On behalf of Michael Dittmar:

Hi,

i think when talking about overshoot we need first of all
to become real and realistic about our situation.

The footprint concept is totally underestimating our problem
as it ignores the important and dominating contribution
from non renewable energy resources.
Take oil out of the current system of food production and the
result shows that we are not only using 1.5 earth today
but 10 or even more.
Thus.. unfortunately even your statement below is
unrealistic and we need to go beyond this.

“The degree of overpopulation is best indicated (conservatively) by ecological footprint analysis, which shows that to support today’s population sustainably at current patterns of consumption would require roughly another half a planet, and to do so at the U.S. level would take four to five more Earths.”

-Michael Dittmar

On behalf of Lee:

“Transparency is the Enemy of Empires”.

-Lee

On behalf of Joseph Vincent Siry:

I am struck by what eighty to ninety-five million more Americans would mean for the nation. Many novices will look at states like Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona to suggest we have plenty of room. They of course disregard the water needed for those people, their hygiene, electricity and nutrition. While it does not all come down to water, I am struck by how many people just think of do we have the space for fifty more Manhattans or thirty more San Diegos. New York already needs the Catskill Mountains for its watershed to provide sufficient water and California drains the Colorado River and parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains. More people will mean the necessity for more forested mountains.

If the nation switched to geothermal energy sources, more folks could migrate to the arid western states, but water would have to be re-used several times over since the west is in the worst drought in centuries. But water is only a piece of the problem. Certainly adding more people means changing our dietary habits. Currently many American children receive insufficient food calories on a daily basis. Do we propose to feed the additional population as we have our existing residents? That too takes water, but food also requires fossil fuels to grow, transport, refrigerate, package and get to our tables. Some studies show ten calories of energy are needed to put one calorie of food into your diet. Can we sustain that sort of deficit for another forty-five years? Still there are people who think we have enough space for ninety million more neglecting the area needed for transportation, energy, watershed, and disposal of our un-recycled wastes.

Land fills the size of mountains exist in many American cities to collect and store our refuse. Some regions make parks, golf courses, and even school sites out of these mounds. Additional people will require that sort of creative re-use of structures, places and dumps. Some Americans may be able to live at the density of existence that Japanese families take for granted. But our consumption of acres for roads, public institutions, and homes will have to change radically if water, food, and electricity will be sufficient for even fifty million more people. Critics will say that the Dutch use greenhouses for growing food and decorative plants, they build walls to keep out the flooding sea, and they preserve their farmland, orchards and fields. But there are few American regions that match the density of the Netherlands or Japan, we do not even match those nation’s transportation systems, let alone copy their regulations for land-use and water conservation.

When you hear people ignorantly suggest population growth is good remind them of what we need. Ask them are they prepared to live on the water use levels that Israel consumes where every new construction is required to have solar thermal installed? Ask if they are ready to set aside forests, fields, and sacred areas, as have the Japanese. And ask them if they will live as do the Dutch with very high levels of re-use of scarce materials and strict zoning for protecting agricultural and flood lands. I think you will find that–as we in America need a quarter of the world’s resources to sustain only four percent of the world’s population; and we borrow already more money than we produce to live as we do– we are not prepared to have forty, fifty, or sixty million more people in our already exhausted countryside.

-Joseph Vincent Siry

On behalf of Stella Joy:

f the freshwater cycle is not protected and secured through legislative and conservation action major freshwater problems will be experienced within the rich developed countries as well as the poorer countries. Water and food scarcity will escalate, wars for water will increase and global poverty will rise alarmingly in relation to this. All human societies whether rich or poor along with nature, will undergo immense unnecessary suffering. Making water an Sustainable Development Goal and recognizing it as a global commons will make an enormous difference to the survival and evolution of life on Earth.

The Human Right to Water supports the Right to Food, which protects the Right of all human beings to live in dignity, free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. The Human Right to Food is not about charity, but about ensuring that all people have the capacity to feed themselves in dignity. It is dependent upon there being adequate quantity, quality and supply of freshwater. To implement the right to clean drinking water and sanitation, government obligations include the protection and restoration of environments, which the hydrological cycle depends upon. This is essential for there being adequate freshwater to meet humanities need at an affordable price for all. This has been agreed upon as the central factor in achieving water security.

“Ensuring that ecosystems are protected and conserved is central to achieving water security – both for people and for nature. Ecosystems are vital to sustaining the quantity and quality of water available within a watershed, on which both nature and people rely.

Freshwater is an infinite renewable so long as the environmental factors it needs are available. Universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation is impossible to realize if the very freshwater cycle itself is compromised and unable to fulfill its natural renewable and recharge functions. Its stability has been compromised and could reach a tipping point if not dealt with as an urgent issue of national and international security.

“Maintaining the integrity of ecosystems before they become compromised is an essential component of achieving water security and reducing the potential for conflicts. The continuous pace of human development is threatening the capacity of ecosystems to adapt, raising concerns that ecosystems will reach a tipping point after which they are no longer able to provide sustaining functions and services, and will become unable to recover their integrity and functions (Maas, 2012). Establishing sustainability boundaries will set the capacity of ecosystems before their limit is surpassed, acting as a preventative measure before crises and conflicts arise.” (U.N Analytical Brief 22/3/13)

The quantity and quality and adequate supply of freshwater depend upon water sourcing ecosystems. These include mountains (the water towers of the world), mixed mountain forests, rain forests and wetlands. The protection, conservation and restoration of all ecosystems,which the global freshwater cycle is dependent upon, is central to achieving national and international water and food security security and hence all security.

We suggest such action be taken seriously and immediately whilst there is still time to do so. The health of mountain regions will determine the survival of life and evolution on Earth. Mountain forests can only be restored while both soil and mountain communities to do the work remain there.

Stella Joy

On behalf of Joseph Vincent Siry:

I am struck by what eighty to ninety-five million more Americans would mean for the nation. Many novices will look at states like Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona to suggest we have plenty of room. They of course disregard the water needed for those people, their hygiene, electricity and nutrition. While it does not all come down to water, I am struck by how many people just think of do we have the space for fifty more Manhattans or thirty more San Diegos. New York already needs the Catskill Mountains for its watershed to provide sufficient water and California drains the Colorado River and parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains. More people will mean the necessity for more forested mountains.

If the nation switched to geothermal energy sources, more folks could migrate to the arid western states, but water would have to be re-used several times over since the west is in the worst drought in centuries. But water is only a piece of the problem. Certainly adding more people means changing our dietary habits. Currently many American children receive insufficient food calories on a daily basis. Do we propose to feed the additional population as we have our existing residents? That too takes water, but food also requires fossil fuels to grow, transport, refrigerate, package and get to our tables. Some studies show ten calories of energy are needed to put one calorie of food into your diet. Can we sustain that sort of deficit for another forty-five years? Still there are people who think we have enough space for ninety million more neglecting the area needed for transportation, energy, watershed, and disposal of our un-recycled wastes.

Land fills the size of mountains exist in many American cities to collect and store our refuse. Some regions make parks, golf courses, and even school sites out of these mounds. Additional people will require that sort of creative re-use of structures, places and dumps. Some Americans may be able to live at the density of existence that Japanese families take for granted. But our consumption of acres for roads, public institutions, and homes will have to change radically if water, food, and electricity will be sufficient for even fifty million more people. Critics will say that the Dutch use greenhouses for growing food and decorative plants, they build walls to keep out the flooding sea, and they preserve their farmland, orchards and fields. But there are few American regions that match the density of the Netherlands or Japan, we do not even match those nation’s transportation systems, let alone copy their regulations for land-use and water conservation.

When you hear people ignorantly suggest population growth is good remind them of what we need. Ask them are they prepared to live on the water use levels that Israel consumes where every new construction is required to have solar thermal installed? Ask if they are ready to set aside forests, fields, and sacred areas, as have the Japanese. And ask them if they will live as do the Dutch with very high levels of re-use of scarce materials and strict zoning for protecting agricultural and flood lands. I think you will find that–as we in America need a quarter of the world’s resources to sustain only four percent of the world’s population; and we borrow already more money than we produce to live as we do– we are not prepared to have forty, fifty, or sixty million more people in our already exhausted countryside.

-Joseph Vincent Siry

On behalf of Leilani Jones:

I enjoyed reading this very much but I believe something that I never see mentioned. I believe that there is no problem that man has created, and science and technology fixed, that didn’t lead to the next big problem. This to me, is one of the main reasons we have come to this place in time. Man has polio. Science and technology finds a cure, thus leading to more people living and producing. Can anyone tell of one problem, man created and science fixed that didn’t lead to more problems acerbated by science and technology fixing it to begin with?

-Leilani Jones

Karen Gaia says:

One of the reasons for population taboo is that people are not confident enough in voluntary family planning. They are afraid of ‘population control.’ The old school felt it necessary to pressure people into ‘stopping at two’.

What is lacking is enough knowledge of how many pregnancies are unintended. If these unintended pregnancies could be better addressed, such as more education on the benefits of contraception, combining reproductive health with family planning, more accessibility, affordable long-acting methods, and empowering women to use family planning (such as secondary education and being employed).

To add to the problems with food production:

A current satellite study show that we may be already at maximum plant production for the planet.

Several countries large in population have overpumped aquifers and soon the water bubble will pop.

More and more fisheries are being depleted and ocean acidification will reduce the bottom of the food chain, which will, in turn, reduce all higher forms of aquatic life.

The soil and our water ways are being poisoned by excess nitrogen from artificial fertilizers.

Soil is eroding far beyond it’s replenishment rate.

-Karen Gaia

On behalf of Tamra Englehorn Raven:

A new global metric for the Anthropocene for reflective human scale local urgent ecological restoration. http://youtu.be/QI0XTbT7hM0
Mapping local scale photosynthesis and vegetation connectivity globally using rectangular volumetric of air:land:water http://youtu.be/-Bbh_gAs5pU
Map #10km3x2 @tamraraven
Map plants under UNCBD http://youtu.be/6rDIjXNTSkc
Geocoded Spatial Transparent Metric is scale needed for verification of UN conventions/treaties e.g. TRANSBOUNDARY Air Pollution, Persistent Organic Pollutants, UNFCCC, UNCCD, UNCLOS, RAMSAR etc http://youtu.be/83daosgeAn8
Half the global population of humans is under twenty five, this is signally new thinking. See SHIFT 10km3x2 http://youtu.be/kFOPGilwiB4

-Tamra Engelhorn Raven

On behalf of Randolph Femmer:

Much thanks to Dr. Ehrlich for this post. To expand upon one of his observations, suppose that we contemplate for a moment a universally-achievable set of the top 100 or so core population / environment principles, concepts, data sets, and understandings.

As one example, envision a brief freely-downloadable set or two of five or six open-courseware PowerPoints and an equal number of brief “executive summary” PDFs that together might comprise a kind of “Biospheric Literacy and Sustainability 101.”

What specific content might such universal “biospheric literacy” understandings include? An initial set of answers can begin to be compiled by simply posing the following question: “What Should Every Citizen Know About Our Planet?” (Notice how quickly core terms, data sets, and understandings immediately come to mind by simply asking the question.)

In recent years we have given some considerable thought to the above ideas and have made our own results available as open-courseware resources that are entirely free for use by scientists, students, and educators anywhere in the world. One of these is a new set of six PowerPoints appropriate for a brief one-or-two week unit for first-year undergraduates (of every major) and even for schools in general which set is accessible athttp://www.scribd.com/collections/3705681/Biospherics-Literacy-101-Five-PowerPoints-Five-Days . (The very first of these PowerPoints actually addresses Population, Carrying capacity and Limiting factors in Natural Systems” and is accessible at http://www.scribd.com/doc/118659074/Population-Carrying-Capacity-and-Limiting-Factors-ppt-version .)

As a second set, envision a “Priority population collection of executive summary PDFs for Academia and Policymakers” which also includes six or seven brief and easily-digestible summaries. These latter resources are also freely-downloadable and are accessible at http://www.scribd.com/collections/3655003/Population-for-Academia-and-Policymakers .

Notice that for non-scientists, policymakers, and decision-makers, an essential collection of core population / environment ideas, data sets, and understandings can be introduced and easily assimilated in, for example, a one-day workshop.

-Randolph Femmer