An inspiring, must read article from Jesse Ausubel, the Director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University is available via John Mauldin here this week, see: Nature Rebounds.
The below picture from the article offers a flavor of the thesis.
Technological efficiency is allowing humans to decrease consumption per capita even as our numbers have grown.
Efficiency advances in farming have also accelerated our yield per acre while decreasing our inputs of fertilizer and water. And the most recent advances in hydroponic and vertical farming are only just beginning. At the same time birth rates in the developed world have plateaued.
Greenspace is actually expanding as humans relinquish former farm land back to nature.
Figure 15. The smart phone as dematerializer, one small device replacing many larger ones. Credit: M. Tupy 2012.
Add to all of this a bursting of the consumer credit bubble that is sobering the west back toward more modest, efficient and sustainable trends in consumption and housing as well as on line shopping, which is dramatically reducing our need for bricks and mortar retail. Along with simultaneous, accelerating advances in alternative and renewable fuels and water management (urged by climate change), we see that the world is in the midst of a health renaissance for us and our planet.
Top of present to do list, that thinking people are working to advance:
- continue moving off fossil fuels and pumping renewable energies to the grid
- move off combustion engines to electric motors that plug into the green grid
- start recognizing and managing water as the world’s most valuable resource
- stop using the oceans and waterways as free for the taking and begin managing, cleaning and farming them as critical resources.
A bright, sustainable future is ours for the making. But yes, change is natural evolution and essential.
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