Are we approaching game over, is there a salvation for the planet or is there not?

South China Tiger - Extinct

A few days ago one the young live-ins in my house asked me if I believed in the global warming. The answer I gave was perhaps not what he wanted to hear (I don't think you like it either), it was more about over population and over consumption than global warming caused by something that simple like burning fossil fuels. I believe that the focus on global warming will lead us to hell sooner or later, some call that hell, end of times or Armageddon in religious terms. Coming to terms with the global warming is only one aspect of a more serious problem. The underlying causes that are stymied by human behavior and politics are a much greater challenge.

WWF published the "Living Planet Report" a few days ago and in short some stark facts say: half of the vertebrate species of the planet is gone since 1970 (52% gone of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish). For freshwater fish it is 76% and for species in the neo-tropics 83%. Astounding figures, play with it trying to calculate the rate of annihilation and you'll be ready for your own suicide. The report also says that we would need to add another 50% to the planet’s surface to meet the demands humanity demands from nature. What is the rate of destruction? Does it accelerate? My mind says that there is only 20 years left until we sit in complete devastation.

Some of this horrendous decline has primary causes and others secondary. The primary stems from when humans expand their "lebens-raum" (Hitler and the Germans used this term before and during WW2) invading or deforesting the territories of non-human species, to live in or to grow crops in. The secondary ones stems from deforestation and emissions (carbon dioxide) resulting in higher temperatures, warmer climate, mainly affecting marine species.

Back to my live-ins again. One of the two pulled out a half-filled pack of meatballs the other day telling me that he had to throw them away because they had gone bad. I remember when he bought them and I got surprised as it was just a few days ago, so I smelled them, no foul smell, smelled normal, I tasted them no foul taste so I told him I'll take them, so I did. Just a few weeks ago the same live-in bought and prepared a lot of food to prepare and eat for a whole week, he ate it during 2 days and then the rest sat in the fridge for a week, lots of food. I had to ask him what he was going to do with it and he replied that he was going to throw it away as it was bad. I smelled it, no foul smell, so I tasted it, no foul taste, telling him, I'll eat it and so I did. It was good and I did not get sick. It appears that people in the wealthy part of the world goes to the store when they are hungry, buying like a lust-murderer or serial killer then at home eating until they can't stuff themselves anymore to lose interest in most of what they over-bought when hungry, throwing it away. This behavior must stop as it is the behavior of an addict, extremely difficult to stop, and most of us are like this. Nobody sees this as cause for over production, over consumption and secondary to that, deforestation and global warming. Are you like this?

Then we have the stupidity of warmonging when we need the money and energy to combat over-production, over-consumption and over-population. We have the stupidity of international trade, the latest, the US poultry industry working for that Europe should open its borders for US chicken products! Imagine such a simple to produce product shipped from between 4000-8000 kilometers away to land at some ports in Europe to be redistributed again oven thousands of kilometers again. Or listen to this one, the Chinese started to abandon growing Soy-beans in favor of Corn as Chinese had turned into eating more meats. Growing Corn is done to feed live-stock, that is beef. Now, the Chinese still want the Soy-bean but production had plummeted so that demand far exceeded availability. Argentina steps in to save China starting growing the Soy-bean but to do that huge swaths of land are need and the answer is deforestation. The story does not end here as the Soy-bean produce has to be shipped to China. Here in Sweden we talk about "near-produced" foods to lower carbon dioxide from transportation but I guess that is a mere joke or marginal regarding the solution to our small problem. I could make very long list over the madness in this world sometimes coming under the name of free trade.

I have been travelling extensively between Europe and Americas since 1982. In my latest trips and in particular flying over US territory nightime I starting realizing how populated the US is becoming. Flying over Florida the lights and roads resembles a contigues city. Very different from 30 years ago. This prompted me to take a look at some US cities and states on Google Earth and the most astounding was when I saw how Phoenix, Arizona with all its suburbs had grown into a monster city covering 1/3 of the entire state, imagining the huge need for water and energy. When I passed by in 1977 it resembled a small and insignificant village.

We in the west are pointing fingers at many tropical nations for slashing the rain forests, in particular Brazil and Indonesia but what have we been doing ourselves? Did we quit harvesting our forests, no we did not and we have been doing since long before the term "rain forest" was known by the general population. Has our own deforestation slowed down, no it is accelerating while media seem not to care about reporting it. In Sweden where I live, farmers are having problems competing with the rest of Europe concerning milk, meat and crop production. To compensate and to stay alive they sell away their forests to pulp, energy and timber production corporations many times devastating large areas of their land. As I have been around Sweden for mineral prospecting and seen it with my own eyes and in fresh remembrance how tough a life farmers here would have it without the possibility to sell of the forests on their properties. It is easy to make up the math towards hell.

I have no solution for this, the very little hope I see is that there is information about what's going on but the problem is that we all behave like addicts and are embedded in lies created by governments, government sponsored "scientists" and those lies relayed to us commons by market controlled media. Nobody believes that we are on the brink of annihilation.

It will all end with people dying from starvation and others killing others for food, to live on for another little while. Some will get fried and others freeze to death. I am just another addict, but concerned.