Here are a link to an article about ecologists' advice for Obama and
a copy of a letter that Steve Carpenter uploaded to:
http://www.change.gov/yourvision
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/more-earthly-advice-for-obama/?ei=5070&emc=eta1
November 2008--
Dear President Obama,
Congratulations on your election, which has created a sense of
optimism in America that has never occurred before in my lifetime.
Yet earth's life support systems have deteriorated more in our
lifetimes than in any other era of human history. With earth's
population increasing, and consumption per person growing much faster
than population, humans are heating the climate, polluting air and
water, degrading landscapes and turning coastal oceans to dead zones.
America's food supply depends on a few fragile crops, grown using
practices that degrade soil, air and water to yield foods of low
nutritional value that harm our health. The U.S. is not investing in
the education and innovation needed to create agriculture and energy
technologies that can get us through the 21st century. Details are
found in a consensus report of more than 1300 leading scientists from
more than 90 nations including the U.S. (http://www.MAweb.org). These
findings support the following priorities for your presidency.
Decrease America's dependency on coal and oil and increase the supply
of energy from non-polluting technologies: We must decrease emission
of greenhouse gases, and the era of cheap oil is over. We must
accelerate development of clean energy technologies using wind, sun
and tides. These investments must be based on scientific information
to avoid bogus remedies, such as grain biofuels, that sound good but
do not in fact solve the problem. We must increase conservation
through better buildings, efficient transportation, and renewal of
industry. We must improve agriculture and forestry practices to
reduce energy consumption and increase carbon storage in soil.
Stop subsidizing agriculture that destroys land, water and health.
Create incentives for agriculture that maintains land and water
resources and yields healthy food: Agriculture must shift to
practices that use less energy for tillage and transport of food,
produce healthy food for local consumption, train more people in
diverse farming practices, build soil instead of degrading and
eroding it, and maintain clean water. These reforms can be
accomplished by redirecting federal subsidies.
Have a population policy: In global impact, the U.S. is the world's
most overpopulated nation, mainly because of our high per-capita
consumption. Our population is growing rapidly. Global population
growth is a key driver of degraded land, water, air and climate.
Education of women is a powerful lever to restrain population growth.
If all the world's women are educated to high-school level, human
impact on our life-support system will be more than 30% lower by
2050. As a father of daughters, it is especially appropriate for you
to support education for all of the world's women.
Invest in the education and innovation needed to create a society
that could thrive in the 21st century and beyond: Even though our
universities and research centers are the envy of the world, science
education of the general population of the U.S. is weak and must be
made stronger. Education must be reformed to encourage creativity.
There are enormous opportunities for innovations in agriculture,
energy, and infrastructure that will lead to a moderate climate, rich
landscapes, and clean air and water into the future. These
technological opportunities are being seized by other nations while
the U.S. lags behind. We must restore American leadership in creating
technology that maintains our life support system while providing the
energy, food and shelter that people need.
Sincerely yours,
Steve Carpenter
S.A. Forbes Professor of Zoology
Center for Limnology
680 North Park Street
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin 53706 USA
email [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel 608.262.8690 fax 608.265.2340
internet
<http://limnology.wisc.edu/personnel/carpenter/>http://limnology.wisc.edu/personnel/carpenter/
North Temperate Lakes LTER
<http://lter.limnology.wisc.edu/>http://lter.limnology.wisc.edu
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment <http://www.maweb.org/>http://www.MAweb.org
Resilience Alliance <http://www.resalliance.org/>http://www.resalliance.org
