Sarah: Symbol of a Sick State of Mind

I don't want to write about Sarah Palin on a personal level. After all, she's an attractive lady, has some pretty significant achievements to her credit and looks like she would be fun to be with.
What scares me, however, is her beliefs. Even more frightening is that a large number of Americans share her ideals. She is a symbol for moral derailment.
First, Ms Palin has five children and is opposed to abortion and family planning. Her championing of the sanctity of life is the ultimate contradiction. It appears Ms Palin hasn't learned about fish stocks being wiped out, coral reefs dying, oil shortages and food riots. She protects life today, but doesn't care one whit for future generations who, if we all followed the Palin doctrine, would live a nightmare, if they lived at all.
Ms Palin shrugs off her daughter's pregnancy, "Well, that's life. Teenagers will be teenagers." Nice try. Yes, teenagers do get pregnant, but it's wrong, wrong, wrong. Teenage pregnancies are a serious problem that reduces the quality of life for both mother and child and places a burden on society. Sex education, family planning and—listen up all you Ms Palins—parents providing good role models, are vitally needed.
Ms Palin does not believe global warming is caused by humans. Well, who the heck raised carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere from 280 ppm to 382 ppm since the industrial revolution started? God?
Ms Palin believes in creationism. I'm dumbfounded. Religious fanaticism is just a way of cowering behind a shield of ignorance, a means of justifying unacceptable behaviour (an example, extreme perhaps, is suicide bombers).
The globe is teetering on the brink and one big reason is that too many share the philosophy of Ms Palin. It's time to put ignorance and zealotry aside and turn to common sense, logic and caring about our neighbours and the common good. Good luck Obama.

The Glass is Empty

Over the past 60 years human civilization has had the best innings of its 400,000 years of existence. The quality of life — at least in the developed countries — just kept soaring higher and higher.
But now — ever so suddenly — we have stumbled into dark times. I can't help but worry that the situation is going to get worse, far worse than anyone imagines. Because life has been so good for so long, many people feel it's an entitlement, that simply being born bestows on us the right to prosperity and all the materialistic hedonism it entails. Not true!
It's not a stretch to imagine massive unemployment in the USA in the next few years, perhaps reaching levels seen in the Great Depression. Should that happen, things could get real ugly. This time attitudes are different, gangs and guns are are prevalent — thanks a million, Charlton Heston and the NRA! — and there is nowhere to migrate to find employment. I predict that society will breakdown in some regions. The hot, arid southwest is a strong candidate. But where will that lead? Will we see anarchy, or can society recover?
Even before this made-by-greed financial crisis struck, the environment and resources were being hammered. The oceans are being raped, food riots have erupted and the insidious global warming is slowly bringing this cauldron we call Earth to a boil. And with everyone's attention focussed on the economy and jobs, the environment will, unfortunately, take a distant back seat.
The root cause, which our leaders conveniently choose to ignore, is overpopulation. The simple fact is that there are too few resources on this good planet to support seven billion people in a North American lifestyle. Sadly, the population issue will remain locked on the back burner. I despair for my grandchildren.
Let's peer into the murky future. How do you think this mess will play out? How low can it go? Please send me some scenarios you think will develop in the next year or two.

Reflections in a Mirror

I bumped into Devon, a friend who works in the resource sector, at a recent social gathering. He began to curse the tiny pine beetle. "Have you seen aerial photos of the damage they're doing to the forests?" he demanded, poking me in the chest with a pudgy finger while waving a beer in the other hand. "Almost 15% of British Columbia's forests have been ruined by these damnable insects. They're costing the province a fortune and now they're spreading into Washington state and Alberta. Something's got to be done, the government has to take action.
"Why would you say that?" I replied. "After all, they're only copying human behaviour. You should admire them for being so successful." I reminded him of human exponential growth – 4 billion more people in the past 50 years – how we're wiping out resources like oil and fisheries even faster than pine beetles are decimating forests.
He looked puzzled, but came back with, "The government should mount an aerial campaign using pesticides or whatever means we have."
"Yes," I responded, "that is always our human answer. If any other species steps over their boundaries -- and often even if they don't – we cull them, shoot them, spray them, destroy their habitat."
"Devon, governments everywhere are fixed on the goal of growing the economy, expanding even more. Why don't we humans take steps to control our own population? If it's so obvious for pine beetles, why are we blind to our own unsustainable growth?" He took a deep drink and didn't answer.
I jabbed him in his ample girth, "Devon, when you look at your aerial photos, you are looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection of human behaviour. Yet you have never shown the same passion about reducing human numbers. Why?"
He mumbled something about my having had too many drinks and wandered off shaking his head.

The Elusive Steady State

The other day I stumbled upon the web site of a neat organization, one that has put its finger on what is going wrong with this crazy world. The Centre for the Advancement of a Steady-State Economy (CASSE; http://www.steadystate.org/), a non-profit organization of natural scientists and ecological economists, makes compelling arguments that the current financial crisis has been caused by excessive growth in the economy, and that the current meltdown is a method of "correcting" the situation. CASSE states that continued economic growth not only harms the environment but also threatens national security and international stability. We need, they urge, to move toward a better non-growing (i.e., steady-state) economy. In a world of fast-depleting resources and increasing pollution, these words are rapidly becoming more meaningful.
A quiet corollary that is frequently overlooked, however, is that it is impossible to bring the economy into equilibrium if the population is constantly growing. A necessary requirement for a steady-state economy is a steady-state population.
I strongly feel that both a steady-state economy and a population in equilibrium are necessary of we want a sustainable planet.
Feedback?

Old News

While cleaning out some files recently I came across a newspaper article dated 1994. "Earth has too many people" shouted the headline. A study at Cornell University led by Professor David Pimentel had concluded that the human population must fall substantially to an optimum of — get this! — between one and two billion. With this population the Earth can provide the water and fertile land necessary for a diverse, nutritious diet of plant and animal products. Otherwise enormous numbers of people will live in misery, poverty, disease and starvation. The study stated that the population could be brought to below two billion by 2100 if each couple had only 1.5 children.

Similar studies by the United Nations, the World Wildlife Foundation and Professor William Rees and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia also conclude that human population exceeds the carrying capacity of the Earth. They feel that a sustainable human population is in the four to six billion range. These are trusted and respected organizations with learned, reputable researchers. The validity of their studies is not in doubt.

Yet their results are buried on the back pages, ignored and treated as mere curiosity. No one is taking action. Instead, we march in the opposite direction. The world's population has increased by just over one billion since the 1994 study, and the count keeps ticking upward.
Signs of a teetering world are everywhere: war in Iraq, genocide in Darfur, food riots, peak oil, fisheries wiped out and now the biggest recession since the 1930s. This can't possibly end well.

How long can the pressure keep building? What will it take to get us talking seriously about population?

Split Personality

Our economic system is in shambles. The sub-prime mortgage crisis and plummeting stock markets are the start of the biggest recession since the 1930s.

To make things even worse, human numbers — almost seven billion — are well beyond the carrying capacity of the good Earth. Oil production has passed its peak. World grain production is decreasing. The ocean's fisheries are being depleted. Global temperature is rising. And I could go on.

After the Second World War, cheap energy, mass production and technological innovation brought good times. Society enjoyed the best 60 years of human existence. But now that Golden Age has crashed onto a reef.

As discussed in my last blog, communism and now capitalism have been brought to their knees by a common human trait: greed. Today our society is characterized by conspicuous consumption, superficiality, vanity, materialism, mindless entertainment and, most of all, greed, which comes in many shades. Instead of planning ahead, we have instant gratification. Instead of kindness and consideration, we have vanity and narcissism. Instead of ethics, everything is condoned. Instead of honour, we have "who cares." Instead of charity and sharing, we grasp for more.

It's the tragedy of the commons on a grand scale. To hell with others; let's live for the present and abandon the future.

Technology will not solve our problems. The solution lies much closer: between our ears. We need to change our attitudes and become more caring of our neighbours and considerate of future generations. We must learn to control our greed. But how?

Human beings have split personalities. We desperately need to find ways of curbing the negative traits, especially greed, and fostering the positive. But how?

Send me your ideas. Let's talk about this .... our survival depends on it.

The Berlin Wall, Capitalism and Greed

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the failure of communism. It was a great theory – equality, sharing, brotherhood – but it went sour in practice. When walls, barbed wire and machine-guns are necessary to pen in fellow comrades, the system is morally bankrupt.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis that is devastating the stock markets and plunging America into a deep recession/depression marks – like the Berlin Wall – the failure of capitalism. Again, a great theory – free enterprise with a competitive marketplace providing built-in checks and balances – ran aground in practice.

The common factor in the unravelling of these two great theories is human greed. Something in the human psyche, a basic drive, makes us – some more than others – lust for power, wealth and all their trappings. Too many CEOs and managers believe the ends justify any means. Who cares about ethics, regulations, share holders or our grandchildren. It's all about getting obscene salaries, perks and huge severance packages. Conrad Black – now languishing in jail – and Dick Grasso – who somehow "arranged" a $187 million severance package from the New York Stock Exchange – are poster boys for unfettered capitalism.

What a dilemma: two vastly different systems of governance have both been skewered by a simple, basic human trait. So what is the answer?

We must change our mindset. Somehow we need to become more caring of our neighbours and considerate of the future we bequeath our grandchildren. We must diminish our greed. But how? Perhaps topics like happiness, caring and volunteerism should become important parts of school curricula. Instead of obsessing about technology perhaps research should be directed towards these social topics. Perhaps cities can be redesigned around centres that function like villages, offering "communities" where people care and help each other.

Desperately needed is a campaign to conquer greed. Let's talk about this, it's important.