Nick Palmer
Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:34:06 -0700
I've been a bit busy this last week so I'll just tidy up on the responses to my thread. Horace - I changed the ambiguous wording from "our personal spaceship" to "I then went on to calculate what size our individual “spaceship” would be today within which we each metaphorically have to live our lives..." Jed - so we have about 0.26ha arable land per person - about 50 metres square each. I presume that includes land for milk/dairy production in which case things really are looking tight unless we all go veggie... or get CF jump started... Robin wrote (re my figures):- <<IMO they are completely meaningless, because they imply that we actually have compete freedom within that space. However that's not how the real world works. We all share the *same* space, and consequently what we do affects everyone else>> Obviously I agree wholeheartedly with the last sentence - it's shame so many don't realise their responsibilities. The purpose of the calculations was to clear up exactly how small an environmental space we have. Being in the environmental campaign business, I can assure you that there is a widespread belief/faith, almost unconscious in most, that the world is a huge place and that humans cannot adversely affect it in any real way. Once, in the 90's, I was in a meeting with Jersey's Chief finance "Minister" . Roughly speaking, this darkly humourous exchange took place... NP. - ...and that Sir, is why we need to address the way we do things because current practices are not sustainable. "President" RJ. - Mr Palmer, I have flown over and seen vast areas of the world - it is empty - there isn't any way that puny humans could affect the world in the way that Friends of the Earth are suggesting. N.P. We only have a couple of hundred yards square per person - the world is just about as full of over consuming humans as it can take. PRJ (spoken forcefully) Mr Palmer - do you believe in a Creator? because I do and the Great Architect would not allow us to do what you are claiming we are doing to the world's systems. NP (brightly) Oh, well in that case organisations like Friends of the Earth are doing the creator's will! The temperature in the room metaphorically dropped by about 40 degrees. PRJ stiffened, adopted a very scary expression, literally started frothing at the mouth and sweating for about 30 seconds before he regained composure and said (opening the door forcefully):- PRJ (sinisterly) - This interview is at an end! My interpretation of what happened is that I had spoken the equivalent of blasphemy in front of the Spanish Inquisition. That was an extreme example of what is behind the views of some of those with their hands on the levers of power. More down to earth business types have just been brainwashed that consumer society is the only thing that works - "greed is good" - and that they are heroes who deserve enormous rewards for their heroic defense of the system that generates those enormous financial rewards. Any naysayers should be disbelieved and characterised as naive fools. They almost literally don't see that they have any responsibility at all for the wider effects of their activities on the life support systems of Earth - mostly they believe that environmental threats are lies or just wildly exaggerated and that we actually have plenty of "lebensraum". Sadly there are many neo con think tanks and such excrescences as Rush Limbaugh to reinforce the brainwashing. The purpose of my calculations was simply to blast these people out of their complacency with simple maths that is easily checkable.