graphene.

So certainly do not take money away from technology-inspired research that will reap corporate profits. Instead, match those funds for projects with goals for all of humanity now. The paybacks and profits for society will be immense.