Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We used to live in a world where the price of resources came down steadily, and now the world has changed. You have a great mismatch between finite resources and exponential population growth.
Our planet's lands and oceans are already stretched to meet the demands of 7 billion people. The human population continues to grow. The search for sustainable solutions is an economic and a moral imperative if we are to create the future we want.
We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
As a global community, we have to start thinking more seriously about whether there are limits to what our earth can bear and if we're willing to cope with the struggle for limited resources, which only seem to increase as our population does.
We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.
Spiraling demand for resources of which our world contains a finite supply is the great long-term threat posed by globalisation. That is why we need new technology to relieve it.
In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity.
Scientists and supercomputers have amplified our ability to look ahead. For decades, experts have warned us that human numbers, technology, hyper-consumption and a global economy are altering the chemical, geological, and biological properties of the biosphere.
By enriching the carbon-dioxide content of the atmosphere from its impoverished pre-industrial levels, human beings have increased the productivity of the entire biosphere - so much so that roughly one out of every seven living things on the planet owes its existence to the marvelous improvement in nature that humans have effected.
The living world has become impoverished. Species are being lost every day. Energy and other resources are nearing exhaustion. The environment is deteriorating. Pollution is everywhere. Climate is changing. Natural balances are threatened.
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