Reuters reports: The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday.
As the world’s population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially.
Even by 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water, according to U.N. estimates, at a time when a changing environment is creating new limits to supply.
And if the world fails to tackle these problems, it risks condemning up to 3 billion people into poverty, the report said.
Efforts towards sustainable development are neither fast enough nor deep enough, as well as suffering from a lack of political will, the United Nations’ high-level panel on global sustainability said.
The world ran out of time about 30 years ago, about the time that Reagan said we weren’t going to have any more unamerican talk about austerity.
Ah, but there is a plan, or at least a solution to the population growth. Of course, the devils in the details, but because of blinders, remains out of sight. Reduction of the population, not through birth control, but by pandemics. It’s the only way to achieve such, short of using nuclear bombs over as wide an area as possible. But there is that old bugaboo, the iss8ue of unintended circumstances that lurks in the background. Which ever method that is used, what will prevent the environment from becoming poisoned? Either radioactive or germ, take your pick. The fact that the earth is already going through changes, that nobody seems to care about who can change them, I seriously doubt the world as we know it will contain humans perhaps beyond 2030, if that long.
I am afraid Norman may be right. Nobody seems to care about runaway population, and the excessive use of resources by the rich, who are all that matter to the present “world leadership”. Wars, refusal to tackle (or even recognise, in the USA)climate change, waste of resources, pollution of all kinds, nuclear proliferation, inequality, deforestation, weapons all over, loss of human rights by 99% or more -all of these are tossed aside. “Terrorism”- a tactic for the dispossessed- is taken as the main problem for humanity. Israel- a land for people who have hatred of their neighbours and often have other homelands- is allowed to rule “Western foreign policy” come what may. Huge corporations decide policy in so-called democracies.