Resources // Current

The 15 most toxic places to live

Earth's orbit Believe it or not, even space contains copious amounts of pollution. An... more

quanta
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100 Tools and Resources to Teach Yourself Sign Language

Sign language has grown to become a very popular skill, with many colleges,... more

eva2
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3 days ago
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Green House Gases; World-FlowChart

In Graphic Detail http://cait.wri.org/figures/World-FlowChart.jpg

remanns
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4 days ago
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92 Historical Interviews You Can Watch on YouTube

This list of 92 historical interviews attests to that fact. Browse through this... more

sunnyspeaks
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10 days ago
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resource preservation

Vetting and organizing sustainable materials can be a daunting task. We've spent the... more

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11 days ago
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resource preservation – criterion

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100 Incredible Open Courses for the Ultimate Tech Geek

Here are 100 free resources to help you hone your techie skills and learn more about... more

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17 days ago
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4 comments

50 Essential Swine Flu Resources for School Nurses

As we get deeper into flu season, your office or training clinic may already be... more

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19 days ago
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Ten Rules of LinkedIn Etiquette for Business Professionals

Unlike Facebook and the like, LinkedIn is strictly a social network for professionals... more

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20 days ago
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10 Surprising Celebs with Honorary Degrees

Though celebs are often most admired for their financial success from their singing,... more

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24 days ago
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100 Inspirational Twitter Feeds for College Students

You can find inspiration and advice through Twitter on things like finding a job,... more

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1 month ago
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The Ultimate Guide to Better Business Writing: 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources

Most successful business people have developed professional communication skills over... more

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The other inconvenient truth: the crisis in global land use

It’s taken a long time, but the issue of global climate change is finally getting the attention it deserves. While enormous technical, policy, and economic issues remain to be solved, there is now widespread acceptance of the need to confront the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. Collectively, we are beginning to acknowledge that our long addiction to fossil fuels — which has been harming our national security, our economy and our environment for decades — must end. The question today is no longer why, but how. The die is cast, and our relationship to energy will never be the same.

Unfortunately, this positive shift in the national zeitgeist has had an unintended downside. In the rush to portray the perils of climate change, many other serious issues have been largely ignored. Climate change has become the poster child of environmental crises, complete with its own celebrities and campaigners. But is it so serious that we can afford to overlook the rise of infectious disease, the collapse of fisheries, the ongoing loss of forests and biodiversity, and the depletion of global water supplies?

Although I’m a climate scientist by training, I worry about this collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems. Learning from the research my colleagues and I have done over the past decade, I fear we are neglecting another, equally inconvenient truth: that we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization.

Our use of land, particularly for agriculture, is absolutely essential to the success of the human race. We depend on agriculture to supply us with food, feed, fiber, and, increasingly, biofuels. Without a highly efficient, productive, and resilient agricultural system, our society would collapse almost overnight.

But we are demanding more and more from our global agricultural systems, pushing them to their very limits.

Continued population growth.The massive environmental impacts of our agricultural practices rival the impacts of climate change.(adding more than 70 million people to the world every year), changing dietary preferences (including more meat and dairy consumption), rising energy prices, and increasing needs for bioenergy sources are putting tremendous pressure on the world’s resources. And, if we want any hope of keeping up with these demands, we’ll need to double, perhaps triple, the agricultural production of the planet in the next 30 to 40 years.

Meeting these huge new agricultural demands will be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. At present, it is completely unclear how (and if) we can do it.

If this wasn’t enough, we must also address the massive environmental impacts of our current agricultural practices, which new evidence indicates rival the impacts of climate change. Consider the following:

Ecosystem degradation. Already, we have cleared or converted more than 35 percent of the earth’s ice-free land surface for agriculture, whether for croplands, pastures or rangelands. In fact, the area used for agriculture is nearly 60 times larger than the area of all of the world’s cities and suburbs. Since the last ice age, nothing has been more disruptive to the planet’s ecosystems than agriculture. What will happen to our remaining ecosystems, including tropical rainforests, if we need to double or triple world agricultural production, while simultaneously coping with climate change?

end of excerptIt’s taken a long time, but the issue of global climate change is finally getting... more