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The Forum > Article Comments > Elephant in the greenhouse part II > Comments

Elephant in the greenhouse part II : Comments

By Michael Kile, published 4/12/2015

The current world population of 7.3 billion is increasing by 83 million a year. It will reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.

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All good stuff and all too true.
Posted by ateday, Friday, 4 December 2015 8:26:34 AM
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I suggest with incessant demand growth that fossil fuels will run out sooner than we think, thereby largely 'solving' the emissions problem. Australia is now perilously dependent on oil and fuel imports and cannot really afford long term to export gas as LNG from the eastern seaboard. Coal mines are encroaching on prime farmland which seems odd if there is supposed to be plenty of reserves.

In numbers the world is now using 17 terawatts of power comprising say 13 fossil fuelled and 4 non fossil. By mid century due to population growth and a more equitable distribution of consumption we might need say 25 TW = 22 nonfossil + 3 fossil. Nonfossil has to increase more than fivefold in this period. Where will this come from? Hint... ample real world evidence shows not much of it will be wind and solar.

As we desperately burn coal, oil and gas to keep the party going the economic reserves will run out quicker. Perhaps we should worry about that as much as emissions.
Posted by Taswegian, Friday, 4 December 2015 9:27:03 AM
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The mad population increase pruduces more useless people we feed out of misguided 'compassion'. Stop feeding them.
Posted by ttbn, Friday, 4 December 2015 9:43:44 AM
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That`s right, by feeding them and keeping them alive they just breed more
and more
and more
and more
ad infinitum.........
Posted by ateday, Friday, 4 December 2015 10:13:43 AM
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One thing is sure, the Vatican are amazing, behind the scenes lobbyists. They continue to preach the evils of condoms, continue to deny women their right to have their tubes tied in Catholic hospitals, continue to avoid the topic of the real elephant in the room, our explosive global population, all in the name of religion.

Clearly Charles Darwin was correct when he noted that any species will produce far more individuals than can survive and they will keep increasing in numbers until they run out of resources. Then nature will sort it out, in one quick and dramatic thud. So be it, we humans might have evolved to have larger brains, large enough to ensure our own eventual destruction, but not large enough to live sustainably
Posted by Yabby, Friday, 4 December 2015 10:27:23 AM
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Only complete dunderheads and moribund morons would envision we could allow the ambient temperatures to rise by a whole 2C!?

And we just don't need to on any grounds, but particularly economic ones!

There are things we can and should do to first quite massively grow the economy, which will among a host of other economic advantages, quite literally suck the climate change gases from our atmosphere, all while providing low cost and endlessly sustainable transport fuels!

More talk won't however, produce a single litre of alternate algae sourced fuel!

Look some algae are up to 60% oil, and virtual child's play to extract! We just talk about saving the Murray, when what actually beckons, is massively improving its wealth creation possibilities! Then only thing we need remove, is the pollies who quite knowingly and deliberately block the way and the endless humbug they use to achieve just that outcome!

Algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2 and given optimum conditions, can double both that bodyweight and absorption capacity/oil production, every 24 hours! EVERY 24 HOURS!

And grown as mop crops, used to sequester coal fired Co2 inside large clear plastic pipes, use just 1-2% of the water, ( effluent is fine or desirable) normally required by traditional irrigation!

All the current yakkity yak blah blah, blah blah is adding, is evermore hot air and bloated oil and coal barons!?

I mean, why do you think there is so little real action occurring on this front?

And more difficult than getting a donkey to gallop and for long enough to win the half mile race!

WE will commit to this or that reduction all while burning and exporting more coal and the climate change gases they produce?

Well we talk a good greenhouse reduction scheme and might even make a few dozen carbon brokers around 140 billions richer every year!?
And all while making black white and farming in Antarctica!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 4 December 2015 10:34:25 AM
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Growth is a problem.
Not a solution.
The problem won`t be solved by more of what caused it.
Things don`t work that way.
Posted by ateday, Friday, 4 December 2015 10:45:55 AM
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Population is not a problem, problems can always be solved.

Population is however a predicament, predicaments cannot be solved.

Finite resources, lower grades of substitution and efficiency which cannot exceed 100% will guarantee a die-off of some size at some point in the future. It is inevitable, Easter island inhabitants learnt this lesson and we have failed to use this example to our peril.

Western economics and third world population dynamics guarantee the outcome will occur sooner rather than later.

Geoff
Posted by Geoff of Perth, Friday, 4 December 2015 12:58:31 PM
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More power to your prehensile thumb Geoff!

There aren't enough superlatives to describe how much I admire your true grit, real courage and usual clear sighted candor! Not that necessarily means I agree with all you say.

Some folks earn medals of valour on the field of battle? Like say some of those glory seeking officers who reportedly ran roaring, legs if you cain't go any faster, move over and let this yere body through; or just stayed quaking in their tents as the battle roared nearby, only coming out to assume the mantle of command once the battle was ore.

You earn yours every day just by showing up at the terminal, well done old mate!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 4 December 2015 5:01:46 PM
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Thanks Rhrosty, being able to communicate, even via keyboard keeps me sane. Life in a wheelchair as a tetraplegic certainly is challenging so any encouragement is appreciated.
Cheers Geoff
Posted by Geoff of Perth, Friday, 4 December 2015 5:22:53 PM
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Yes hooray for Geoff.
The website Nature Bats Last, and those that link into it confirm his comment.
Posted by Daffy Duck, Friday, 4 December 2015 8:09:02 PM
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Thanks Daffy.

The writings of Richard Heinberg, found on www.resilience.org support many of the concerns relating to population and energy, although I sometimes think Heinberg is a little too optimistic regarding renewables.

Likewise, John Michael Greer, also reposted on the above website, seems to indicate a much slower decline or decent for industrial civilisation, and he is very well read and intelligent, his posts are always worth a read.

Similarly, James Howard Kunstler, website I can't write on this post due to the "F" word being included in the web address, posts weekly and provides an always interesting take on things but he is a little too keen on seeing things fall apart, nevertheless his writing style is great and I always enjoy his descriptive wording when describing "tattoo infused, cheese doodle eating, brain dead Americans".

Malthus may have been wrong in his time but at some point down the road his prognostications may just come to pass, I am sure he will roll over and chuckle at our foolishness, but that is what unfettered greed results in.

Cheers Geoff
Posted by Geoff of Perth, Friday, 4 December 2015 11:26:09 PM
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What a good common sense article,

Love the "elephant in the greenhouse" comment.
That paints a vivid picture. And gets right to the issue of global warming and overpopulation.

I once called overpopulation, "the Big white elephant standing in the United Nations
Chambers.

But The "elephant in the Greenhous " , I just can'T get that picture out of my mind.
Great comment by Micheal, the author of this article
Posted by CHERFUL, Saturday, 5 December 2015 12:08:22 AM
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For anyone with a desire to see a fantastic pictorial view of mans impact on our planet please go to this link and view this wonderful book, http://issuu.com/globalpopulationspeakout/docs/final_over_book?e=12385403/10500444

Some of the pictures are simply stunning

Cheers Geoff
Posted by Geoff of Perth, Sunday, 6 December 2015 12:50:58 AM
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We talk about renewables all while ignoring some of the most basic and affordable solutions!

Anyone see the amount of garbage finding its way into landfill in Indonesia,and how much methane that produces, and yes they collect some of it!

Other third world countries fare little better and continue to add methane (21 times more efficacious as a greenhouse gas than Co2) as thousands of daily tons, when with a little old fashioned common sense they could turn nearly all that waste into currently costly fuel.

Let me elucidate, step one, feed all the organic waste currently dumped into landfill, into digestors, either as a suburban or highrise specific operation at the lowest point to eliminate where possible, pumps, along with the hard material recycling that would require, and collect and store the methane in bladders.

After scrubbing, the gas can be fed into ceramic fuel cells to create on demand 24/7 peak power, plus free hot water.

Step two is a simple as using the resultant nutrient laden effluent to grow oil rich algae in clear plastic pipes, using roof space and floating on ponds, where space is at a premium; and extract the ready to use alternate fuel. Simple and virtual child's play.

The reusable water is then safe to use for almost any non potable purpose. i.e. rice production?

the ex crush material may be used as animal fodder in some circumstances or as the basis for a food and arable land free petrol replacing ethanol industry!

We can't do any of this, we aren't poor enough and prefer to use coal where we can so we can continue to be the largest pro rata emitters? and possibly underpin a very lucrative ETS, which earns billions for sharp ex bankers? No names no pack drill.

You'd be forgiven for thinking we didn't have any cheaper than coal, carbon free thorium, let alone enough to power the world for 700 odd years!

And what's more for a fraction of the price of coal, wind or solar power!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Sunday, 6 December 2015 10:58:14 AM
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Since 1800, we've heard that population growth is 'unsustainable'. But these doomsayers have never been right - never. We've gone from 1 Billion to 7.3 billion since 1800 yet we currently grow more calories per capita than ever before. We've been told by doomsayers that famine is just around the corner for the majority of mankind yet that too has been wrong. Famines occur not because of lack of food but because of failed political systems.

Likewise we are constantly told that we are on the brink of running out of resources. But we've never run out of a resource - never.

In fact there is only one resource that matters - the human brain. A stick is just a stick until a human brain turns it into a spear or fuel. A rock is just a rock until some intelligent bi-ped puts a point on it. Oil is just some sludge that befouls farmland until...

The world is getting better because there are vastly more of the one thing that makes progress happen - the human brain. Don't fret over the growing population, celebrate it.

But if you need to fret then consider that we already know how to resolve population growth. As people become wealthier and more secure, they have fewer children. It happens everywhere, everytime. Thats why the world's population growth rate has declined over the past half century (http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history3.aspx). When you see throw-away comments like "with an increase in average fertility of just 0.50 children per woman - it would reach 16.6 billion people by 2100" ask why fertility rates would rise when they've been falling for the better part of a century. They won't. But its postulated to create the scare.

The world's population will stabilise some time this century and then start to decline. At that point those 10 billion (+/- 1 billion) will be wealthier, more educated and better fed, on average, than people at any time in history. All that assumes that we continue to grow economically and don't throw it away by taking fright at phantoms.
Posted by mhaze, Sunday, 6 December 2015 1:55:09 PM
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Sorry, some of you Henny Pennys, for piddling in your punch bowl but here's a prediction which is impossible to verify:

* that, long before we run out of high-quality coal in Queensland or natural gas in the Canning Basin, and similar new deposits all around the world, population growth will slow down (with people living far longer), stabilise at about ten billion in about 2150, then slowly start to decline at 0.01-0.02% p.a. By 2300, an affluent and well-educated world may be facing a crisis of too few people, too few workers in an extremely high-tech economy, as life expectancy exceeds 120 years.

What's the bet ?

Joe

PS. I apologise for the term 'high-quality coal', which so many here would like to be an oxymoron.
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 6 December 2015 3:18:55 PM
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I attribute a lot of the wars, unrest and refugees happening in the world today
To land and resources shortage caused by overpopulation in many parts of the world.

Did I mention poverty as well.

And no,the wealthy world which practices contraception
Shouldn't have to share their resources with people who overpopulate.

The making of their misery is in their overpopulation.
They need to learn especially the religious male leaders
That overpopulation has serious consequences.
Don't blame responsible country's for the consequences.
Posted by CHERFUL, Sunday, 6 December 2015 10:24:21 PM
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Joe, I admire your optimism but there is a large grey animal, one with a trunk, standing in the middle of your progressive world, his two part name is "Peak Debt".

Our western, so called, industrial economy is about to collapse. The only thing keeping it going is more credit (as debt) issued by central banks attempting to boost economies that are well beyond saving.

All fiat money systems failed in the end, history is a clear demonstrator of this fact.

In the U.S. There are 93 million people unemployed or under employed, despite what the MSM and government statistics will tell you. In Australia our genuine unemployment rate is close to 11% and growing, not including real youth unemployment which is running at around 19%. Pretty sobering stats when you think about it.

We may not have run out of rocks, whale oil, conventional oil or coal but all the low hanging fruit is well and truly gone.

By my estimate, and despite your optimism, I see a massive global recession in 2016, with little hope of a recovery and an ongoing gradual decline in living standards, global retraction, further conflicts over resources and an eventually decline in population.

History will eventually prove one of us right!
Posted by Geoff of Perth, Sunday, 6 December 2015 10:33:33 PM
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Hi Geoff,

Optimistic ? That's your interpretation ? Yes, I suppose it could be so, but my point was that population growth is not the boogy-man many end-of-times people think: once the current civilizational conflicts engendered by the clash of cultural stasis and technological growth, are resolved, some time this century, and once Africa is geared up to meet its human potential - in other words, once genuine globalisation/internationalisation has been freed up, then women will seize educational opportunities, birth-rates will plummet and population growth will cease, except for the simple fact that more people will grow older as living standards around the world improve.

As an internationalist, I welcome the prospect of Africa - one of the largest continents after all - having a population two or three times its present size, of an Africa as a powerhouse of the world, at the same time as Europe's population stabilises at a bit less than its current population. Yeah, all up, ten billion is about right.

Running out of resources ? One aspect of technological development is improvements in discovery technology, extraction technology, refinement technology. If anything, the 21st century will have a constant problem of an over-supply of resources, so downward pressure on prices, and so the reliance by any country on its natural resources may be a huge mistake.

But by 2100, we could running desperately short of one natural product: CO2.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 7 December 2015 8:37:57 AM
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Told you all its a global depopulation agenda while putting funds into the pockets of the elite... Its a racket.

Just to be sure though I might go down to the shoreline of where I live in the next few days to check on the sea levels to make sure they haven't risen.

I'm willing to bet they are in the same place they've always been.
Posted by Armchair Critic, Monday, 7 December 2015 9:22:14 AM
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Hi AC,

Measuring the shoreline is a very complicated business. For example, take the effects of plate tectonics: the Australian Plate is moving north under the Pacific Plate, so it is dipping on its northern edge and rising on its southern edge. Hence those bloody great cliffs around the Great Australian Bight. The Bengal Plate is tilting down to the east, rising in the west. Hence, flooding in the Brahmaputra delta, i.e. the Bangla Desh shoreline. Hence Al Gore's perception of sea-level rise.

Areas of the world which were under a couple of kilometres of ice during the Ice Age are still slowly rising, sort of on the rebound. Hence the perception of sea-level rise.

Atolls sink. People build on atolls closer and closer to the water, and take more and more ground-water out. So atolls sink faster. Hence the perception of sea-level rise.

Build a dam and, downstream, the river deltas don't get the silt any more. So the sea floods in on them. Hence, the Nile Delta. Hence the perception of sea-level rise.

Remove the protective island barriers from a shoreline and hey presto ! floods. Hence New Orleans. Hence the perception of sea-level rise.

So where might any definitive measurement be taken ? Off the Pilbara coast ? After all, it's a very seismically stable area. Along the entire shoreline of Brazil ? Somalia ? Tropical coasts with low seismic activity ?

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 7 December 2015 10:46:11 AM
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Loudmouth,

"Areas of the world which were under a couple of kilometres of ice during the Ice Age are still slowly rising, sort of on the rebound. Hence the perception of sea-level rise."

Its called Glacial Rebound. But it gives the appearance of FALLING sea levels since the land is rising. Adjustments are made for this but there is significant dispute over the accuracy of those adjustments.

"Atolls sink".
They also rise but we are supposed to not notice this since it upsets our Pacific Island friends.
https://www.newscientist.com//article/dn27639-small-atoll-islands-may-grow-not-sink-as-sea-levels-rise#.VXI6nzcw-id

Geoff,
"Our western, so called, industrial economy is about to collapse."
That's easy to say. It must be since people have been predicting the end of the capitalist economy since at least "Das Capital".
It never seems to quite happen but the doomsayers never tire of making the next prediction. I suspect your's will suffer a similar fate but well discuss it this time next year.

"All fiat money systems failed in the end, history is a clear demonstrator of this fact."
Well yes and no. Most that have existed no longer exist. But that is usually because their supporting political structure failed, not the currency. Rome didn't fall because the denarius failed, the denarius failed because Rome fell.

"There are 93 million people unemployed or under employed"
That is simply wrong. I don't know whether you misunderstood the data or read someone who misunderstood the data but its just wrong. There are 93 million USians over the age of 16 who don't participate in the workforce. There are 250,080,000 people over 16yrs old. Of those 62.7% are employed or want to be employed. The rest (93million) aren't employed and aren't trying to get employment. They include retirees, stay at home mums, students etc.

Still big scary numbers often work when you're trying to support an inherently unbelievable story
Posted by mhaze, Monday, 7 December 2015 2:30:21 PM
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How can carbonic acid destroy calcium based coral while calcium based algae is increasing?

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/explore/pristine-seas/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/

and

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/33767/20151128/rising-carbon-dioxide-causes-rapid-growth-coccolithophores-ocean.htm
Posted by JF Aus, Monday, 7 December 2015 7:39:27 PM
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Yeah, sorry, mhaze, I meant 'Areas .... are still slowly rising, sort of on the rebound. Hence the perception of a FALL in sea-levels.'

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 7 December 2015 9:58:02 PM
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mhaze,

You are only looking at the last 200 years, when we have been able to keep ahead of population growth. If you go back further, you can see times when living standards really did deteriorate due to overpopulation. Prof. Paolo Malanima wrote a paper about Italian wages from 1270 to 1913 and found a strong inverse relationship between population size and wages and living standards. He makes the point that an Italian labourer in the 19th century had to work half again as long for bare subsistence as a labourer in the 15th century after the Black Death, the "Golden Age of the worker". This was despite 400 years of technological progress and the introduction of some amazingly productive New World crops.

http://www.paolomalanima.it/default_file/Articles/Wages_%20Productivity.pdf

See also the work of biological anthropologist J. Lawrence Angel, who examined a great many bones from the Eastern Mediterranean and was able to determine average height and life expectancy (good indicators of average well-being and living standards for different periods).

http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml

Overpopulation was also pretty clearly one of the main causes of the Rwandan genocide even in our own time. See

http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdf

Your simple picture of unending progress and human ingenuity always triumphing over our problems simply isn't true. Fertility rates have come down in most countries, but there are still quite a few recalcitrant cultures, mostly, but not exclusively, in Africa and the Islamic world where they remain stubbornly high (why the UN has to keep revising its medium population projection upwards). Even if they all got with the program, we are due for billions more just due to demographic momentum. Even with our present numbers and so many living in grinding poverty, we are also doing serious damage to our environmental life support systems, as scientists from a lot of different fields have been telling us. It isn't just global warming.
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 8 December 2015 7:53:59 PM
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Note the case of India too.

AFR's Tony Walker missed the elephant in the greenhouse (“’C+’ Turnbull back in climate class”) last weekend.

Poor air quality indices in New Delhi - and Beijing - are a consequence of more people driving more vehicles.

If Nature is sending a message from the capitals of the world’s largest developing countries to COP21 delegates in Paris, it is one more about demography than ‘climate change’.

Expect 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to UN Population Division’s latest medium variant projection released last July.

India – which had only 260 million people in 1950 - will overtake China - 550 million in 1950 - as the most populous country in just seven years, with 1.4 billion.
Posted by Alice Thermopolis, Wednesday, 9 December 2015 12:18:09 PM
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Hi Alice and Divergence,

It's not all doom and gloom, you know. As standards of living rise in developing economies, human rights tend to improve as well, especially for women: women get better education, postpone their child-bearing years, have fewer children. Hence birth-rates fall.

Africa is a huge continent, about four Australias, with vastly better rainfall and soils. Vast areas are really quite undeveloped economically. Give it twenty years and its population may exceed two billion, in line with its size. By 2100, its birthrate will be close to zero growth, but its population will keep growing for some time due to longer life-spans, like it is elsewhere currently.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 9 December 2015 3:33:39 PM
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Divergence,

Firstly thanks for the links. Really interesting and I can see I'll be spending the next period following up on all this. I did do a deal of work way-back-when on ancient life expectancy. My conclusion, and I think that of many archeologists, was that the records we have distort the true picture. We are most likely to find the bones and artifacts of those who were buried and/or otherwise honoured in death. These are likely to be the elite and the wealthy who had disproportionate access to better food and medicine. In Rome, for example, vast numbers of the poor were simply dumped in the Tiber or country-side. So the averages we get are for the better-off members of those societies, not the full spectrum.

Anyway...

Yes I was only looking at the current era since that's what is pertinent. Its very true that in the pre-industrial era population and conditions fluctuated significantly, mainly due to climate and natural events. But we can't compare then with now. We now have access to vastly better knowledge and understanding of agricultural process and transport means that climate issues in one area is no longer disastrous for that area. It may be that we will come to an end of the uninterrupted improvement in output. Maybe there is an upper-limit to agricultural yields that we are pushing. However referring to the past declines is no longer relevant.

As to population and the fact that as you say there are parts of the world where fertility rates remain high, this was rather my point. These are places where development has either stalled or never started. My point was that everywhere, everytime development has pushed a society into a more prosperous position, fertility rates fall. So the solution to the high birth rates in parts of Africa is progress. Get wealthy and get population under control.
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 9 December 2015 3:59:51 PM
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Climate is the most urgent problem. Once we switch to clean energy, we'll roughly halve our environmental impact. Gradually we can reduce the impact of all other human endeavours.
http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-english/
Posted by Max Green, Wednesday, 16 December 2015 2:59:41 PM
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