Organ Harvesting in China. Chinese Death Vans - Body Parts for Americans! Three years ago, Dr.
Thomas Diflo's moral nightmare walked into his examination room: a patient freshly implanted with a kidney bought from China's death row, where prisoners are killed sometimes for minor offenses and their organs harvested. Since then, Dr. Diflo, director of the renal transplant program at the New York University Medical Center, has seen half a dozen such people, typically young Chinese American women. China's human rights record worse than a year ago. Taking Action Chapter 6. "Driven by unprecedented growth in human numbers and wasteful consumption, many of the basic resources upon which future generations will depend for their survival are being depleted. " --Dr. Nafis Sadik Executive Director, UN Population Fund Carlyle Key Facts on Population and Consumption. Over Consumption. Over Consumption: To summarize, the human population has been allowed and encouraged to over consume, use and abuse our natural resources to a point where society at large is at an epic crossroads.
Our Civilization is Unsustainable ! Money, Debt & Greed – A Brief Commentary — The Secret Garden of Maths. On Friday I will be talking in our school chapel.
Here is the penultimate draft of the monologue (the style does lend itself to being read out loud) Good morning. I want to talk to you today about our monetary system. Untitled. Abstract: In 1992, 1,700 of the world’s top scientists issued a public statement titled The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.
They reported that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.” More than a decade later, the authors of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment were moved to echo the scientists’ warning asserting that “[h]uman activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of the Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”
Ours is allegedly a science-based culture. For decades, our best science has suggested that staying on our present growth-based path to global development implies catastrophe for billions of people and undermines the possibility of maintaining a complex global civilization. Diogenesian discourse. Diogenesian discourse The keyboard is mightier than the machine gun...
The political, philosophical and general outpourings of a troubled soul living in Australia and blogging his Vietnam veteran's head off. Revista Envío - The Ecological Crisis Goes Global: The Development We Want Is Unsustainable. International Ever since the 1992 Rio de Janeiro summit we’ve been sold the notion that we’re on the way to sustainable development.
Consumer societies latched onto this seductive idea the most. Everyone felt good about moving towards sustainability without changing lifestyles that make infinite economic growth unsustainable when it’s at the expense of Nature’s finite resources. That sustainable development illusion lasted until the outbreak of the current global crisis. Now it’s no longer believable. Assigning Economic Value to Natural Resources.
Natural capital. Remarks from 1937 by FDR on "natural capital" and "balancing the budget of our resources" §History of the concept[edit] Natural capital is one approach to ecosystem valuation which revolves around the idea, in contrast to traditional economics, that non-human life produces essential resources.
Thus, ecological health is essential to the sustainability of the economy. In Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution[2] the author claims that the global economy is within a larger economy of natural resources and ecosystem services that sustain us. In order to continue to reap the benefits of our natural environment, we need to recognize the importance of natural capital within the economy. In a traditional economic analysis of the factors of production, natural capital would usually be classified as "land" distinct from traditional "capital". A Human Approach to World Peace. The global loss of topsoil. Excerpt BETWEEN 1950 and 1973, world demand for grain doubled, spurred by both population growth and rising affluence.
It will double again by the end of the century if the projected growth in population and income materializes. Loss of soil threatens food production, UK government warns. More than 2m tonnes of topsoil from farms and forests is being eroded by wind and rain each year, jeopardising efforts to increase food production, the UK government said today.
The soil erosion is reducing the amount of food grown, increasing the risk of flooding and undermining efforts to reduce carbon emissions. UK land has been steadily degraded by 200 years of intensive farming and industrial pollution, warned the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in a major study of soils. But it said the situation is not nearly as bad as in many Asian and African countries, where soil erosion due to overgrazing and poor farming practices is now seriously threatening food production. Consequences - Erosion. By Rhett Butler | Last updated July 22, 2012 The loss of trees, which anchor the soil with their roots, causes widespread erosion throughout the tropics.
Only a minority of areas have good soils, which after clearing are quickly washed away by the heavy rains. Thus crop yields decline and the people must spend income to import foreign fertilizers or clear additional forest. About Us: Age-old farming practice leads to topsoil loss. Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas, in the 1930s. Drought combined with years of plowing under crop residue, leaving the surface exposed to wind, resulted in gigantic dust storms that devastated the Plains states.
Photo credit: NOAA Photo Library, Historic NWS collection Throughout history, civilizations expanded as they sought new soil to feed their populations, then ultimately fell as they wore out or lost the dirt they depended upon. What the Frack? Natural Gas from Subterranean Shale Promises U.S. Energy Independence. DISH, Tex. —A satellite broadcasting company bought the rights to rename this town a few years ago in exchange for a decade of free television, but it is another industry that dominates the 200 or so residents: natural gas. Five facilities perched on the north Texas town's outskirts compress the gas newly flowing to the surface from the cracked Barnett Shale more than two kilometers beneath the surface, collectively contributing a brew of toxic chemicals to the air.
It is because of places like DISH (formerly known as Clark) and similar sites from Colorado to Wyoming, that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a new review of the practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". Fracking implicated in US water pollution. Last updated 10:06 09/12/2011. EPA: First evidence surfaces linking fracking, water pollution. This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Cheyenne, Wyo. • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday for the first time that fracking — a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells — may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution. Water Contamination From Fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing) Oil Catastrophe. Global Consequences of Deforestation in the Tropics. The World of Infographic Insights: Amazon Rain Forest Depletion: Rainforest Destruction. Tropical Deforestation : Feature Articles.
First, global markets consume rainforest products that depend on sustainable harvesting: latex, cork, fruit, nuts, timber, fibers, spices, natural oils and resins, and medicines. Rainforest depletion. Deforestation. Biofuels boom could fuel rainforest destruction. Stanford Report, February 17, 2009. Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity. Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity Despite its crucial importance for the survival of humanity, marine biodiversity is in ever-greater danger, with the depletion of fisheries among biggest concerns.
Depleted fish stocks require recovery efforts. World's Natural Fish Stocks Depleted. Future Food Security Must Be Found in Farm-raised Fish and Managed Natural Fisheries. Depletion of fish stocks. A global environmental problem, threat to our oceans and disaster. Fisheries Depletion - Going, Going... gone? (framed version) Greed is killing the oceans.