A lesson from Sir David Attenborough – from his movie – in short Population growth. It’s possible to slow the population growth, even stop it, well before it reaches the point of 11 billion by 2021. So, we have to stabilize our population growth. As education and health care improved in Japan, people’s expectations and opportunities grew, and the birth rate fell. As nations develop everywhere, people choose to have fewer children. The number of children being born worldwide every year is about to level off. A key reason for our population still growing is that many of us are living longer. At some point in the future, the human population will peak for the very first time. The sooner it happens, the easier it makes everything else we have to do. By working hard to raise people out of poverty, giving all access to health care, and enabling girls in particular to stay in school as long as possible, we can make the world’s population peak sooner and at a lower level. We must raise the standard of living around the world without increasing our impact on that world. Renewables. The living world is, essentially, solar-powered. The earth’s plants capture three trillion kilowatt-hours of solar energy every day. That’s almost 20 times the energy we need – just from sunlight. Imagine if we phase out fossil fuels and run our world on the eternal energies of nature too! Sunlight, wind, water, and geo-thermal. At the turn of the century, Morocco relied on imported oil and gas for almost all of its energy. Today, it generates 40 percent of its needs at home from a network of renewable power plants, including the world’s largest solar farm. Sitting on the edge of the Sahara, and cabled directly into southern Europe, Morocco could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. Within 20 years, renewables are predicted to be the world’s main source of power. But we can make them the only source. It's crazy that our banks and our pensions are investing in fossil fuels when these are the very things that are jeopardizing the future that we are saving for. A renewable future will be full of benefits. Energy everywhere will be more affordable. Our cities will be cleaner and quieter. And renewable energy will never run out. Oceans. The living world can’t operate without a healthy ocean, and neither can we. The ocean is a critical ally in our battle to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. The more diverse it is, the better it does that job. And, of course, the ocean is important to us all as a source of food. Fishing is the world’s greatest wild harvest. And if we do it right, it can continue because there’s a win-win at play. The healthier the marine habitat, the more fish there will be, and the more there will be to eat. Palau is a Pacific island nation reliant on its coral reefs for fish and tourism. When fish stocks began to reduce, the Palauans responded by restricting fishing practices and banning fishing entirely from many areas. Protected fish populations soon became so healthy that they spilt over into the areas open for fishing. As a result, the “no fish” zones have increased the catch of the local fishermen while at the same time allowing the reefs to recover. Imagine if we committed to a similar approach across the world. Estimates suggest that “no fish” zones over a third of our coastal seas would be sufficient to provide us with all the fish we will ever need. In International waters, the UN is attempting to create the biggest “no fish” zone of all. In one act, this would transform the open ocean from a place exhausted by subsidized fishing fleets to a wilderness that will help us all in our efforts to combat climate change. The world’s greatest wildlife preserve. Land use. When it comes to the land, we must radically reduce the area we use to farm so that we can make space for returning wilderness. And the quickest and most effective way to do that is for us to change our diet. Large carnivores are rare in nature because it takes a lot of prey to support each of them. For every single predator on the Serengeti, there are more than 100 prey animals. Whenever we choose a piece of meat, we too are unwittingly demanding a huge expanse of space. The planet cannot support billions of large meat-eaters. There just isn’t the space. If we all have a largely plant-based diet, we would need only half the land we use at the moment. And because we would be then dedicated to raising plants, we could increase the yield of this land substantially.
May 2022 , 2020
Page 28
