7 billion people are not the issue - human development is what counts

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/INF/PR/2011/2011-10-27.html

Communications Department

PRESS RELEASE

7 billion people are not the issue - human development is what counts

Laxenburg, Austria, 27 October 2011 – As the global media speculate on the number of people likely to inhabit the planet on October 31 an international team of population and development experts argue that it is not simply the number of people that matters but more so their distribution by age, education, health status and location that is most relevant to local and global sustainability.

Any realistic attempt to achieve sustainable development must focus primarily on the human wellbeing and be founded on an understanding of the inherent differences in people in terms of their differential impact on the environment and their vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities are often closely associated with age, gender, lack of education, and poverty.

These are some of the messages formulated by twenty of the world’s leading experts in population, development and environment who met at IIASA in Austria in September 2011, with the objective of defining the critical elements of the interactions between the human population and sustainable development. http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/POP/Laxenburg%20Declaration%20on%20Population%20and%20Development.html">The Laxenburg Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development as prepared by the Expert Panel, describes the following five actions as necessary to address sustainable development, achieve a ‘green economy’ and adapt to environmental change:

• Recognize that the numbers, characteristics, and behaviors of people are at the heart of sustainable development challenges and of their solutions.
• Identify subpopulations that contribute most to environmental degradation and those that are most vulnerable to its consequences. In poor countries especially, these subpopulations are readily identifiable according to age, gender, level of education, place of residence, and standard of living.
• Devise sustainable development policies to treat these subpopulations differently and appropriately, according to their demographic and behavioral characteristics.
• Facilitate the inevitable trend of increasing urbanization in ways that ensure that environmental hazards and vulnerabilities are under control.
• Invest in human capital—people’s education and health, including reproductive health—to slow population growth, accelerate the transition to green technologies, and improve people’s adaptive capacity to environmental change.

…

[RC]

1. Hog wash!

Bull shit!

Out biggest problem is our shear numbers. There are too many now for the earth to support in the long term. When the oil gets scarce, then our numbers will quickly drop to something sustainable. A

We are destroying our own nest. Finding another one is not an option.
Our shear numbers are wiping out most other life forms. We are Depleting the oceans of life for our food. We are using up natural resources at an alarming rate.


Our arrogance is going to kill most of us and if any are left, hopefully they will get the message.

[txlibdem]

2. The World Wildlife Fund encourages Aquaculture

http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/aquaculture/index.html

Seafood is one of the healthiest and most popular sources of protein worldwide. Almost half of the seafood we eat comes from farms. This makes aquaculture, also known as seafood farming, the fastest growing food production system in the world.

When done responsibly, aquaculture’s impact on wild fish populations, marine habitats, water quality and society is minimal.

[txlibdem]

3. The arrogance of the top 1% will kill us... if the 99% let them. Rise Up and stop them!

The only way we are all going to suffer is if we DO NOTHING.

Join a march, send food or supplies for those who are marching, stand arm in arm as part of a human barricade to protect the marchers. Practice peaceful civil disobedience, sit in, boycott, form blockades and do not budge.

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing!

[txlibdem]

4. Where I see merely inefficiency and waste, some see doomer gloom on the horizon

The only thing stopping this world from comfortably supporting 20 billion people or more is unequal distribution of wealth, aka Capitalism.