UN COP17, meet reality.

[Essay]

Well, the Green revolution as a solution to strife hasn't panned out.

 

Like a said.. a whole different set of problems on that continent.

 

 

 

Whoops, I can see how you missed my point that the "Green" Revolution is at the root of many of the problems you mentioned--as well as many other socioeconomic inequities and environmental problems.

 

The slides on this post:

http://www.sciencefo...post__p__648760

 

...talk about solutions based on new information, which science has discovered just within the past decade, that fulfill many goals with simple land-use techniques. This is an option to evolve beyond the "Green" revolution, which is unsustainable and related to those problems you mentioned.

 

These new paradigms relating to "land use" are not about throwing money at problems, but about teaching new ways to restore and maintain socioeconomic sustainability--achieving the MDGs and "Food Security."

 

"Land use-based climate solutions can create co-benefits that meet several of the important United Nations' Millennium Development Goals in developing countries. These goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (Goal 1), promoting gender equality and empowering women (Goal 3), and ensuring environmental sustainability, including access to safe drinking water and conservation of biodiversity (Goal 7)." --p. 33

 

"Why should we not take every opportunity to find synergies between action to reduce climate change and action to advance other social goals? So long as the carbon benefits are real, we should seek to prioritize those efforts that maximize co-benefits." --p.36

 

Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use Authors: Sara J. Scherr and Sajal Sthapit June 2009

 

And from a 2007 book: "The Rhizosphere" [meaning the extended root zone in land use].

"Thus small changes in the equilibrium between inputs and decomposition could have significant impact on atmospheric CO2 concentrations...." --p.31

 

"It is against this backdrop of a highly modified soil environment and the cascading effects on soil biota that we examine the rhizosphere in agriculture and consider how to redirect management to restore rhizosphere processes and agroecosystem function." --p.133

 

"We recognize that ultimately the transition to ecologically sound, sustainable food production systems that meet human needs will be complex and will require fundamental changes in cultural values and human societies as well as the application of ecological knowledge to agricultural management." --p.148

 

...in case you missed these quotes above.

 

"We recognize that ultimately the transition to ecologically sound, sustainable food production systems that meet human needs will be complex and will require fundamental changes in cultural values and human societies as well as the application of ecological knowledge to agricultural management." --p.148

...isn't this what you suggest is needed; fundamental changes...?

 

~

[JohnB]

Essay, I can quote from books written by respected scientists too.

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.

 

Predictions by "experts" in books don't have a terrific track record, do they?

 

Why do you go on about "Global Government?" Couldn't we talk about global cooperation, as with the 1987 Montreal Protocol on remediating stratospheric ozone problems; or simply talk about global coordination and monitoring--of strategies to manage our resources more judiciously and pragmatically--i.e., in pursuit of achieving the Eight Millennium Development Goals and Five Food Security Steps?

 

Some political basics. If you are going to have "Global Co-ordination and monitoring" then you must have a supranational body to do so. A body with the power to co-ordinate and monitor. And if it's going to be more than a paper tiger then it has to have teeth and enforce the instructions it gives while "co-ordinating". This is, to all intents and purposes a government. Just because you don't want to call it that doesn't make it less of a government. The simple fact of ruling bodies is that if there is no mechanism to keep it under control it will become a despotism. You might be happy to grant some desk pusher power over your nations economy and not want to have any say at all in the choosing of that person or the policies involved, but many others don't.

 

"We recognize that ultimately the transition to ecologically sound, sustainable food production systems that meet human needs will be complex and will require fundamental changes in cultural values and human societies as well as the application of ecological knowledge to agricultural management."

 

Isn't it funny that in finding the answers to all our problems, the words "Democracy" and "Responsibility" don't get used much. Oh there is plenty of talk about how the proles need to take "responsibility" for their pollution/carbon fottprint, whatever but very little about how the all knowing, well meaning ecological intelligensia will be responsible or who to. Maybe the reason that so many people are suspicious that there is a political push to use climate panic to destroy democracy is because all the "solutions" seem to require democratic nations giving up their sovreignity to undemocratic, unelected and responsible to no-one "authorities".

 

Call me a cynic if you want, but I do have to wonder whether Drs Drinkwater and Snapp (who wrote the p 148 quote) thought that there should be "fundamental changes in cultural values and human societies" before they started their research as well.

 

Essay as a general note it's getting very difficult to keep track of your answers, you're cross answering across too many threads.

 

BTW, how would you define "sustainable"? The word gets used a lot, but I have a sneaking feeling that the meaning varies.

Edited January 22, 2012 by JohnB