Posted on by boardchairman

Sandy Irvine of The Green Party predicts that, despite the amazing advances of human beings in the 20th and 21st centuries, those years will be known by the historians of the future as the “Age of Stupid”.

The age when leadership failed at its most fundamental level; when society collectively refused to see that we were engaged in a long term process that threatened the species (not just homo sapiens) as a conseqence of our technological successes which in turn lead to unfettered population growth based largely on finite resources. Yes – The Age of Stupid!

We spend billions of pounds, dollars or whatever on trying to reverse the impact we make on our planet yet seem to accept without challenge or comment the fact that every hour we add a further 10,000 to our population.

This depletes our natural capital. We are using groundwater to such an extent that replacement is impossible if usage levels continue. Our fossil fuels may give another 100 years or more at ever increasing cost. We may be lucky and get technology to mitigate this depletion but at 10,000 births per hour we are draining the glass quicker than we can fill it.

Indefinite population growth is physically impossible – it must stop at some point either through measures that we introduce or through death through famine, drought, disease, war and environmental collapse or a mix of all of these combined.

Many experts view the sustainable population of the planet is around 2,000 million – about one quarter of the forecasted level in the middle of this century. There are some serious policies required if this is to be achieved and we are not to become the agents of our own demise.

In spite of this, I remain an optimist that the scales will fall from the eyes of the policy makers and that the conversations that are needed will take place. The alternative is not worth contemplating and we will be rightly tagged as those who managed the Age of Stupid.

Leslie

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