-------- Original Message --------
| Subject: | [Paranormal_Research] UN Warns of "A Major Planetary Catastrophe" |
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| Date: | Wed, 6 Jul 2011 20:47:48 +0100 (BST) |
| From: | Drou <drouetda@btinternet.com> |
| Reply-To: | Paranormal_Research@yahoogroups.com |
UN Warns of "A Major Planetary Catastrophe"
05 July 2011 23:23:05
Humanity is close to breaching the sustainability of Earth, and needs a technological revolution greater â€" and faster â€" than the industrial revolution to avoid “a major planetary catastrophe,†according to a new United Nations report. The world is facing exploding population, an energy crisis, global climate change, increasingly destructive natural disasters and increasing starvation.
Credit: UN
Major investments will be needed worldwide in the developing and scaling up of clean energy technologies, sustainable farming and forestry techniques, climate-proofing of infrastructure, and in technologies reducing non-biological degradable waste production, according to The World Economic and Social Survey 2011: The Great Green Technological Transformation, published today by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).
“It is rapidly expanding energy use, mainly driven by fossil fuels, that explains why humanity is on the verge of breaching planetary sustainability boundaries through global warming, biodiversity loss, and disturbance of the nitrogen-cycle balance and other measures of the sustainability of the earth’s ecosystem,†the report says. “A comprehensive global energy transition is urgently needed in order to avert a major planetary catastrophe.â€
The survey says $1.9 trillion per year will be needed over the next 40 years for incremental investments in green technologies. At least $1.1 trillion of that will need to be made in developing countries to meet increasing food and energy demands.
“Technological transformation, greater in scale and achievable within a much shorter time frame than the first industrial revolution, is required,†it says. “The necessary set of new technologies must enable today’s poor to attain decent living standards, while reducing emissions and waste and ending the unrestrained drawdown of the Earth’s non-renewable resources.â€
“Staging a new technological revolution at a faster pace and on a global scale will call for proactive government intervention and greater international cooperation. Sweeping technological change will require sweeping societal transformation, with changed settlement and consumption patterns and better social values,†it adds.
In the preface to the report, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes that “rather than viewing growth and sustainability as competing goals on a collision course, we must see them as complementary and mutually supportive imperatives. This becomes possible when we embrace a low-carbon, resource-efficient, pro-poor economic model.â€
The survey concludes: “Business as usual is not an option. An attempt to overcome world poverty through income growth generated by existing ‘brown technologies’ would exceed the limits of environmental sustainability.â€
According to the report, global sustainable energy transition needs to be achieved within four decades, a significantly faster rate than in the past.
Global sustainable energy policy must take into special consideration the 3 billion poor people who aspire to gaining access to electricity and modern energy services.
The scope of current national and global policies and programs does not “add up†to the scale of actions needed to meet global emission reduction targets. Paradoxically, they are also overly ambitious in terms of their expected outcomes and are inconsiderate of certain biophysical, techno-economic and socio-political limits to scaling up known technologies. A reality check of current plans is needed so that realistic and well-targeted initiatives can be devised at a far greater scale.
There is a need for comprehensive, strategic and systemic approaches that emphasize performance goals, niche markets and technology portfolios, especially those related to end-use. In order to take pressure off the technological innovation imperative, individual limits of 70 gigajoules (GJ) primary energy use per capita and 3 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per capita by 2050 may need to be considered. Such energy-use and emissions caps would not affect the development related aspirations of developing countries.
The sustainable energy transition offers significant economic opportunities for both developed and emerging market economies, but poses additional development challenges for poorer and more vulnerable countries, which would therefore require enhanced support from the international community.
To meet both the objectives of conquering poverty and protecting the environment, the World Economic and Social Survey 2011 calls for a complete transformation of technology on which human economic activity is based.
The "great green technological transformation" that the Survey champions will have to be completed in the next 30 to 40 years, that is, twice as fast as it took to accomplish previous major technological transitions. Because of the limited time frame, Governments will need to play a much more active and stimulating role to accelerate the green energy transformation. The Survey details new policy directions and major investments in developing and scaling up clean energy technologies, sustainable farming and forestry techniques, climate proofing of infrastructure and reducing non-bio-degradable waste production.
There are 22 countries regarded as facing a “protracted food security crisis†are home to over 165 million undernourished people (about 20 per cent of the world’s total). The proportion of undernourished people ranges from under 15 per cent in Cote d’Ivoire to almost 70 per cent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2010a).
The report comes out yearly. Last year’s survey called for a major overhaul of the machinery for international finance, aid and trade.
While humankind has made enormous progress in improving material welfare over the past two centuries, this progress has come at the lasting cost of degradation of our natural environment. About half of the forests that covered the earth are gone, groundwater resources are being depleted and contaminated, enormous reductions in biodiversity have already taken place and, through increased burning of fossil fuels, the stability of the planet’s climate is being threatened by global warming. In order for populations in developing countries to achieve a decent living standard, especially the billions who currently still live in conditions of abject poverty, and the additional 2 billion people who will have been added to the world’s population by mid-centuryâ€"much greater economic progress will be needed.
Continuation along previously trodden economic growth pathways will further exacerbate the pressures exerted on the world’s resources and natural environment, which would approach limits where livelihoods were no longer sustainable. Business as usual is thus not an option. Yet, even if we stop global engines of growth now, the depletion and pollution of our natural environment would still continue because of existing consumption patterns and production methods. Hence, there is an urgent need to find new development pathways which would ensure environmental sustainability and reverse ecological destruction, while managing to provide, now and in the future, a decent livelihood for all of humankind.
www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2011wess.pdfParanormal_Research - Scientific Data,
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