‘HUMANS WILL NEED TWO EARTHS BY 2030’

SECOND EARTH WILL SOON BE NEEDED, WARNS WWF
HUMAN NEEDS DOUBLE NATURAL RESOURCES BY 2030

www.hindustantimes.com - According to the Living Planet Report, human demands on natural resources have doubled in less than 50 years and are now outstripping what the Earth can provide by more than half; and humanity carries on as it is in use of resources, globally it will need the capacity of two Earths by 2030. The planet’s 6.8 billion people were living 50% beyond Earth’s sustainable means in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the biannual “Living Planet” report by WWF, a conservation group previously known as the World Wildlife Fund. “Even with modest U.N. projections for population growth, consumption and climate change, by 2030 humanity will need the capacity of two Earths to absorb CO2 waste and keep up with natural resource consumption,” they say. This report has come shortly before countries begin meeting today in Nagoya, Japan, to discuss the Earth’s dramatic loss of species at the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity.

Its index of biodiversity health showed a loss of almost 30% worldwide and an even loss of 60% in the tropics between 1970 and 2007. “There is an alarming rate of biodiversity loss in low-income, often tropical countries while the developed world is living in a false paradise, fuelled by excessive consumption and high carbon emissions,” Jim Leape, director general of WWF International, said. “The challenge posed by the Living Planet Report is clear,” Leape said. “Somehow we need to find a way to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly prosperous population within the resources of this one planet. All of us have to find a way to make better choices in what we consume and how we produce and use energy.”


Humans are overusing the planet’s resources and will need two Earths by 2030. The over-use and pollution of Earth’s natural resources have become so extreme that, at current rates, a second planet will be needed by 2030 to meet the world’s needs, the WWF warns. The report adds that four and a half planets would be needed if everyone used as many resources as the average American, the WWF warns. This is an objective data that shows how a group of rich countries are living in extreme comfort and unbridled lust at the expense of the rest of the world.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

As the curtain of the new millennium rises, the drama of life and humans seems tragic. More than six billion people are on a march of materialism, which means that acquisition, accumulation, possessions and consumption of material goods is the ultimate “good” of life. This philosophy assumes that the material resources are unlimited. … Human beings are proliferating at the rate of 80 million a year and 90% of the growth is in the developing world. There, almost four out of ten people live at the edge of survival. ... The Human Development Report says that three billionaires (Gates, Buffett and Allen, together worth US$156 billion) have wealth equal to the total GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people. The essence of the globalized world of technology - which has been converted into a marketplace where you buy and sell goods and services in order to gratify humans at whatever cost- is to put man at the center of the universe. Everything exists for man - a few men, actually, who, in the economic struggle, accumulate the most.

“We Came. We Saw. We Messed it up.”
Article written by Dr. Rashmi Mayur,
Director, International Institute for Sustainable Future
“Hinduism Today Magazine” October/November/December 2010.
http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=4198