Source: Yahoo
The world has slid into "ecological debt", having used up all the natural resources the planet can provide this year, according to the New Economics Foundation.
The think-tank said humans were using up resources such as forests and fisheries faster than they can be regenerated and producing more waste, mainly carbon dioxide, than the planet can absorb.
As a result, we have been increasingly "overshooting" nature's budget each year since the 1980s, NEF said.
Tuesday marks the date when we have exceeded the natural resources the planet can provide for this year - a day which has been creeping steadily earlier each year.
From now until the end of the year, humanity is "dipping into our ecological reserves, borrowing from the future," according to Dr Mathis Wackernagel, executive director of the Global Footprint Network.
Each year, the network calculates humanity's ecological footprint - the demands it puts on the planet - and compares it to the capacity of the Earth's ecosystems to generate resources and absorb waste.
Human beings are currently using up the capacity of 1.4 planets, and consumption is increasing.
Last year, Ecological Debt Day, formulated by NEF based on data from the Global Footprint Network, was October 6 - although new data has been taken into account this year including emissions from slash and burn agriculture and biofuels.
Incorporating the new data into last year's calculations would have put Ecological Debt Day 2007 on September 28, showing human consumption is still on the rise, NEF said.
According to the foundation, the failure to live within our ecological means is the root of many of the most pressing environmental concerns, including climate change, collapsing fisheries, declining biodiversity and factors contributing to the current food crisis.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Working Titles
Some possible titles for the show: (In alphabetical order)
Stars and Vermin
Future Tense
Speculation
Stars and Vermin
The celebrations will continue long after our bodies have been removed
Three feet above our Heads
Friday, September 12, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
The History of the Future (According to Forbes)
The future, as a concept, was born in ancient Mesopotamia, when people began studying the heavens for clues to impending events. But the Babylonians and their fellow stargazers (including the Maya) had a limited idea of the future: They thought time was cyclical, so they were not inclined to contemplate the shape of things to come. What goes around, comes around; why conjure up visions of an improved future Babylon if it will only be destroyed when the cycle ends?
These days, certain New Age seers who study the Mayan "Long Count" calendar have concluded that time's current cycle is due to end--cataclysmically--on Dec. 21, 2012. Consider yourself warned. But most of us look at time as a linear continuum, and we expect the future to be different than the present. For the more optimistic among us, the future will not merely be different--it will be better.
Where did we get this idea? Not from the Greeks and Romans, who "really did not have any idea of progress per se," says history professor Timothy Burke, who teaches a course at Swarthmore College about the cultural history of the idea of the future.
In Pictures: Futurists Through The Ages
Nor did we get it from the great Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, which emphasize reincarnation and a cyclical sense of time. Judaism, in contrast, is rooted in a sense of history, which it bequeathed to Christianity. And for Christians, time is most definitely linear: It began with the Creation and it will end on Judgment Day. In between, according to Saint Augustine, there is room for progress toward a better world.
Most Christian prognosticators during the Middle Ages were fixated on the Book of Revelation, which points to the Apocalypse. But in due course came the Renaissance, which gave rise to the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment--and it was at this point, Burke says, that the idea of a better future took hold. At first, it was a matter of moral progress: Mankind was expected to use reason to develop philosophically. "In the 19th century, that kind of idea becomes much more technological and scientific," Burke says.
The key transition figure was Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology, first published in 1830, promulgated the concept of geologic time. This was a world-shaking development, comparable to the insight of Copernicus that the Earth revolved around the sun. Prior to the 19th century, people in the West had generally assumed that the world was less than 6,000 years old. After Lyell, people had to contend with the mind-boggling idea that the world was, in fact, billions of years old, with billions of years still to come. Human history was merely a blip on this cosmic timeline.
Next, Charles Darwin jumped in with a theory that made good use of all this time, by giving it over to evolution. And evolution need not be limited to biology. If the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer were right, society would inevitably develop into something more splendid in the future.
Seers such as Jules Verne started writing books that imagined various high-tech futures, when people would travel to the moon, to the center of the Earth, or to the bottom of the ocean, which (per Verne) was located 20,000 leagues under the sea. Then the Victorians passed into history, succeeded by a more pessimistic generation which envisioned dystopian futures, like H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984.
Throughout the 20th century, the cult of progress was besieged by dissenters who thought the future was fraught with unpleasant possibilities. Still, the optimists have held their own, and they celebrated a particular triumph on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong of the Apollo 11 mission first walked on the moon, as prophesied by Verne. Yet the No. 1 song on the Billboard pop chart that same week was the anti-technology screed "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans, which hinted at a return to cyclical time. The song was the biggest hit of 1969, an indication that the future remained a problematic concept for many people.
Zager and Evans were one-hit wonders who soon disappeared from the charts--whereas the cult of progress remains a going concern in 2007. The song from Casablanca said it better: The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.
These days, certain New Age seers who study the Mayan "Long Count" calendar have concluded that time's current cycle is due to end--cataclysmically--on Dec. 21, 2012. Consider yourself warned. But most of us look at time as a linear continuum, and we expect the future to be different than the present. For the more optimistic among us, the future will not merely be different--it will be better.
Where did we get this idea? Not from the Greeks and Romans, who "really did not have any idea of progress per se," says history professor Timothy Burke, who teaches a course at Swarthmore College about the cultural history of the idea of the future.
In Pictures: Futurists Through The Ages
Nor did we get it from the great Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, which emphasize reincarnation and a cyclical sense of time. Judaism, in contrast, is rooted in a sense of history, which it bequeathed to Christianity. And for Christians, time is most definitely linear: It began with the Creation and it will end on Judgment Day. In between, according to Saint Augustine, there is room for progress toward a better world.
Most Christian prognosticators during the Middle Ages were fixated on the Book of Revelation, which points to the Apocalypse. But in due course came the Renaissance, which gave rise to the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment--and it was at this point, Burke says, that the idea of a better future took hold. At first, it was a matter of moral progress: Mankind was expected to use reason to develop philosophically. "In the 19th century, that kind of idea becomes much more technological and scientific," Burke says.
The key transition figure was Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology, first published in 1830, promulgated the concept of geologic time. This was a world-shaking development, comparable to the insight of Copernicus that the Earth revolved around the sun. Prior to the 19th century, people in the West had generally assumed that the world was less than 6,000 years old. After Lyell, people had to contend with the mind-boggling idea that the world was, in fact, billions of years old, with billions of years still to come. Human history was merely a blip on this cosmic timeline.
Next, Charles Darwin jumped in with a theory that made good use of all this time, by giving it over to evolution. And evolution need not be limited to biology. If the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer were right, society would inevitably develop into something more splendid in the future.
Seers such as Jules Verne started writing books that imagined various high-tech futures, when people would travel to the moon, to the center of the Earth, or to the bottom of the ocean, which (per Verne) was located 20,000 leagues under the sea. Then the Victorians passed into history, succeeded by a more pessimistic generation which envisioned dystopian futures, like H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984.
Throughout the 20th century, the cult of progress was besieged by dissenters who thought the future was fraught with unpleasant possibilities. Still, the optimists have held their own, and they celebrated a particular triumph on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong of the Apollo 11 mission first walked on the moon, as prophesied by Verne. Yet the No. 1 song on the Billboard pop chart that same week was the anti-technology screed "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans, which hinted at a return to cyclical time. The song was the biggest hit of 1969, an indication that the future remained a problematic concept for many people.
Zager and Evans were one-hit wonders who soon disappeared from the charts--whereas the cult of progress remains a going concern in 2007. The song from Casablanca said it better: The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.
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