Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
A courtesy of
The Wecskaop Project
and Biospheric Literacy and Sustainability 101
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The continued functioning of natural systems? Somewhere during
the 90% eradication that current policy envisions and may permit, a
catastrophic threshold or tipping point with global repercussions
will almost certainly be crossed.
This book and this syllabus is a courtesy of The Wecskaop Project and is offered as
an open-courseware resource which is entirely free for academic use by scientists,
students, and educators anywhere in the world.
ISBN 978-0-933078-18-5
Pont Royale
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Excerpts
Throughout history, we have always been able to count on the
functioning of Earth's natural systems as a given. As this book
will show, however, today humankind’s world population has
already become so large, and is growing larger so rapidly,
that such presumptions are no longer warranted.
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“If current predictions of population growth prove accurate and pat-
terns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science
and technology may not be able to prevent... irreversible degra-
dation of the environment.”
Joint statement, officers of the U.S. National Academy
of Sciences and Britain’s Royal Society, 1992
"The Earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive ef-
fluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its
ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we
are fast approaching many of the Earth's limits."
An urgent warning to humanity (1992)
Signed by 1500 top scientists, including
99 recipients of the Nobel Prize
Speaking a half century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once add-
ressed “the modern plague of overpopulation. What is lacking,” he
said, “is… universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem
and the education of billions of people who are its victims.” Today
his insights are more applicable than ever.
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The most important data sets in the history of our species
High
Medium projections
projections to 2100
to 2100
Human
Population
in billions
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Preface
We begin this book with what may be the most important da-
ta sets in the history of our species. In the graphs shown left
notice that beginning with a world population of two billion
in 1930, we reach seven billion in late 2011 – meaning that
we have just ADDED FIVE MORE BILLIONS to our numbers
in less than a single human lifetime, with billions numbers
EIGHT and NINE on-track to arrive by 2040.
While the numbers in the smaller of our two graphs would re-
sult in a worldwide population of more than 11 billion by the
end of this century are dangerous enough, the numbers in the
larger of the two graphs are even more dangerous. According
to the same U.N. projections (2015 revision), if world fertility
rates average just ½ child per woman higher than assumed by
the medium-fertility guesstimates, we will find our totals on a
collision trajectory with 16.6 BILLION by century’s end.
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Notice especially that the years since 1830 and 1930 differ ra-
dically from all earlier eras of human history as we began to
skyrocket upward over the past 180 years, and that since then
our growth has been (and continues to be) so exponential, so
rapid, and so extreme that some have described this pattern as
“hyper-exponential.” For readers already familiar with expo-
nential mathematics, our two graphs argue that we are living
in the closing and catastrophic late-phase conditions of an ex-
ponential progression whose shape bears a disquieting simil-
arity to a graph of the fission events that destroyed Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan at the end of World War II.
If the previous information is not already worrisome enough,
however, there are at least three factors that suggest that the
higher of the two U.N. outcomes may be the one to unfold.
1. It seems, for example, that U.N. population projections too
often fail to contemplate, comment on, or even consider actu-
al planetary limits, or carrying capacities, or limiting factors,
or tipping points, or thresholds, nor to contemplate the real-
world human, biospheric, and civilizational implications if
humankind’s numbers and impacts overshoot such limits (ev-
en though multiple independent lines of evidence argue that
we have moved into overshoot mode already).
2. The world demographic projections that have prompted this
discussion, including those of the U.N., appear to allocate no
contemplation whatsoever of recent life-extension studies de-
spite the fact that over the past two decades, scientists have
already achieved SIX-FOLD extensions of life in laboratory or-
ganisms (and achievement of an equivalent extension in hu-
mans would result in healthy, active 500-year-olds) (e.g.,
Kenyon, 2005). And in an interview, Cambridge University
geneticist Aubrey de Grey (2005) recently suggested that “the
first 1000-year-old human may have already been born.”
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If even a tiny fraction of such changes occur in humans, the U.N’s current popula-
tion projections, as worrisome as they already are, would be tossed right out the
window, and young people alive today might actually experience the calamitous un-
folding of the U.N.’s 16.6 BILLION trajectory. It is interesting to note that if six-fold
life-extensions were to ever be widely achieved in humans, worldwide replacement-
level fertility rates would have to decline to just TWO-TENTHS of a child per woman
….. PER CENTURY.
We will see that over the past four decades, we have been re-
peatedly assaulting Earth’s life-support machinery with one
BILLION additional persons every twelve years, so that our
numbers invite storms of humanitarian and biospheric calami-
ties over the decades ahead. For example, given the impacts
that our collective numbers, damage, consumption, eradica-
tions and wastes have already induced (when only half of us
are industrialized), it is hard to imagine how things are going
to improve as billions numbers 9, 10, and 11 (and quite poss-
ibly numbers 12, 13, 14, 15, or 16.6) join us before this cen-
tury is out. And when it comes to our demographic and physi-
cal impacts on Earth's biospheric life-support systems (which
produce, for example, the foods that we eat and the oxygen
that we breathe) no planetary “do-overs" will be available if
we fail to get things right this first time around.
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In the past, we have always been able to count on the func-
tioning of Earth's natural systems as a given. As this book
will show, however, today our population has already become
so large, and is growing larger so rapidly, that such presump-
tions are no longer warranted. Try to imagine, for example, a
team of astronauts in a space vehicle if they were to cannibal-
ize 95% of their guidance and propulsion systems, annihilate
93% of their heat shields, destroy 87% of their CO2 scrubbers
degrade 77% of their oxygen production systems and eviscer-
ate the computers and life-support systems of their spacecraft.
.
In a similar way, try to imagine the owner of a new and pristine automobile who
begins to systematically degrade its multiple operating systems, degrading 50% of its
steering system, 75% of its tires, and then destroying its carburetor, most of its spark
plugs, half of its axles and brake shoes, and 93% of its ignition and electrical sys-
tems, while simultaneously pouring additional contaminants each day into its gaso-
line, oil, radiator, battery, transmission fluid, and brake fluid. And then suppose that
this individual can't understand why his automobile, which "has always worked in
the past," doesn't function anymore. Not so bright, is he?
No rational astronauts would ever dream of inflicting such damage upon the vehicle
that sustains their lives in space, and the rest of us would never dream of inflicting
such damage upon our automobiles. Amazingly, however, we seem to suppose that
we can systematically destroy, eradicate and dismantle the only planetary life-sup-
port machinery so far known to exist anywhere in the universe and to presume that it
will nevertheless continue to function as it has always done in the past.
Notice that the above is not solely limited to "running-out-of” food or resources sup-
positions, but instead counsels urgent caution when it comes to the sheer extent and
degrees of physical damage, wastes, and eradications that we inflict.
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ions, either Earth’s natural systems will continue to function
and carry out essential life functions of self-maintenance,
self-perpetuation, and self-repair, or they will not.
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have an effect. Yet, we know that an ever-greater portion of
those who will make up world population in 2050 have al-
ready been born, so that, with each passing day, more and
more of the trajectory becomes locked into place and due to
the resulting population momentum, threatens to become in-
escapable.
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sel which he captained, (and which, after all, had never sunk
in the past) was unsinkable.
We might further note that our planet does not have a lone in-
dividual who acts as Earth’s planetary decision-maker-in-chief
who can make mistaken and incautious decisions – we have
at least hundreds of them. (And even if they might decide
something correctly, there is a lengthy delay or lag-time be-
tween each year’s annual meeting, and then, even if the ne-
cessary votes to adopt a meaningful and effective resolution
(or a watered-down compromise) happen to be present, there
remain futher delays in following through with sufficient
funding and implementation. (Finally, we should note that we
often end up employing our technologies, cleverness, and in-
genuity in ways that amplify the damage that we cause, or
that magnify our adverse impacts, or that serve private greed
as opposed to the public good, so that rather than serving to
save us, they can just as often enable us to make things worse
more completely, efficiently, and at faster rates than ever.)
So what, exactly, should EVERY person, student, educator,
policymaker, and citizen know about our planet? We submit
that there exists a precise and specific repertoire of biospheric
and demographic information that includes understandings,
concepts, and data sets such as, among other things: carrying
capacities, thresholds, ecosystem services, and tipping points;
delayed feedbacks and unintended consequences; limiting
factors and overshoot; hotspots and conservation biology; the
power and behavior of exponential mathematics; and demo-
graphics and world population levels past, present, and future.
Whether one is dealing with poverty, hunger, failed states, the
environment, governance, foreign affairs, or terrorism, bios-
pheric understandings are crucial as world population growth
roils the environmental and geopolitical oceans in which to-
day’s nations and foreign policies must swim. While civiliza-
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tion should have begun a Roosevelt/Churchillian level of re-
sponse two decades ago, too many of today's books, articles,
broadcasts, and even scholarly venues continue to ignore the
existence of the population elephant in the room. Thus, we
seek to assemble here the key data sets, concepts, understand-
ings, and demographics that constitute a quick overview of
the essentials that comprise Biospheric Literacy 101 (also see
our appendices for links to executive-briefing pdfs “for aca-
demia and policymakers,” as well as an open-courseware col-
lection of six Biospheric Literacy 101 PowerPoint presenta-
tions for half-day workshops, distance-learning programs, and
all first-year undergraduates of every major). And lastly, for a
full appreciation of the scale of our danger, we must all ap-
preciate the enormous size of EACH of the BILLIONS that we
have been adding to our planet every twelve to fifteen years.
(In a few pages hence – How Large is a Billlion – we will see that that understanding
will involve 38,461 years – so that if we began a momentous project 20,000 years
ago and worked from then until now, we would have to continue working on that
same project for 18,461 additional years into the future in order to finish.)
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this moment in history. It does not advocate policy and is
most emphatically not a policy document. It does, however,
view our present demographic and environmental trajectories
with alarm, so that this book argues in behalf of knowledge,
and counsels us to proceed entirely voluntarily and ethically
in addressing the demographic maelstrom in which we live.
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known to exist anywhere in the universe are likely to be cal-
amitous - if not worse.
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Table of Contents
00 Preface 08
01 Why Wecskaop? 15
02 Numeric Literacy – A Million and a Billion 1 34
03 Civilization's Demographic Journey 1 41
04 Carrying Capacity and Limiting Factors 49
05 Ecological Services and Ecological Release 1 65
06 Fragile Films – Earth's Atmosphere and Seas 78
07 Exponential Mathematics 89
8 A Mathematical Fire Alarm 0 99
09 Riddles of the Dinoflagellates 111
10 Other Planets 119
11 The Open-space Delusion 126
12 Limits, Feedbacks, Overshoot and Collapse 135
13 Thresholds, Tipping Points and Unintended
Consequences . .148
14 The Big Question: Carrying Capacity 168
15 Projections, Comments and Critiques 178
16 Sri Lanka and Caenorhabditis elegans 193
17 Biodiversity and Human Impacts 205
18 The Paleolithic, the Neolithic and Now 217
19 A Conservation Roadmap 225
20 Humanitarian Snapshots: A Descent into Chaos. 236
21 Frequently Asked Questions . .- .. . .251
22 What We Can Do . 272
23 "Floorspace" and the Cornucopians . . 299
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Figure 11.1 - The dot below denotes three classical, real-world
“too-late” / “already waited-too-long” population conditions that re-
sulted in 99%-plus die-offs (and/or even worse mass mortalities)
that either began, or were already well-underway, in seemingly
“vast-open-space” conditions that were just two one-thousandths of
one percent occupied (and which remained 99.998% unoccupied).
Two of these occurred in mammalian populations and our third ex-
ample reflects classical outbreaks of dinoflagellate red-tide in mar-
ine systems.
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From pages 138-140
Example 1
The Rise and fall of a Reindeer Herd
on St. Paul Island, Alaska
Graph is after Scheffer, V.B. 1951. The rise and fall of a reindeer herd.
Scientific Monthly 73: 356-362.
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Scheffer’s 40 square mile island had no wolves, predators, or
major competitors for the reindeer in the study. Notice the J-
shape of the curve produced as the population grew over the
years. Secondly, .notice the collapse. denoted by its last data
point which concluded a 99% die-off. Thirdly, the reindeer
occupied less than 2 /1000ths of one percent of the area theo-
retically available to them at the time of the collapse so that
the die-off took place even as vast “amounts of open space”
appeared to remain seemingly available.
Readers will encounter this and similar patterns in this syllabus and
in the book. (No data were able to be collected during World War II.)
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study. By 1938, however, reindeer numbers peaked at more
than two thousand individuals. Notice that the data over these
first 28 years produce a classical J-curve as the herd exhibits
an exponential increase in numbers. Notice also, however,
that 99%-plus of the herd died over the next twelve years in
the calamitous die-off or collapse that followed.
Part two of the preceding graph depicts the die-off that took
place during the last twelve years of the study. Notice that
following the peak numbers in 1938 (when the population oc-
cupied less than 2/1000ths of one percent of the “open space”
that appeared to remain seemingly available), reindeer num-
bers fell repeatedly and precipitously. During its collapse, the
herd experienced a 99% die-off, so that as the study ended in
1950, only eight reindeer remained.
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extreme J-curve explosion shown below, however, is neither
brief nor localized in extent, but is unfolding on a global
scale for one decade after another and another and another
and in the middle of the only planetary life-support machi-
nery so far known to exist anywhere in the universe.
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We do not yet know the Earth's precise carrying capacity for
our species, but it would have been wise to address that topic
two decades ago. As it is, many, if not most, scientists sur-
mise that we are already well beyond Earth's carrying capa-
city for our species, in a classic case of overshoot.
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seemingly vast amounts of open space, and despite the fact
that the Karenia brevis population occupies a volumetrically-
insignificant portion of the area or volume that appears to
remain available, they nevertheless, by their combined over-
population (and their production of wastes), manage to cal-
amitously-alter the environment in which they reside (a set of
conditions worth noting, perhaps, since our own species ap-
pears to exhibit an extraordinarily similar pattern of behavior).
Supporting math for both of our referenced mammalian studies and for
outbreaks of dinoflagellate red-tide are outlined at presentation slides 127-
130 of the following link: PPT 2 –REAL-WORLD POPULATION CALAMITIES in
SEEMINGLY EMPTY ENVIRONMENTS. .
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/29284061?access_key=key-1d5uc7f665roaubtur7w
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least provocative to consider that today our own species, sur-
rounded by a seemingly enormous atmosphere and seemingly
“vast amounts of open space” also appears to be well on its
way, via an ongoing release of industrial and societal wastes,
to a significant alteration of the entire atmosphere.
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Recall our earlier assessment of an ordinary human being liv-
ing in an industrialized country. One's daily body wastes are
again present, of course, but humanity's collective biological
wastes are natural products that have little impact on global
systems. Next, however, we envisioned this same person in
an automobile, backed up in crowded traffic on a busy eight-
lane highway, surrounded in every direction by hundreds of
cars and trucks and buses, each spewing exhaust from an in-
ternal combustion engine.
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No other animals on Earth supplement their biological and
metabolic wastes in this way. No other animals on Earth
have EVER supplemented their biological wastes in this way.
And even dinoflagellates, in the worst red tide outbreaks in
history have never supplemented their cellular and metabolic
wastes in this way. And our exceptionality in this behavior is
not an incidental or minimal footnote to our biology – in-
stead, it is one of our most-pronounced and all-encompassing
characteristics. How can we imagine that endless billions of
us can endlessly behave in this way without calamitous re-
percussions? If we intend to enjoy such extravagance,
(And now the most recent U.N. projections show us to be on potential trajectories
toward 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, or 16.6 billion by century’s end, with two prominent
demographers raising the possibility that the U.N.’s “higher-end” numbers may be
the numbers that actually emerge.)
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what does all of this mean? Unfortunately, fully-appreciating
the enormity and the immense implications of the above num-
bers is not possible unless our minds fully and completely ap-
preciate the truly enormous size of each of our billions.
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One reason that this book has been written, and that this wri-
ter and other natural scientists are extremely worried is be-
cause, although our planet’s “carrying capacity” for a mod-
ern, industrialized humanity (with a Western European stan-
dard-of-living for all) is on the order of two billion or less, we
are now headed toward 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, or 16.6 billion by
the end of this century, even though Earth’s biospheric life-
support machinery was already being damaged by 1987’s pop-
ulation of FIVE billion, only one-third of whom were indus-
trialized.
(For pre-college audiences, the same understandings might explore, for example, a
thought-experiment that imagines a school district that decides to require its students
to complete one billion homework questions in order to graduate.) (In either case, of
course, the answers remain the same: 38,461 years, beginning 20,000 years ago, and
requiring18,461 additional years into the future.)
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Or suppose that this same automobile is approaching a red
stoplight in the near distance. Normally, a driver will take his
or her foot off the accelerator and press on the brake pedal in
a way that slows the vehicle to a safer speed, or which brings
the vehicle to a gentle stop as it nears the red light.
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From beginning of Chapter 13
13
Thresholds, Tipping Points,
and Unintended Consequences
Imagine the first domino in a row of adjacent dominos being
toppled, thereby causing all the others to fall in quick suc-
cession. In such an event, even an accidental instability im-
parted to a single domino can unexpectedly topple a far wider
and interconnected system. We are living at a time when each
of humanity’s added billions is impacting one natural system
after another, incrementally, and in most cases, repeatedly –
again, and again, and again. And a disconcerting amount of
accumulating evidence suggests that some of Earth’s most im-
portant dominos may already be toppling. In this chapter we
will consider thresholds, tipping points, and unintended conse-
quences.
While an engineering firm may build a bridge to support a
particular tonnage, if that threshold is breached, the integrity
of the structure is compromised, leading to potential collapse
or failure. In a similar way, elevators and aircraft have char-
acteristic weight thresholds which, for safe operation, should
not be transgressed.
Examples of known thresholds also occur in physical, chemi-
cal, biological, and environmental systems, along with a host
of unanticipated thresholds and/or thresholds whose precise
values have not yet been quantified. Such thresholds are
points that denote a limit or a boundary, whether known or
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unknown, that result in dramatic changes when transgressed.
The boiling point of water is an example of such a boundary.
If we imagine a pan of hot water at 211o F under conditions of
standard pressure, the system persists in its liquid state. If,
however, we increase the temperature by just one added de-
gree, the system is carried past a critical and, in this case, an
unmarked tipping point, and transforms abruptly to a gaseous
system of billowing steam (after Kluger, 2006).
As an example of thresholds in a biological system, pH buf-
fers in our blood maintain blood pH at a mildly alkaline 7.4.
Seemingly small transgressions, however, beyond 7.35 (lower
threshold) and 7.45 (upper threshold), result in acidosis or al-
kalosis which are both potentially fatal. As a third example, a
nerve cell will not fire unless a critical number of neurotrans-
mitters bind to its cell-surface receptors. Only if that thresh-
old number of neurotransmitters is reached or exceeded, will
the nerve cell “fire” and transmit a message onward. Each of
these instances illustrates a threshold with implications for es-
sential life-functions. An increasing number of scientists worry
that our population and our impacts may soon exceed one or
more of Earth’s ecological thresholds, known or unknown, or
even that some such thresholds may have been exceeded al-
ready.
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From pages 199-200:
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derestimating humankind’s planet-wide population numbers
that may be unfolding or about to emerge.
The data used to generate the graph are displayed in the table
below:
Births Deaths Extra
Year per 1000 per 1000 per 1000
Examining the data for 1939, we notice that for every thou-
sand residents of Sri Lanka that year, there were 35 births and
21 deaths. Thus, by the end of 1939, each person who died
had been physically replaced, and then - fourteen extra babies
were born per 1000.
Forty-five years later, however, Sri Lanka's rate of population
growth in 1984 was fifty percent faster than it was originally
(1984: 21 extra births/1000 versus only 14 extra births/1000
back in 1939). Thus, even though there was a 25% reduction
in birth rates, in 1984 the number of extra babies born/1000
was 50% greater than it had been in 1939. .
What we see, then, in Sri Lanka's data above mirrors events
around the world over the past two centuries - and may fore-
shadow worldwide events in the decades just ahead): Advan-
ces in medicine, for example (and/or breakthroughs in life-ex-
tension), may offset or entirely cancel-out population stabili-
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zations presently expected to arise from birth rate reductions -
(and send us toward high-end projections of 15 or 16 billion).
From pages 202-204
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"...partly successful, it will create vast social and economic
dislocations” (Wilson, 1998).
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As fertility rates slowly and gradually adjust to an initial mor-
tality reduction, today’s genetics, technologies, and medical
advances institute a second, third, fourth, and fifth mortality
reduction in increasingly quick succession. As a result, fall-
ing fertility never catches up to the multiple new reductions
in mortality and the interim stage of the transition (with its
period of skyrocketing population) is never completed.
(It will be completed eventually, of course, but with each delay in the
transition, the completion is increasingly likely to occur as a collapse.)
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From pages 324-325
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A half-century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of “the
modern plague of overpopulation. What is lacking,” he said,
"is universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and
the education of billions of people who are its victims” (see
King, 1966; Bartlett, 2000; Wooldridge, 2007; Ehrlich and
Ehrlich, 2004). Today, Dr. King’s insights are more applica-
ble than ever. If we continue to proceed complacently, as we
have already done for far too long, it may be that civiliza-
tion’s prevailing philosophy will also become its last words
and its epitaph: business-as-usual, (or perhaps “Too-late” /
“They waited too long”).
.
As Thomas Friedman once noted (2008), “there is a line be-
tween can-do optimism and a keen awareness that the hour is
late and the scale of the problems practically overwhelm-
ing.” To quickly achieve the universal scale of demographic
and biospheric literacy envisioned in this book will necessi-
tate a Roosevelt /Churchillian degree of mobilization and re-
sponse that should have begun two decades ago. As it is, we
close by offering two questions that will carry us toward one
or another of two very different destinies:
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Our species is a J-curve going off in the middle of the only
planetary life-support machinery so far known to exist any-
where in the universe,
and 30 or 40 essential biospheric literacy under-
standings must be universalized two decades ago.
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OCW links, ppts, pdfs, and other resources
I.
Biospheric Literacy 101 - Six PowerPoints / Six Days
http://golddoubloons.wix.com/biospheric-literacy#!powerpoints/c24vq
II.
Priority population-environment collection-
for Academia and Policymakers
http://www.scribd.com/collections/3655003/Population-for-Academia-and-Policymakers
(Space vehicles, automobiles, and other complex systems such as an airplane or the human
body do not continue to function with 70-80-90% eradications, wastes, and damage)
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PPT 4 –EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE AND SEAS AS RAZOR-THIN SURFACE FILMS
http://www.scribd.com/full/28709867?access_key=key-2nz7qoeakn2mqnl8h5o5
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