A study by the New Economics Foundation (Nef) and the Open University says 16 April is the day when the nation goes into "ecological debt" this year.
It warns if annual global consumption levels matched the UK's, it would take 3.1 Earths to meet the demand.
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even more depressing than that
15.04.2006 10:17
We will all die, horribly or not, but most of us prefer to think others will outlive us. Every generation throughout history was scared it would be the last, but now we are approaching the point where that seems certain. Our species always regarded itself as primary but our much vaunted intelligence is an evolutionary dead-end without an equal amount of wisdom. Building an atomic bomb is certainly proof of intelligence but equally it is proof of lack of wisdom. Our technology doubles every 18 months, our wisdom hasn't increased at all for 6,000 years. The techno-heads are expecting 'the singularity' , which is the science-as-religion equivalent of Judgement day.
It is sometimes said we can't uninvent nuclear weapons, but we could eliminate nuclear physics from academia. Everyone who holds a physics qualification or who applies for nuclear courses could just be killed until the knowledge becomes unusable and our philosphers have time to catch up. That is perhaps unfair to physicists, but it is justice for the greater catastrophes they have inflicted upon the rest of us. It's not just physicists, there are biological weapons, chemical weapons - in this regard the luddites, the unabomber and Pol Pot all had a point.
Danny
so come to the
15.04.2006 12:14
climatecamp.org.uk
Homepage:
http://climatecamp.org.uk
Worse than that -- MUCH worse
15.04.2006 14:45
About to become? ROFLOL! The British population grew far beyond any possibility of being supportable from your own ecological base a LONG time ago. To see the US as being in a worse fix is to totally misunderstand the nature of the disaster about to befall us.
Forget about how people in the US now consume. The reality is that at a bare subsistence level (like people now survive in the poorest parts of the world) the US could support its current population. They'd be miserable but would not necessarily die. The current population density is ~100/sq mile and although close to half the area doesn't get enough rainfall, half does. True, a lot of the land in the well watered areas is rough, but a lot isn't. The US would have about an acre of decent land per person and that would suffice for "subsistence".
Now take another look at your situation, what your population density is and what your land is like. Or rather turn it around -- how much population would your available ecological base support on a subsistence basis. That's the problem with the current proponents of analyzing the situation on a "footprint" basis. Footprint is the right way to look at the disaster before us but not necessarily in terms of CURRENT consumption levels but rather in terms of the bare survival levels to which we will be forced once the fossil resources have been exhausted (and that's not just oil -- remember the fossil water being pumped from the aquifers for irrigation, the fossil nitrates spread on the fields to keep up yields, etc.).
The disaster will be worst in places where ........
1) The the bare subsistence footprint exceeds what is available
2) The local footprint would be sustainable but too close to neighbors where it is not
Mike Novack
e-mail:
stepbystpefarm mtdata.com
LET OUR VOUICE BE HEARD!!!!
15.04.2006 21:50
I spoke outside the registery office today and gave brief details about how my family have been effected by the Home Office, I would just like to say it was a fantastic day!!!, and most of all the number of people who turned up to demonstrate was fantastic!. I pray and hope that we will all grow bigger and our vouices become louder so that we can all make others aware of what our goverment are doing to asylum seekers/refugees. Thank you to all that showed support, let's all KEEP STRONG and continue with our fight to STOP the Home Office treating people in such a horrible way, hope to see you all soon, take care xx
Miss Lisa Gordon
e-mail:
LisaGordonXxX@aol.com
Climate camp is a good start
16.04.2006 09:02
But in the meantime look at your food miles and start by growing your own organic veg. It not THE answer, but it is an answer. If possible walk, use a push bike, use public transport. It not THE answer, but it is an answer.
Do these two things and I will Guarantee you that, carrots will taste of carrot, potatoes of potato and you will have strawberries to die for!! you will feel relaxed, independant and a little healthier too - what an bargain!
Croltbopper
Best Headline EVER
18.04.2006 08:59
Tumble Weed
Doom Gloom Boom
19.04.2006 01:56
doomsaying has actually been a proffesion of sorts occasionally in ages past, somthing else taken from the common man reshaped and spewed forth by a senile media, Our land no our earth is being damaged and truly it is being allowed for an easier life for us and by us.
i agree you can grow your own food, learn how to manage your own travel, build your own resources, create your own entertainment. all this could be done by any person in a better more ecological way whether you are smart or not disabled or more than able but the real Doom we face is not from space, nor from the enviroment but from our own depressive inability to see or to feel that we can all acheive a little more than what is expected of us or than what is drilled into our bloated mindset. not all the time nor on our own but together some of the time learning to live better with all that is around us.
palewarrior
am I the only person alive who thinks this is shit?
20.04.2006 01:13
what the fuck is this? not just because killing anyone with a physics qualification or applying for em 'nuclear courses' is wrong (who are you talking about? students, people with families?) but because its also silly to assume that somehow killing people with qualifications or students in a subject would make that knowledge unuseable. Pol Pot had similar ideas.
I hate this. its a kind of enviromental facism. if i'm supposed to believe simplisticly that killing people now will equate to a new dawn where we are all somehow free of scary knowledge, because thats what you'd have to do, oh and don't forget to burn the books. and then you get eden, you think?
heather
Shit thinking
21.04.2006 09:42
It happens to be humour Heather, something you seem unqualified in. Me, I have a minor qualification in nuclear physics so I'd be first on my own list but I'll pass the list to you when I go so you can add your name at the top..
I do find it odd that if I gave children guns and live ammunition to play with I would be held responsible for the subsequent deaths but the scientists who gave politicians nuclear weapons to play with went unpunished. You correctly identify the premise of the joke, we can't realistically kill everyone interested in physics, biology and chemistry even if we held them accountable to collective blame for their superiors in their fields corrrupt and immoral activities. I suppose I should have signalled the punch line Basil Brush style with an appropriate 'boom boom', in memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki..
Anti-nuclear protestors aren't really anti-nuclear, they all approve of sunlight, the solar nuclear action, they just disapprove of man-made nuclear weapons and nuclear waste. If you could get clean, cold nuclear fusion thern you would be welcomed by the anyti-nuclear movement. Since we can't uninvent nuclear weapons and it is impractical to kill the millions of people qualified in physics, can you think of any way to prevent the future and perhaps imminent use of nukes ? How about killing every politician who possesses nukes and threatens their use or is that too fascistic for you ? I think anyone who threatens the entire species is no great loss myself, especially those divinely inspired leaders who believe in the literal truth of Judgement day, and their role in it. Do you know your taxes went to support the Khmer Rouge ? Do you know Pol Pots last words were 'Everything I did, I did for my country'. No borders means no politicians, and the elite won't leave power willingly, everything it does is designed to gather more power to it. Petitioning politicians to give up nukes is like saying to a furious five year old, 'Honey, please put down the gun'.
The Eastern world, it is explodin',
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'.
You're old enough to kill, but not for votin',
You don't believe in war -- but what's that gun you're totin'?
An' even the Jordan river has bodies floatin'.
But you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say,
An' can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away,
There'll be no one to save, will the world in a grave.
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy.
An' you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin',
I'm sittin' here just contemplatin'.
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
Handful of senators don't pass legislation,
An' marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin',
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'.
An' you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China,
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama.
Ah, you may leave here for four days in space,
But when you return it's the same ol' place,
The poundin' of the drums, the pride an' disgrace.
You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace.
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace,
An' tell me, over and over and over again, my friend,
You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction,
No, no, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Danny
shave the whirled
17.07.2006 13:09
Luddly ite