Grandsons will live in truly interesting times

My grandsons will live in truly interesting times.

I don’t want that to be the case, but we have exploited the earth to such an extent that such an outcome is not just possible, it is unquestionably certain.
Although my generation is not solely responsible for what is unfolding, it has continued and worsened a pattern of consumption that evolved since the Industrial Revolution some 200 years ago.
Subsequently, should we be looking to ascribe the tribulations facing my grandsons to someone, look no further for it is I, along with anyone else working to support, maintain and expand developed Western-style economies.
The “Living Planet Report” of 2010 released in December showed that as of last year humanity was using nature’s services 50 percent faster than what Earth could renew them.
It illustrated that a projected “moderate” business as usual scenario over the coming decades would lift those demands to the point where we would need two and a half times earth’s capacity to survive.
The arithmetic is simple, by 2050 life on earth is going to become a rather risky affair, so risky in fact that many of us will not survive and with my grandsons in their early forties, they will be in the heart of calamitous times.
Conscious of a friend’s views that “what” requires little thought and the real innovations emerge when thinkers successfully explore “how” and so let’s begin with the personal – you, and your approach to life is the first step in making life more comfortable for my grandsons, along with all your descendants.
First, we must support and encourage anyone, politician or otherwise, who advocates a stable-state economy in which the emphasis is on quality rather than quantity; we should support anyone who advocates a society that has a public bias as opposed to the private wealth of a few over the exploitation of many; that same support should go to anyone insisting on equality throughout society; and, critically, we should support any morally philanthropic soul who works to break the hold of the military/industrial estate.
My innocent three and one-year-old grandsons have the unknowing expectation that we will act. Will we?

Although Malthus was wrong, he was dead right

Earth’s population is the elephant in the room.

Thomas Malthus (right) first alerted the earth to population difficulties when he wrote about the issue in the late 1800s.

Many of his predictions were well-wide of the mark and so his credibility collapsed, however the elephant is still there and getting bigger.

Malthus’s predictions, as time illustrated, came out of a vacuum of understanding about man’s innovative nature or his growing grasp of technology because, in fact, most of the technology that transformed life on earth had not been thought of, let alone invented.
Human numbers on earth are growing exponentially with nearly seven billion jammed on board and the best estimates put that number at about nine billion by 2050.
Sixty years ago, 1950, earth’s population was about 2.5 billion and although the bus was then a little overloaded, it seemed the planet’s resources were coping.
However, the numbers have since crept inexorably upward as we have become better at preserving life, despite our seemingly blind insistence throughout the 20th century at slaughtering millions of our fellows.
We have become technologically smarter and although we can see things whose existence is small in the extreme and beyond the understanding of most, we can’t see, or don’t want to talk about, the elephant in the room, earth’s population.
Those around the world with sufficient influence to alter attitudes on population, simply don’t, or won’t, go there as it means promoting or espousing ideas that question a fundamental of humanity, procreation.
Various plagues have decimated humans on an off for centuries, but the worst plague – that’s you and me and our fellows – goes on largely unnoticed and additions, certainly in the developed world, are greeted with celebration.
Opportune times to grasp a kindly solution seem to have passed with nature poised to illustrate that our place here hinges on collaboration, friendliness and the abandonment of perverse human traits that has seen the human landscape forever troubled by competition and confrontation.
Humans, like all other life forms, have an insatiable need to maintain and extend their gene pool, but forces most don’t understand will soon halt that and decimate humanity

Weather worsened events distract from understanding knotty reasons

Floods, fires and other weather worsened events seriously distract us from understanding and acting on the more knotty issues that contribute to their complexity.

Although Queensland’s floods (right) and Victoria’s fires, along with the many other weather-based difficulties around the world, are catastrophes of immense dimensions, with a huge human cost, they are simply symptoms of a grander world event.
Struggling with floods, fighting fires and marshalling our forces to get back to business as usual has honourable intent, but it misses the point.
Mute nature may be,  its actions speak louder than words it can’t speak and through its massive weather events, it is attempting to alert us that we do not act with impunity and so are not beyond its influence
Rather, however, we are a part of it and as the past century has shown, just a fragment, although a critical and influential fragment.
The urgency with which we seek that return to business of usual following such disasters as floods and fires is misplaced and ignores warnings from decades ago that without a fresh approach to our politics and way of living, decided difficulties were certain to emerge. Record droughts and hitherto unseen flooding suggest the accuracy of those predictions.
True, the floods and fires are not directly attributable to climate change, but weather events arising from changes to our climate worsened those present and recent difficulties and should be seen as another warning that all is not right.
Rather than rush to a return of business as usual, we should be re-examining our life-styles, our ideas and the management of our ways in the interest of reducing our carbon footprint remembering that it was the former Chief Scientist with the British Government, Sir David King, who said that climate change is the most severe problem the world faces, bar none.
Neo-liberal inspired growth has opened up the good life to most in Western economies and the resultant accompanied comforts have psychologically trapped many of us leaving us with a misplaced obligated sense that we must return to business of usual as quickly as we can, whatever the cost.