Posted on 05/18/2012 6:47:36 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The end is nigh! Or so our esteemed environmental prophets are telling us… yet again.
Humans will need two Earths to support our lifestyles by 2030 because we are draining the world’s resources so quickly, a new report has warned.
Produced by the World Wildlife Fund, the Zoological Society of London, the Global Footprint Network and the European Space Agency, the 2012 Living Planet Report measures humans’ ecological footprint on the planet.
At the moment, the picture is bleak, according to Jim Leape, Director General of WWF International, with resources being drained 50 per cent faster than they can be replenished.
He said: “We’re all familiar with the stories of what we’re doing to Planet Earth, the ways in which we’re changing the climate, depleting the world’s fisheries, destroying the world’s forests. …
“The report tells us that we’re already using the earth’s resources 50 per cent faster than it can be replenished, and that, if we don’t change our ways, by 2030 we will need two planets to support us.”
Over the decades, doomsayers have predicted that the growing pace of human activity simply isn’t sustainable. Catastrophes ranging from war, famine, and even human extinction are just a few years ’round the corner, they insist, mainly stemming from a crisis in global energy supplies. They imagine that the finite supply of oil on earth and our increasing production means that we’re sucking the planet dry with alarming rapidity.
The greens are especially freaked out these days, as economic growth in the population-dense countries of China and India means more of their citizens are becoming wealthy enough to afford cars and electricity and other modern conveniences (quelle horreur!), adding to worldwide oil demand. Yet, we’ve sailed right past these supposed apocalyptic moments every time, with little fanfare.
The date of the predicted peak has moved over the years. It was once supposed to arrive by Thanksgiving 2005. Then the “unbridgeable supply demand gap” was expected “after 2007.” Then it was to arrive in 2011. Now “there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020.” …
The first was in the 1880s, when production was concentrated in Pennsylvania and it was said that no oil would be found west of the Mississippi. Then oil was found in Texas and Oklahoma. Similar fears emerged after the two world wars. And in the 1970s, it was said that the world was going to fall off the “oil mountain.” But since 1978, world oil output has increased by 30%.
Just in the years 2007 to 2009, for every barrel of oil produced in the world, 1.6 barrels of new reserves were added. And other developments—from more efficient cars and advances in batteries, to shale gas and wind power—have provided reasons for greater confidence in our energy resiliency. Yet the fear of peak oil maintains its powerful grip.
President Obama is partial to this sort of scaremongering rhetoric, too. A couple months back, when he was trotting out the energy-theme from his campaign-distractions wheelhouse, he was fond of iterating sentences along the line of: “After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves.” …What the what? Anyone who knows anything about energy knows that this statement assumes proven reserves — but new discoveries and further technological/economic innovations are making more oil available for extraction all the time. Oil resources might be finite, but our proven reserves sure aren’t. For instance, just last week, the GAO announced that the Green River Formation in a few of our Western states is sitting atop oil supplies greater than the rest of the world’s current proven reserves, combined. So much for that “2 percent” nonsense.
And, by the way, what might be this new study suggest as the solution to this ostensible emergency?
Mr Leape stresses that the starting point for reducing our impact on the planet is to end our love affair with fossil fuels – “the energy technology of the 20th century” – and switch to renewable energy.
Mm hmm. Of course, I’m sure that his proposal is a completely dispassionate, not-at- all political exhortation, riiight?
Here’s the real deal: The earth has never been a better place in which to live. Yes, I said it. Worldwide, people live longer, consume more calories, earn more money, bury fewer children, and enjoy more modern conveniences than ever before — even though the world population has more than doubled in less than half a century. And thanks to ever-improving efficiency, innovation, and new technologies, life can continue to get better, and our demand for oil may even flatten out eventually. What’s with all the gloom and doom? If catastrophe really is on it’s way, it’ll be because nobody seems to be able to lock it up and get their fiscal house in order, not because we need a second planet earth.
New study: there are 100,000,000 too many people, which is exactly the number of environmentalists.
Well, we do know that the earth as we know it will be forever changed some day....but something tells me that they aren’t talking about this. 2 Peter 3:10 “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
The EOTWAWKI will undoubtedly come....and NOT in any of the ways these fellow travelers envision.
The fact that they’re so stoooopid doesn’t help.
We were all supposed to die at the change of the millenium anyway so we are on borrowed time.
If I had a nickel for every doomsday prediction not including 2012 ‘til now.. I could afford ObammyCare.. as it is, no one gets out anyway.. or so I heard.
Look at places like NYC, Tokyo and Seoul... if it were that crowded you could fit everyone on Earth into Texas. Please don’t though.
we can have resources of 2 Earths if we mine asteroids.
My green idea is to find another planet and colonize it.
This just can't be happening! Why, my libturd pinko English teacher in 1971 made us read "The Population Bomb" which predicted that people would literally be standing on top of each by 1995 or 2005 or something like that. I must admit, every time someone gets too close to me, I tense up, thinking he or she may all of sudden catapult onto my shoulders and stand on top of me... Ohhh the horror! /sarc
Isn't it amazing? The libTurds & their media partisan hacks, and the environmental whackos all breathlessly report on some doomsday tragedy, but they mock & deride the Genesis worldwide flood or of the soon return of Christ & destruction of the world bv fire as predicted in II Peter. It must be because they can't make any profit or book sales by stating the Biblical account.
How long before Obama declares this land a national monument removing it from possible developement?
“Look at places like NYC, Tokyo and Seoul... if it were that crowded you could fit everyone on Earth into Texas. Please don’t though.”
Wouldn’t have to be that crowded. Everyone in the world could fit into Texas in a comfortable suburban style environment.
You have no idea just how big Texas is unless you have driven it. It never seems to end.
And beyond the suburbs, there is no one out there. One second you’re looking at shopping malls and 10 seconds later there is nothing. Some cattle maybe and oil wells, lotsa oil wells.
There are lots of untapped resources for future generations. Much land is currently off limits for exploration. Open that up, and we’ll have lots of oil and mineral resources for hundreds of years. Not to mention what is hidden below lakes and oceans.
The problem is pollution, and more often than not it is young liberals who recklessly pollute. We could clean up our nation tremendously by banning take-out food and it’s packaging. Liberals would howl the loudest.
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