Is the grass dying yet?
- Thread starter Stringmaker
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this and we build on the flood plains and don't allow the rivers to flood naturally. Thus land doesn't get replenished as it should and also we concentrate flood problems to the end of the defense chain.
Surely................& building in areas where rivers naturally flood doesn't help either.
EDIT: mountainm beat me to it
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One recent event sticks in my mind.
Where I live is pretty rural and is a market town surrounded by arable land. We live in the bottom of a small river valley, and running down one side of it is an old drainage gully or brook which runs into the small river running through the town. When it lashed down for two days solid about a month ago, this drainage gully became a torrent; all that rain just ran straight off the tarmac, roads and concrete and ended up back in the sea instead of soaking into the fields which need it.
It was running fast and full for nearly 24 hours after the rain had stopped and not a drop of it was of any use.
Time to cultivate cactus I think...
Where I live is pretty rural and is a market town surrounded by arable land. We live in the bottom of a small river valley, and running down one side of it is an old drainage gully or brook which runs into the small river running through the town. When it lashed down for two days solid about a month ago, this drainage gully became a torrent; all that rain just ran straight off the tarmac, roads and concrete and ended up back in the sea instead of soaking into the fields which need it.
It was running fast and full for nearly 24 hours after the rain had stopped and not a drop of it was of any use.
Time to cultivate cactus I think...
Instead of panicking about theoretical global warming/climate change - man-made or not - it would be worth worrying a whole lot more about population growth. 1900 - about 1.5 billion people. 2012 - 7 billion and rising rapidly.
Whichever way you cut it, that is the major problem the earth faces. Struggles for finite resources - be it food, water, minerals or land - always end up badly.
Whichever way you cut it, that is the major problem the earth faces. Struggles for finite resources - be it food, water, minerals or land - always end up badly.
You nailed it; the classic "elephant in the room" which no politician will ever acknowledge.
We humans are basically a parasitic species which is doing its best to destroy our host. It's taken thousands of years so far but we've been pretty good at it.
When I am in reflective mood, I ponder the story of both Dartmoor and Easter Island. Both were once wooded and inhabited, both are now empty. Eventually we will breed to the point of no return but we'll all be dust long before then.
And in other happy news, the garages are running dry already!
Population growth is the huge problem right enough. Sooner or later, exponential growth bubbles burst. Nothing can grow faster that the ability to support it. House prices cant grow faster than incomes forever - or nobody can buy a house - so that bubble burst. More and more people can't live in the same crowded island using more and more oil from a finite reserve and claiming the way out is a "growing economy" - i.e even more people buying even more things.
Sadly a population bubble burst will make a property price bubble bursting seem trivial.
But population will correct itself.
Sadly a population bubble burst will make a property price bubble bursting seem trivial.
But population will correct itself.
no it won't.....charitys will step in and prop it up, creating more population.......and on it goes.
Sorry, but we will never destroy the planet only ourselves. The earth will recover, new species will thrive and time will march inexorably on.
Oh they can get it bigger, no doubt. Eventually though there is not enough water, or food, or oil to go around. So we fight for what's left. But there still isn't enough, so we hae wars, destroy infrastructure and so on until there is enough left....for those that survive.
Even charities can't make more land. Or more oil
that really is a very sad future isn't it, how could we stop it happening ?
stop giving to overseas charity, stop overseas aid, let each country look after themselves ?
an interesting non-political ( more ecological ) question.
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There are plenty of natural resources to go around with some better management. On one hand people are starving and the western world is suffering an obesity crisis, there is chronic mismanagement of water in the uk but no real lack of it. We have had dry Easters for the last couple of years and wet summers
Peak oil is a red herring. Science will find replacements - in fact it already has - oil-excreting bugs. Just a matter of industrialising production! Water is not really a problem either - nuclear power stations on the coast (solar in tropical zones) desalinating water, and also producing hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cells to drive transportation. Climate change? Its happening - but then it has always changed - ice-age time due again soon (geologically speaking). And with CO2 historically having been in large multiples of existing levels, life in the oceans and land seems to have survived ok regardless of al the scare stories going around.
Population expansion however has finite limits. Pity no-one wants to talk about it. Guess "An uncomfortable truth about population" won't be funded by the green energy lobby.....
Population expansion however has finite limits. Pity no-one wants to talk about it. Guess "An uncomfortable truth about population" won't be funded by the green energy lobby.....
Just have less kids. The UK cannot feed itself, clothe itself, fuel itself. But the solution is to "expand" in order to cover pensions crises and to give financial and tax incentives to have children in an already over crowded island.
Personally I can't see the joined up thinking (in a non political way). You cannot feed more and more people without taking more and more away from the countries we import from. We import food. Often from countries with massive malnutrition. We have a "housing shortage". Actually we would have a housing surplus with static population.
We have a pensions shortfall so encourage population growth to fund it. Of course all those extra people will need pensions.....
As tomomgoos says, there's enough, it's just how it's used, if every child needs a tv, xbox, designer clothes, phone etc etc then yeah, slow the population growth, if that wasn't the case though and kids played outside and made things like we used to there would be a lot less impact from kids. If anything it's the big companies that aim to sell things to make profit that have the most influence on resources, it's mostly down to money...
From what I've read there is enough food, lots gets thrown away because the prices need to be boyed (sp) up, or it's uneconomic to transport it etc, I don't think the issue is quantity of nutritious food so much as availability and price.
From what I've read there is enough food, lots gets thrown away because the prices need to be boyed (sp) up, or it's uneconomic to transport it etc, I don't think the issue is quantity of nutritious food so much as availability and price.
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That's a better way of putting it.
I used the Dartmoor/Easter Island examples in the wrong context. We didn't destroy them as such, we just made them unable to support the human population that once lived there. That, on a much larger scale is what we are still doing, it is just a much slower process.
You're right of course, the planet will survive.
