What is your biggest Enviornmental Concern?

[Quixote1818]

Poll question: What is your biggest Enviornmental Concern?

On Edit: I am not including Overpopulation because that would most certanly get all the votes. This poll is to determine the direct threats caused by Overpopulation.

[UrbScotty]

1. Energy supply, renewable vs. nonrenewable sources (nt)

[Quixote1818]

2. Thanks for the suggestion. I added it to the poll. nt

[onehandle]

3. Toxic waste spills from O'Reilly's mouth. nt

[wtmusic]

4. thanks for posting this

with people "just" dying and being tortured everyday, it's easy for the destruction of the planet issue to get sidelined.

Many of these issues are interrelated. My biggest concern is the lack of concern, i.e. public awareness

[Quixote1818]

5. I voted disappearing wilderness because that impacts global warming

and depletion of natural resources in one blow. Less forest means less Oxygen and more CO2 in the atmosphere. It leads to soil erosion and totally fucks up the eco system locally and world wide putting millions of animals at risk for extinction. At the current rate we may not have much rain forest left in 50 years. That scares the shit out out of me.

Not to mention I hate to see the beautiful wilderness areas and rain-forest disappear.

[etherealtruth]

8. I voted the same way ...

...with the same rationale; protecting forests/rain forests addresses many of the other problems.

I yearn for political leadership that would recognize and address the severe environmental problems this planet has ... sadly, we have a nitwit that can't even recognize something as obvious as torture is reprehensible, how can we hope for him to understand the subtleties and intricacies of environmental issues?

[wuushew]

6. Overpopulation

ZPG or die.

[Quixote1818]

14. Thats a given but I new that option would get all the votes

I wanted to home in on the things we should put as top priority other than Overpopulation.

[bluedawg12]

7. Deforestation is the common denominator in the decline

of civilizations.

It's tied into to global warming, flooding, loss of air quality, and decrease in biodiversity.

Check out Dr. Jerod Diamond on this topic.

No trees= no civilization.

Easter island once had trees, now no trees no peeps.

Iraq once had trees. Some say it is the location of the Biblical Garden of Eden. Now, after 5,000 years of mans efforts, no trees, and the soil is not alkaline or salty and not good for much agri.

[oregonindy]

9. OVERPOPULATION

Overpopulation: Partying as the iceberg looms

By JIM LYDECKER
Friday, November 11, 2005 12:02 PM PST

America's a lot like the Titanic making her way through an ocean of danger. Any number of icebergs threaten to do damage and several are large enough to sink us. The captain warns us of the smaller ones, yet assures us our voyage is safe.

Most passengers believe the captain. Others figure there is nothing they can do, so why worry?

Some, however, notice concerned looks on the crew's faces. Rumors are heard about one berg so big that there is no getting by regardless of the course plotted. It is connected to others making the situation more problematic. We're on a direct collision course unless the damn thing melts and gets much smaller.

The giant iceberg's given a name: Overpopulation. Some of the ones connected to it are known as resource depletion, climate change, disease, hunger and economic collapse. With no warning from the captain, the icebergs are closer than ever. The passengers party on.


Like this allegory, politicians and leaders focus our attention on issues easier addressed than those that really matter. Terrorism is an example.

Since 9/11, billions have been invested on what is a relatively small threat. Consider this: 3,000 died in New York on that fateful day in September 2001; 25,000 die every day in the world from contaminated water alone. Each year, 35 million children are mentally impaired by malnourishment. Each year, an area of prime farmland greater than Scotland is lost to erosion and urban sprawl. These are problems connected with overpopulation, problems that will get worse before they, if ever, get better.

Every statistic and number crunched, every fact absorbed, each study released makes it apparent that our industrialized civilization can't survive unless we seriously reduce our numbers. We have overshot Earth's carrying capacity by mortgaging the future.

To feed the current 6 billion people on a diet enjoyed by Americans would consume all the world's oil production. For the same 6 billion to live at our current standard of living would require world steel production to increase 200 times. This is not possible.

Two current best-sellers look into the past to explain our present and predict the future.

In his Pulitzer-winning "Guns, Germs and Steel," UCLA professor Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed technologies and immunities to dominate much of the world. His new book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," probes the other side of the equation: What caused the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin and what can we learn from their fate?

In "A Short History of Progress," Canadian historian Ronald Wright examines how man throughout history has walked into "progress traps," beginning with the slaughter of big game in the Stone Age and then continued the pattern of over-consumption until most of the world's most creative civilizations fell victim to their own success.

Both books arrive at the same conclusion: Mankind has to seriously reduce its population and the speed of which we are running though Earth's finite resources. To not do so will abruptly bring down the curtain on modern civilization.

But, unlike terrorism, these are subjects politicians and leaders have a better chance of staying employed by ignoring.

The only recent politician to make energy a part of his agenda was cardigan-wearing, in-front-of-the-fireplace Jimmy Carter. Who wanted to hear the horrible truth when Ronnie was telling good-time "morning in America" fairy tales? Reagan ended up president while Jimmy faded into obscurity.

Overpopulation is an issue no one, liberal or conservative, wants to touch. The right-wing Christian conservatives say it's ungodly to screw with procreation while left-wing liberals claim it steps on our civil liberties.

So what happens? We continue to breed ourselves toward extinction.

Our leaders, and those who design and implement their policies, have chosen to ignore the real problems facing us for political and financial gain.

However, it is the responsibility of our leaders to take us down paths, regardless how uncomfortable or painful, when circumstances demand it. We face problems now, and have for several decades, that demand such actions.

Eventually our leaders will be held accountable for their actions, or lack of, and heads will roll.

Wright and Diamond point out that throughout history, once nature starts to foreclose -- with famine, disease, crop failures and more -- the social contract breaks down. People may suffer stoically for a while but eventually our rulers real relationship with the heavens is exposed as a fraud.

Each time history repeats itself, the cost goes up. At this point in runaway growth in population and consumption, we need to replace our irresponsible captain and crew before civilization is hopelessly bankrupt. Because even though most of the passengers party on, more and more of us know the icebergs are closer than ever.

[Quixote1818]

17. I agree, but didn't include it in the poll because it would have

received 90% of the votes.

[EstimatedProphet]

19. It should receive 90% of the votes

It's driving all the other problems.

[Quixote1818]

20. Correct: See my note above poll added on edit. nt

[bluedawg12]

26. Yes! Too many of us. Forgot that when deforestation came to mind

and Jared Diamond is fantastic.

I think his point about deforestation is that this is the symptom- but the disease underlying it is too many of us.

I tried to bring this up on DU a few months ago, and actually it was not a big hit, and surprisingly some thought it was not a problem.

But doing a little searching on the carrying capacity of the earth- I really believe that we are depleting, destroying, and multiplying at an alarming rate.

I can see it in the sprawl of human development, the closure-not of wilderness, but of simple lake frontage for public use, or ocean frontage.

On a recent trip to North Carolina- was shocked- expected a rural paradise. The state is built up, many little towns and homes on the outside. And the ocean front was a series of human sardine can homes, separated by just a few feet.


As I keep saying- we suck as a species. We are parasites on mother earth.

[Bridget Burke]

10. I voted for "energy supply"

But, isn't the concept that everything is related at the heart of "Ecology"? Most of the concerns are linked.

[Ron Green]

11. They are all intertwined under the question of

sustainable v. unsustainable policy. The id wants to have it, use it, fuck it, eat it, and is ruled by desire. If we continue to be controlled by the id, we won't develop sustainable policy in any area, and are therefore doomed.

[Lorien]

12. The forth and first questions are somewhat the same

you can't save endangered species without preserving habitat; for that matter, you can't save humanity without preserving biodiversity. Everything is connected.

[Squatch]

13. Urban sprawl is a precursor to all the rest...

so it's my biggest enviro concern

[Eugene]

15. Global warming for its immediate threat

but all of these concerns are interrelated.
They all affect one another.

[blindpig]

16. Other.

Or all of the above. Although endangered species is my personal hot button habitat loss and climate change greatly impact what can be done with them. As mentioned above all is interconnected. Human overpopulation is what drives all of these problems and if not dealt with will render any other solutions moot.

[Gregorian]

29. Correct answer. Bingo. We have a winner.

The one force that drives is all is the population. End of discussion. And until we work on STABILIZING it, we will continue the nosedive that we are in.

The first thing that happens when you get to the emergency room is to stabilize the patient. We have six billion. We cannot afford to play with fate any more than we already have. Look at the forests. Look at the extinctions. Look at the melting ice caps. And India and China have just begun to live in the modern world. Look out, because disaster is right up ahead.

[phusion]

18. I voted for #1

Have you ever read the blog called Sprol?

Here's a recent post that shows an aerial view of deforestation:

http://www.sprol.com/?p=272



There are many other articles documenting the human toll on the planet.

[CabalPowered]

21. Other - Bioaccumulation of toxins nt

[spindrifter]

22. Exploitative business and politicians--my biggest environmental

concern.

[NNadir]

23. All of these issues are inter-related. All involve population being

higher than carrying capacity.

(BTW - we have an Environmental and Energy Forum here.)

[Jed Dilligan]

24. All the options are connected

not to overpopulation but overconsumption and stupid energy choices.

[RebelOne]

25. All of the above. n/t

[gollygee]

27. Energy supply AND chemicals used in food growing/production

which is related to the energy supply. But we're getting poisoned by this stuff, and so are our kids.

[ThomWV]

28. The Tanks at Hanford

And I'm on the other side of the country.