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Benno Hansen

Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? | Nafeez... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ible-collapse-study-scientists

environment collapse civilisation inequality crisis natural resources climate change food water energy population

shared by Benno Hansen on 16 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
    • Benno Hansen
      Benno Hansen on 16 Mar 14
       
      NASA har lavet Collapse 2 ?
  • These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."
  • The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency: "Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."
    • Benno Hansen
      Benno Hansen on 16 Mar 14
       
      efficiency paradox
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  • the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.
Benno Hansen

The end is not necessarily nigh - V3.co.uk - 0 views

www.v3.co.uk/...necessarily-nigh

jared diamond collapse sociology business sustainability

shared by Benno Hansen on 12 Aug 09 - Cached
  • these underlying environmental factors that inevitably prompted societal collapse
  • societal collapse is often avoidable – a message that is painfully pertinent given the ecologically unsustainable nature of many modern societies
  • there are many reasons why societies make disastrous decisions, including a lack of foresight; poor governance that ensures people can get away with doing things that are in their personal interest but not in the interest of the society; a lack of flexibility that leaves societies that no longer work in a changing environment; and perhaps most importantly a refusal to acknowledge a problem even exists
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  • state of psychological denial that characterises many people's refusal to accept the hazards posed by climate change and other environmental threats
  • numerous commercial reasons for responsible behaviour, including mitigating the risk of high profile and costly accidents, future regulations, and opposition from local communities, and increasing the chance of winning contracts from increasingly environmentally conscious customers
Benno Hansen

Learning From Past Civilizations : TreeHugger - 0 views

www.treehugger.com/...earning-past-civilizations.php

jared diamond collapse sustainability

shared by Benno Hansen on 12 Aug 09 - Cached
  • our early twenty-first century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond.
  • Today, our successes and problems flow from the extraordinary growth in the world economy over the last century.
  • While the economy is growing exponentially, the earth’s natural capacities, such as its ability to supply fresh water, forest products, and seafood, have not increased. Humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. Today, global demands on natural systems exceed their sustainable yield capacity by nearly 30 percent. We are meeting current demands by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for decline and collapse.
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  • In our modern high-tech civilization, it is easy to forget that the economy, indeed our existence, is wholly dependent on the earth’s natural systems and resources.
  • the carbon stored in the Amazon’s trees equals roughly 15 years of human-induced carbon emissions in the atmosphere
  • we will either mobilize together to save our global civilization, or we will all be potential victims of its disintegration
Benno Hansen

FT.com / Columnists / Lunch with the FT - Lunch with the FT: Jared Diamond - 0 views

www.ft.com/...e2-11de-ab4a-00144feabdc0.html

jared diamond sustainability

shared by Benno Hansen on 12 Aug 09 - Cached
  • “If I was Japan’s worst enemy trying to figure out a strategy to drive it into a crisis in 10 years’ time, my strategy would be to get the Japanese to do exactly what they are doing, which is to over-harvest their main source of protein.”
  • “There is a parallel based on the same fundamental mechanisms of the economic collapse that we’re seeing now and the collapse of past civilisations such as the Maya,”
  • only those societies able to stamp out unsustainable habits – over-logging, overspending, over-extension – have the ability to survive
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  • “When people talk about the greater efficiency of dictatorships, they are forgetting that a dictatorship is no more likely than a democracy to make a wise decision,”
  • “If we continue to operate non-sustainably, then in 50 or 60 years, the US and Japan and Europe will be in bad shape. But my friends in the highlands of New Guinea will be fine. Some of my friends made stone tools when they were children and they could just go back to what their ancestors were doing for 46,000 years. New Guinea highlanders are not doomed,”
  • “The first world lifestyle will be doomed if we don’t learn to operate sustainably.”
Benno Hansen

We Are All Madoffs - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...48182

sustainability economy

shared by Benno Hansen on 04 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Benno Hansen on 04 Sep 09
     
    The global economy is a pyramid scheme exploiting Earth, bound to collapse under us all
Jon Snow

Collapsing Cooling Towers - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

écologie electricité Angleterre pub

shared by Jon Snow on 16 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Jon Snow on 16 Jun 12
     
    Chouette pub : )
Benno Hansen

Big business goes to Rio -- New Internationalist - 0 views

www.newint.org/...ility-big-business-corporation

business green economy sustainability environment

shared by Benno Hansen on 18 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Harmless-sounding phrases like ‘green economy’ and ‘sustainable development’ have become grounds for bitter dispute, as different governments and business interests attempt to redefine these terms to meet their own agenda.
  • This row of well-meaning policy sandcastles have spent the past 20 years being eaten away by a rising tide of fundamentalist free-market economics, unfettered financial speculation, and consolidated corporate power.
  • any environmental and social gains from the first Rio summit look small next to the destruction wrought by a voracious corporate sector and by governments obsessed with growth in GDP before all else.
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  • A shift to a genuinely sustainable society will require us to challenge these negative forces, rein in the excesses of corporations and markets, and build an entirely different economy based on wellbeing for the many rather than profits for the few.
  • Silvia Ribeiro from the campaign group ETC Mexico points out: ‘Collapsing financial markets in Northern countries mean that banks and other investors are now looking desperately for new areas of expansion and speculation. We can see these desires leaving their mark on the Rio+20 process. The “Green Economy” now under discussion would unleash a wave of risky but lucrative new technologies such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology and climate technofixes. This isn’t about finding the best environmental solutions: it’s about creating profitable new investments.’
  • we cannot afford to live in a world where ecosystems are protected if, and only if, there is more profit to be made by protecting them than by trashing them.
  • Large polluting industries, business lobby groups and financial institutions are welcomed in as well-meaning ‘stakeholders’ – like mafia bosses invited to a meeting on reducing gang violence.
  • The businesses with the most wealth and power are those that have flourished in an economy based on the unrestricted use of natural resources and the exploitation of many of the world’s people. Those with the most to lose from a shift to true sustainability are therefore those with the most power to block that change.
  • the Stockholm Environment Institute calculated that the economic value of the oceans could be reduced by up to $2 trillion per year if climate change is left unchecked
  • Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of IEN, said: ‘Systems such as “payment for ecological services” and using forests in carbon offset markets do nothing but make Mother Earth into the World Trade Organization of nature.’
  • According to Lucia Ortiz of Friends of the Earth Brazil: ‘Trades Unions are getting very concerned about the “green economy” agenda, because it represents a deepening of neoliberal policies, and threatens to undermine the social rights already secured by past struggles. They are working in solidarity with environmentalists, indigenous peoples, farmers and women’s rights activists, calling instead for a transition to a sustainable and just society free from the exploitation of workers and of nature.’
Benno Hansen

A Day to Prevent Exploitation of the Environment in War - 0 views

www.ens-newswire.com/...2008-11-06-02.asp

un congo ecowar environment war

shared by Benno Hansen on 10 Nov 08 - Cached
  • "The natural environment enjoys protection under Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions," Ban said. "But this protection is often violated during war and armed conflict. Water wells are polluted, crops torched, forests cut down, soils poisoned, and animals killed, all in order to gain military advantage."
  • Since the outbreak of fighting in August 1998, the conflicts have been rooted in struggles for control of natural resources such as water, timber, diamonds and other minerals as well as various political agendas.
  • "The United Nations attaches great importance to ensuring that action on the environment is part of our approach to peace," Ban stressed today. "Protecting the environment can help countries create employment opportunities, promote development and avoid a relapse into armed conflict.
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  • Ban said that the UN is studying the environmental impacts of conflicts around the world, from the Balkans to Afghanistan, from Lebanon to the Sudan.
  • Lasting peace in war-torn Darfur will depend in part on resolving the underlying competition for water and fertile land, Ban said, adding that there can be no durable peace in Afghanistan if the natural resources that sustain livelihoods and ecosystems are destroyed.
  • "We have seen how environmental damage and the collapse of institutions are threatening human health, livelihoods and security," he said. "These risks can also jeopardize fragile peace and development in post-conflict societies." "Let us renew our commitment to preventing the exploitation of the environment in times of conflict," said the secretary-general, "and to protecting the environment as a pillar of our work for peace."
Benno Hansen

Jared Diamond Video: With Climate Change, Americans Have Unique Chance to Avoid the Fat... - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...te-change-fate-of-ancient-maya

climate change Jared Diamond environment

shared by Benno Hansen on 19 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Jared Diamond talks about climate change, drawing parallels between modern Americans and the Classic southern lowland Maya – who failed to take the actions that might have avoided the collapse of their civilization
  • we must not only slow its pace by reducing emissions, but we must prepare for its impacts and adapt
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