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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday November 21 2017, @04:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the save-our-planet dept.

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-11-scientists-countries-negative-global-environmental.html

Human well-being will be severely jeopardized by negative trends in some types of environmental harm, such as a changing climate, deforestation, loss of access to fresh water, species extinctions and human population growth, scientists warn in today's issue of BioScience, an international journal.

The viewpoint article—"World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice"—was signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 184 countries.

The warning came with steps that can be taken to reverse negative trends, but the authors suggested that it may take a groundswell of public pressure to convince political leaders to take the right corrective actions. Such activities could include establishing more terrestrial and marine reserves, strengthening enforcement of anti-poaching laws and restraints on wildlife trade, expanding family planning and educational programs for women, promoting a dietary shift toward plant-based foods and massively adopting renewable energy and other "green" technologies.

Global trends have worsened since 1992, the authors wrote, when more than 1,700 scientists—including a majority of the living Nobel laureates at the time—signed a "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" published by the Union of Concerned Scientists. In the last 25 years, trends in nine environmental issues suggest that humanity is continuing to risk its future. However, the article also reports that progress has been made in addressing some trends during this time.

The article was written by an international team led by William Ripple, distinguished professor in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. The authors used data maintained by government agencies, nonprofit organizations and individual researchers to warn of "substantial and irreversible harm" to the Earth.

"Some people might be tempted to dismiss this evidence and think we are just being alarmist," said Ripple. "Scientists are in the business of analyzing data and looking at the long-term consequences. Those who signed this second warning aren't just raising a false alarm. They are acknowledging the obvious signs that we are heading down an unsustainable path. We are hoping that our paper will ignite a wide-spread public debate about the global environment and climate."

Other links:

Here is the official page where you can read the full article, endorse the article, view signatories, and endorsers

Direct link to full article in PDF

The 1992 version


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 22 2017, @01:57AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 22 2017, @01:57AM (#600006) Journal
    Let me repeat:

    I think there's good reason to blame Obama for the 5 million job loss between January 2009 and February 2010 as well as the glacially slow recover[y] from that point to the November 2016 election.

    Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Back in early 2009, the Obama administration via two administration economists, Christine Romer and Jared Bernstein, came up with a chart [thinkprogress.org] rationalizing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), a bit of economic stimulus comprised of short term spending and tax cuts to the tune of $800 billion.

    There are three curves on that chart all related to the standard measure of unemployment in the US. One curve is their projection of US unemployment for the few years after the recession started when no stimulus was attempted. A lower curve was the projection of unemployment over the same time period, if the ARRA were enacted (with slight changes, since the projection predated the final ARRA bill passed). The final curve is of actual unemployment over that time period which is significantly higher throughout the entire period (the linked story only goes through roughly mid 2011, but unemployment rates [bls.gov] remained higher than the 5% target through to 2016) than either of the projections and didn't settled down to pre-recession levels by the end of the time period.

    So the obvious question here is why did that happen? The party line is that the recession was worse than expected and the higher unemployment rates were due to an unforeseen crash in labor markets that could have been addressed by an even bigger stimulus. The linked story above blames the Federal Reserve despite their considerable efforts to push the economy via monetary policy.

    My view is that Obama was the problem that was bigger than foreseen. For both his terms, he had implemented a variety of hostile business law and regulation. Why would businesses gratuitously hire people in those circumstances? For example, even by mid 2011 when the above story was written, the divergence from plan was still 3% higher unemployment above the projected ARRA rates.

    Here's a couple of charts [businessinsider.com] that illustrate the problem nicely. We've had a bunch of recessions since the end of the Second World War in the US. Aside from the 2001 and 2007 recessions every one of them took off in employment rate once the economy started to recover. And GDP has been remarkably slow to recover compared to every other such recession, including the 2001 one. I think the big difference was that no other recession had a president who was more concerned about ideological policy implementation than the economic recovery of the US and it shows in a recovery that has taken both terms to come about.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @03:44AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @03:44AM (#600031)

    Here's a couple of charts [businessinsider.com] that illustrate the problem nicely.

    Clearly, we should work to recreate the conditions that existed prior to 1980: higher taxes on the wealthy and stricter banking regulation.

    While BI is giving us partisan spin, the graphs don't appear to lie.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 22 2017, @04:02AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 22 2017, @04:02AM (#600037) Journal

      Clearly, we should work to recreate the conditions that existed prior to 1980: higher taxes on the wealthy and stricter banking regulation.

      Then when we take those away, we'll get the desired economic boost. /sarc