Now that the fanfare of Live 8 has subsided those crazy G8 summit members can get right down to the business of saving the world. But maybe in amongst the expensive dinners and fancy cocktails they might reflect on what is, for all intents and purposes, the most important learning tool that humanity has at its command : HISTORY...

New evidence released this week suggests that the Puebloan people of central America drove themselves to an early extinction around 700 years ago because of "human impact on the environment, high population levels and social and political factors, including violent conflict". Maybe the G8 leaders, from the thrones of their seemingly all powerful, media savvy empires, might take heed at the example of the people of Easter Island who over produced and competed their tiny civilisation to the point where NO trees were left whatsoever on their island home. Maybe the G8 leaders will research arguably the world's first great Civilisation, the Sumerian people. Over the course of a few centuries they turned the luscious pastures of the Middle Eastern Basin into the baron desert landscape we all know as the background for the Iraq wars...

Is this just pure pessimism? Here are the facts:

• The Earth has at present 6 billion people living on its surface. Moderate estimates say this figure is set to increase to 9 billion by 2050.
• We are currently in the middle of the largest mass extinction of flora and fauna EVER to take place on this planet, about a thousand-fold higher than the norm throughout evolutionary history. In a million years time our very presence and prosperity will show up as a massive, sudden collapse in the fossil record.
• Approximately 60 per cent of the planet's "ecosystem services" - natural products and processes that support life, such as water purification - are being degraded or used unsustainably.
• Use of fossil fuels is still the main source of power on this planet and this is set to rise in the 'developing world' over the next few decades as they fight to catch up with Western 'progress'. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of many of the greenhouse gases have increased exponentially and are continuing to do so, driving so called Global Warming and destroying finely balanced eco-systems the world over.
• And finally... America produces a massive majority of the world's C02 emissions for a minority of the world's population. Without their admittance into global environmental policies a majority of the world's emissions will STILL go unchecked - "President Bush has made it clear he will not sign up to Kyoto-style limits on greenhouse gas emissions."

Are we doomed? Is their light at the end of the tunnel? Maybe, but only if EVERYONE makes a change in their lifestyle so drastic as to verge on the absolutely impossible.

G8 MUST ACT NOW...

Disagree? Think I'm ranting pure nonsense? Let me know, quote the figures, give me hope in Civilisation, in human nature... For a list of environmental topics covered in Wikipedia go here. I will post some further reading in the comments section of this post. Please do the same...

Categories: G8, Environment, History, News, Politics, Humanity, Earth, Nature, Science, Africa, Civilisation, G8 Summit, Poverty, Climate, Nonsense

Archived Link