How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

[The Dude]

Great quotes svarg26

Chavez is a self important dictator who suppresses any dissident thought in his freedom loving Chavocracy, his quote is still apt. (I agree with what he stands for just not who he's standing on).

Isn't it the economy and capitalism which squanders our resources? Isn't it that carrot and stick mentality which has us chasing our tails wondering why we're left so exhausted having gotten no where? Why do we overproduce and waste so much?

"at Western living standards". You mean being stuck on a treadmill with the rest of your buddies to power some made up system of pure vampiric suckyness. It's these standards that kill the planet, nobody suggests we all adopt them!

Nice try WD, but I don't see the issues of economic vampirism and the drainage of mother natures blood to be separate at all! Viewing the world economically is intimately related with our subsequent rape and pillage of it. To capitalise on nature is to be disconnected from it (like selling out your own mum!), the left hand stealing from the right and just flushing everything down the toilet, I guess if that's the western standard then no it won't last long.

[Guest svarg26]

it's a pity that "higher education" doesn't teach good manners. what is does teach however, is to live happily in the corporate enforced imprisoned society that the elite have created and believe that this is the only option. they brainwash people to such a degree, that some people will actually defend this policy of slavery to the death and will stomp on anyone with a different opinion.

woody would have you all believe that government funded "higher education" solutions like the carbon tax are for the benefit of the planet.

i simply say switch off and don't participate.

woody says pay your taxes and be happy, forced sterilization is a necessary evil, eugenics is your friend, science is god and anyone that disagrees should be shot down and ridiculed back into line.

i don't play your game and never will. sorry, mate.

[WoodDragon]

Why do you keep calling it that? Misinformation and censorship isn't cool at all...

Don't worry Synchro, I actually quite like the idea of Wikipedia. My only gripe is that it can be edited to present biased or even completed untrue material, and a lot of people don't realise that it might be rubbish.

I'm not trying to censor Wikipedia, I just use the term "Wickedpedia" as a personal joke about the fact that it is often itself a source of misinformation! Even so, I've still used it below...

Nice try WD, but I don't see the issues of economic vampirism and the drainage of mother natures blood to be separate at all!

The Dude, I think that you're not quite getting my point.

Economic raping and pillaging are certainly an integral and a huge part of the degradation of the planet. That's why I refer again and again to the "Western lifestyle", and how unsustainable it is, especially as the poorest 80% of the human population is aspiring to the same degree of affluence. Look at what I said:

...Chavez can be correct about Western politico-economics and its damaging effect on the Third World, and... the planet can simultaneously still be under pressure from the number of humans living on it. Quite simply, they're different things.

Point 1 - Chavez is correct about Western politico-economics and its damaging effect on the Third World.

Point 2 - remove Western politico-economic oppression of the Third World, and much of the Third World will naturally want to emulate Western lifestyle and affluence, bringing even more pressure to bear on the planet's ecosystems.

So, the matter of Chavez' comment, with which I agree, is separate from the matter of how many people can live on Earth with a Western lifestyle. Go back to the example of Cuba - they have a degree of affluence, a manner of resource utilisation, and a population density that permits it to be the only 'sustainable' country in the world. However, there are many countries that are not even as "affluent" as Cuba! The trouble is, they have greater population densities, and manners of resource utilisation, that result in even their grim standards of living not being sustainable. Think of some of the arid African countries, where millions of people are burning their last shrubs, and their cows' dung, for fuel, whilst they sit in abject misery in the dust...

Sure, there are brutal dictators creating an enormous disparity of equality in some of those countries, but that itself in fact stems from the limited supply of many critical resources, and the ease with which already-poor people are able to be further subjugated.

Yes, the matters of politico-economics and of population are intertwined - inextricably so - but they are also still distinct issues issues.

And by the way, I love your summation of Chavez!

Svarge26...

it's a pity that "higher education" doesn't teach good manners.

Don't come the raw prawn with me.

I tried several times to elicit some recognition from you that the problems facing the global environment are far greater than simply growing food on terraces and then filling the planet up with 30 billion (or "trillion", apparently) people. In response you persisted in ignoring all fact, and in avoiding any production of evidence (beyond that of Cuba, which does not actually serve your argument at all), and in claiming that your "homework is done".

In the face of this the most intemperate thing I said was:

If you want to skip around singing about terraces and terra preta and expecting to leash the beast with a sparky diamante collar knitted together from one or two quick-fixes, don't expect your smug cure for the ills of the world to be greeted with anything other than frustration by those who have serious exposure to the underlying principles and facts.

In doing so I was being rather snippish, but it's hardly bad manners. However, you descended into really bad manners before I did:

nice way to debate, mate. tell me, who is the real twat?

Not that I give a shit. Your fixation with "manners" is a red herring - one of the logical fallacies to which you have demonstrated yourself to be especially prone. The matter of manners has nothing to do with the correctness of my argument. You need to learn the difference between "You're an idiot" as a debating strategy, and "You're wrong for these reasons (insert analysis), oh, and by the way you're an idiot".

Your fixation with "manners" is also a strawman fallacy, because "higher education" is about more than teaching manners, if it is even about that at all.

Another of your errors is the fallacy of argumentum ad hominum, which you exhibit with:

it's a pity that "higher education" doesn't teach good manners. what is does teach however, is to live happily in the corporate enforced imprisoned society that the elite have created and believe that this is the only option. they brainwash people to such a degree, that some people will actually defend this policy of slavery to the death and will stomp on anyone with a different opinion.

In fact this effort from you constitutes the Reductio ad Hitlerum form of ad hominem. Follow the link and start learning, because your grasp of logical discussion is abysmal.

Your worst example of bad logic in your last post though was:

woody says pay your taxes and be happy, forced sterilization is a necessary evil, eugenics is your friend, science is god and anyone that disagrees should be shot down and ridiculed back into line.

I did in fact say none of these things, nor have I ever advocated them. This is putting words into my mouth; yet another strawman argument - one of the most frequently-used logical fallacies favoured by those who cannot actually argue from evidence and data.

Just so that you are clear about what I have and have not said, I will refer you back to the list of alternatives I presented back on 6 November last year:

So, we have several options:

1) live more simply, in a way that will permit the number of people currently on the planet to not (further) destroy their home,

2) live at the current Western standard with fewer people, in a way that will permit a future number of people on the planet to not (further) destroy their home.

3) live with greater disparity between rich and poor, so that some of us can live the good life and the others can hang on by their fingernails, while we feel warm and fuzzy because we didn't go all Nazi and kill them off,

4) live as we are, ignoring the numbers, and wait for the shit to hit the fan,

5) live as we are, ignoring the numbers, and wait for some thus-far undiscovered magical solution to drop from the sky.

Note, option 5 will result in option 4 eventuating, as would option 3. There are no signs that humanity is opting for alternative 1; and if we ever get to option 2 in practice, at the rate we're taking to do it the shit will be spattering the walls first.

It's time for humanity to wake up, smell the methane, and make some hard decisions. And the window of time for doing so is rapidly closing if we don't want a messy end to the problem.

Read the above quote carefully. All I did was to list the various alternatives that are available to humanity. At no point did I actually suggest how any of these options might be implemented. That is a choice for societies themselves to make, as I have said before, and the longer that humanity waits before making a decision, the harder they're going to be to make and to implement, and the less choice we'll have.

If some of those options are difficult even now, that is not my fault - it is simply a consequence of the situation that humanity and the planet find themselves in; a situation that is scientifically demonstrable, no matter your own peculiar aversion to 'intellectualism'.

As a person though I actively attempt to minimise my own ecological footprint, although I will note that you have on several occasions now used both the strawman fallacy and argumentum ad hominum to claim that I don't, when you have not a clue at all about what I do. Nice work that, buster.

You're wrong on that score too, though.

I'll give you credit for that however - you manage to be very consistent in your wrongness. It's great that you apparently grow all of your own food, but with the distorted understanding of the planet's ecological/environmental problems that you demonstrate, growing a few vegies on a terrace is a bit like having a broken clock on your wall that is 'correct' twice a day...

And a tap on the shoulder... As much as I am all for the human right to have (a small number of) kids, there are many on this forum who are a bit more restrained in their own decisions about this, including our own very respected host. I respect them for it, and I laud such a decision . Whilst it might have been amusing to see you stumble into an embarrassing guff on this subject I have no desire to see people's voluntary choices disparaged, so hopefully you'll be smart enough to pull your head in from further commentary about sterilisation and eugenics.

Edited January 8, 2011 by WoodDragon

[synchromesh]

Don't worry Synchro, I actually quite like the idea of Wikipedia. My only gripe is that it can be edited to present biased or even completed untrue material, and a lot of people don't realise that it might be rubbish.

I'm not trying to censor Wikipedia, I just use the term "Wickedpedia" as a personal joke about the fact that it is often itself a source of misinformation! Even so, I've still used it below...

Dude, I was calling Wikipedia a misinformer/censor... not you!

That's what I originally thought you could have meant! But when I read that post of yours last night, I just kept on reminding myself that "wicked" usually means "cool" in our generation. Anyway, it's just good to know that you don't treat Wikipedia like the Bible, as so many other people do. Quite to the contrary in fact.

[WoodDragon]

Dude, I was calling Wikipedia a misinformer/censor... not you!

Heh, I'm with you now!

Yeah, love/hate the Wickedpedia...

[Guest svarg26]

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

i don't see the part where it says "with a western lifestyle". does that part only exist in woody's mind?

apparently my response to having been called a twat makes me the one with bad manners and he dares to talk about logic. well done, buddy.

was that the best you could come up with?

woody has put words in my mouth from day one and screams foul play when i return the favour. all i can say is, too bad.

i think it is time we reclaimed the debate back from those that hijacked it to suit their own delusions. a rewording of the question posed is in order and i hope this puts an end to all the ill feelings and unwarranted abuse.

how many people like svarg26 can live on planet earth? 20/30 billion. EASY.

or

how many people like WoodDragon can live on planet earth? i am almost too afraid to ask.

common sense or science?

i know what i would choose.

[WoodDragon]

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

i don't see the part where it says "with a western lifestyle". does that part only exist in woody's mind?

Svarg26, your capacity for comprehension is as abysmal as it is for reasoned and referenced debate.

The answer to the question is necessarily contingent upon the way we live, so I gave two extremes. It was the whole point of the SBS documentary that sparked this thread in the first place.

Everyone in the Third World would like to live as we do, so I pointed out that at this level of affluence we can only sustain indefinitely, fewer people than are currently alive. If the intention is to maintain the current population however, then we need to live more simply.

Your incapacity to see the simple logic of this is merely a reflection what is not happening in your mind, rather than of what "exists" in mine.

As far as you being called a twat, it wasn't me who did that. I simply pointed out that you began using that level of "bad mannered" language before I did.

woody has put words in my mouth from day one

Which words exactly have I "put in your mouth"? How do they resemble the ones that you most certainly put in mine?

how many people like svarg26 can live on planet earth? 20/30 billion. EASY

I call crap.

Please tell us what your ecological footprint is. That will tell us soon enough exactly how many svarg26s could live on the planet, and it will also tell us exactly how you are living.

how many people like WoodDragon can live on planet earth? i am almost too afraid to ask.

Don't be, because I am happy to admit my footprint, even though I am not happy at its size.

Using the WWF calculator honestly, it would require 1.4 earths to support the current global population all living at my level.

Using the myfootprint.org calculator honestly, it would require 1.14 earths to support the current global population all living at my level.

Using the myfootprint.org calculator honestly, it would require 1.2 earths to support the current global population all living at my level.

Using the Powerhouse calculator honestly, I use 5 'global' hectares.

Using the Ecology Fund calculator honestly, I use 3.1 'global' hectares, which they equate to needing 2.5 planets to support the current global population all living at my level. Note: I ticked 40% for the last question, because it's insane to think that we could have an indefinitely sustainable global ecology, anywhere resembling the preindustrial one, with less. Selecting 0% drops my footprint to 1.5 planets.

Most of my impact seems to come from my driving to a part-time job, which I do in a 121. If I could get my income without driving as I do, I can easily get my footprint to below "1 planet".

I don't know in what sort of cardboard box you live in, or how much gravel you eat, but to get the "20/30 billion" figure that you pulled out of your arse that's the level at which you'd need to live.

So, once again, on your specious claim I call bullshit.

Edited January 9, 2011 by WoodDragon

[Guest svarg26]

i certainly don't need some elitist calculator telling me how to live my life.

prince philip helped to create the WWF. this is the same man who once shot a mother elephant with its baby standing next to it. this is clearly someone who has the credentials to tell me how i should live. way to go, phil.

my life is not an open facebook page and i wish to keep it that way. but i will say that i only rely on the government to pump water to my home.

my common sense calculator says to live without buying useless plastic crap and to power your own home. store food and water and prepare, not for some ecological disaster, but for hyper inflation. when the time comes, i will still be eating when the super market shelves are empty. i will still have power when the grid shuts down. will you?

you are a child, who needs constant approval from a system that wishes to crush the life out of you. please do not force this enslavement onto the rest of us.

crawl into your hole and free us from your negativity.

[Slybacon]

From what I understand the European population is experiencing a decline. Some say at such a rate as to of hit a point of no return with the eventual collapse of European population all together. USA on the other hand is increasing at a rate of over 1% per year. With 260 odd million already in USA. That means over 260 000 new Americans every year. Now its obvious that USA is experiencing some hard times ahead and wont be able to support this population growth soon.

So what is the answer , de-population agenda? So Who then decides who can breed and who can't? If you can support your self why would you be denied the opportunity to raise a child the same way.

[botanika]

Depopulation is pretty drastic - very contentious area but certainly need to halt excessive population growth. It's not all doom. We're innovative buggers and were not going backwards just yet. All our problems are potentially a huge resource as well.

[synchromesh]

From what I understand the European population is experiencing a decline. Some say at such a rate as to of hit a point of no return with the eventual collapse of European population all together. USA on the other hand is increasing at a rate of over 1% per year. With 260 odd million already in USA. That means over 260 000 new Americans every year. Now its obvious that USA is experiencing some hard times ahead and wont be able to support this population growth soon.

It's the same deal with Australia isn't it? Or maybe I'm getting my wires crossed...

So what is the answer , de-population agenda? So Who then decides who can breed and who can't? If you can support your self why would you be denied the opportunity to raise a child the same way.

Henry Kissinger? He is a doctor after all...

[WoodDragon]

i certainly don't need some elitist calculator telling me how to live my life.

Dude, they're just there to give you an idea of what your lifestyle costs the planet. They're not hold a gun to your head.

prince philip helped to create the WWF. this is the same man who once shot a mother elephant with its baby standing next to it. this is clearly someone who has the credentials to tell me how i should live. way to go, phil

.

What's your problem with an inbred blue-blood got to do with these calculators? They're the best thing we have at the moment for a quick and dirty comparison of everyone's footprints on the planet.

my life is not an open facebook page and i wish to keep it that way. but i will say that i only rely on the government to pump water to my home.

Come on. Putting a numner up here isn't going to tell anyone who you are, where you live, what p0rn site you last visited, or anything else even remotely identifying. Are you just put out because you couldn't score the 0.25-of-a-planet value that you'd need to get in order to validate your claim that 30 billion people couldlive on the planet at your level of impact?

when the time comes, i will still be eating when the super market shelves are empty.

Me too.

i will still have power when the grid shuts down. will you?

I don't have power to my land now, and I hope that I will always be able to do without it in a pinch, even if I do eventually get solar and/or a turbine.

you are a child, who needs constant approval from a system that wishes to crush the life out of you.

Please, spare me the melodrama.

please do not force this enslavement onto the rest of us.

What enslavement am I forcing on you?

crawl into your hole and free us from your negativity.

Wake up and smell the roses.

[WoodDragon]

The thought of any significant enforced depopulation fills me with dread.

If authoritarian governments do it, it'll be ugly - China's 1 child policy could end up looking good by comparison.

If nature does it, it'll be horrible beyond words.

There are many things that could be done instead, and that are humane:

1) Educate women, and especially women and girls in the Third World. Educated women have dignity, they have control over their own bodies, and they help to create a much more human-friendly society. Oh, and they have fewer kids.

2) Reduce global wealth disparity. The way that Robin Hood would do it. Or, at least by not ripping off Third World countries just because they can't stand up to Western transnational companies and governments.

3) Stop the Roman Catholic church from interferring with people's sex lives, and especially with their family planning decisions. The same is also now starting to apply to some Islamist sects who are going very fundie...

4) Stop giving tax breaks and cash handouts to people to have more than two kids.

5) Encourage people to put off having children for an average of 5 years, or even 10. As any demographer will tell you, this has a profound effect on how populations grow.

I actually took the last point to heart, and waited until I was 15 years older than my father was when my parents had me. Biologically, it's actually a bit Russian roulettish, but I walked the talk. We also stopped at two pregnancies.

I don't think that humans will actually be able to fully reduce their population to sustainable numbers completely voluntarily. I'm pretty sure that war, famine, environmental degradation - and ensuing disease - will play all their parts in the future, and I suspect that economic collapse is quite likely put its boot in too.

For many people it'll suck to live in the future, but the more we do now, the less it will suck for others (and maybe even ourselves) later on.

[Slybacon]

Well, given the un even current distribution of finite resources amongst the current population leaning towards the powers that be retaining and controlling these resources in order to make you depend on them in order to survive. As long as we live in a monetary society and not that of a resources based economy we will feel as tho we are in a population growing so rapidly fast that it would seem impossible to support itself. When in reality the population could become independent and self sustaining if the freedom to do so was facilitated not inhibited.

[Mt.B]

1) Educate women, and especially women and girls in the Third World. Educated women have dignity, they have control over their own bodies, and they help to create a much more human-friendly society. Oh, and they have fewer kids.

MEN need education way more than women do IMO. The amount of unplanned births due to rape globally is ridiculous. Let alone the rape of the planet.

[Guest svarg26]

with all of the flooding and most dams at full capacity. i am reminded of the question. where will all the water come from to support the growing population?

common sense says, from the sky. like it has forever.

woody and his elitist fear mongering mates, gave you desalination plants, as the only answer to their deliberate mismanagement of the river systems and water supply.

they now charge us top dollar for something that falls from the sky for free.

the billions that will now be spent on helping the victims of the floods, could have been spent on building more dams to store the water.

these are the same people that pedal the global warming myth. woody has some strange bedfellows.

carbon is evil, run for your lives.

[WoodDragon]

As long as we live in a monetary society and not that of a resources based economy we will feel as tho we are in a population growing so rapidly fast that it would seem impossible to support itself.

Bacon, you've actually touched upon a really important thing here, which is really the stuff of an entire thread, if not a book or several.

In order to sustain our model of economic growth, banks 'make' newmoney by creating more debt, which we have to service by working and making ever more 'stuff' and using ever more (usually unnecessary) services. As long as we have an economy that is modelled on the idea of perpetual growth of debt and GDP, we will continue to gnaw down the natural captial of the planet. Trouble is, economists don't know how to shift our style of economy, so there are no signs that things will change in this regard any time soon.

Mt:B...

MEN need education way more than women do IMO. The amount of unplanned births due to rape globally is ridiculous. Let alone the rape of the planet.

Yeah, you're right there. I actually thought about saying something about this, but sadly I didn't know where to start. It's no wonder that so many women hate men, when you think about it.

[WoodDragon]

with all of the flooding and most dams at full capacity. i am reminded of the question. where will all the water come from to support the growing population?

The trouble is, the El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation, and similar cyclical phenomena mean that there will be extended dry periods in between flood events. Remember how the Murray almost died because of it, and how it might still not be out of the woods yet? Our natural environments are adapted to extremes, but not to the degree that future droughts and floods are likely to occur. You need to learn some physics, and in particular some thermodynamics, so that you can appreciate the difficulties that heat distribution will cause in a warming world.

As to water supply, there are not many feasible options for flood prevention by damming, and if you look at most of the recent events you'll notice that they occurred on wide, flat areas that were not fed by dammable catchments. Yesterday's catastrophic flooding near Toowooma shows this - where would the dam go that would have saved Grantham? Seriously, how many dams would need to be built to flood-proof the whole of Australia again extreme events such as this, especially as they become more frequent and extreme in the future? How much would this cost? What would it do to our river and stream ecosystems?

The same considerations limit how much we can dam water for consumption. That you cavalierly speak of dams without acknowledging this, is a revealing indication of your ignorance of why dams are not a simple fix.

And don't bother trying to say that we should find a way to pump this flood water into existing dams. There are thermodynamic considerations that make this prohibitive expensive, and in fact technologically impossible to any significant degree.

woody and his elitist fear mongering mates, gave you desalination plants, as the only answer to their deliberate mismanagement of the river systems and water supply.

You're really pathetically incapable of factual attribution, aren't you? I have been a vociferous opponent of desalination, and all of my scientific colleagues have been so as well.

You really have no idea.

About anything at all, it seems.

these are the same people that pedal the global warming myth. woody has some strange bedfellows.

Global warming "myth"? Ah, so your ignorance of science knows no bounds at all.

No more need be said.

Edited January 11, 2011 by WoodDragon

[Slybacon]

Bacon, you've actually touched upon a really important thing here, which is really the stuff of an entire thread, if not a book or several.

In order to sustain our model of economic growth, banks 'make' newmoney by creating more debt, which we have to service by working and making ever more 'stuff' and using ever more (usually unnecessary) services. As long as we have an economy that is modelled on the idea of perpetual growth of debt and GDP, we will continue to gnaw down the natural captial of the planet. Trouble is, economists don't know how to shift our style of economy, so there are no signs that things will change in this regard any time soon.

 

There is times when the world has proven itself as a being capable of shifting to resource based. Unfortuately it is in times of great war, when we look at what we have not how much it will cost........

[hutch]

.

 

Wow...I haven't been paying much attention I will admit but this clown is everywhere trying to explain how great he is....

[Guest svarg26]

dams got us this far. i am sure that building more to support a growing population would continue this pattern. according to woody, science says this is not possible and that it all costs money that we apparently don't have.

woody always seems to make everything a bureaucratic nightmare.

when it rains. store it. it's that easy.

[WoodDragon]

when it rains. store it. it's that easy.

No, it's not that easy. But if you disagree, send letters to the engineering departments of all the local Queensland councils, and of the state government, detailing exactly where and how they can build the dams that will easily store all of this water.

Post a copy of your letter here, and post the responses that you receive.

Dams are not a cure-all for flooding. It is not possible to place dams so that they capture most of the runoff from a flooded catchment. Dams cannot capture for potable storage more than a portion of floodwater.

Dams certainly cannot usefully capture for hydroelectricity the water that consitutes the sort of flooding that is affecting Queensland.

Learn some hydology and some thermodynamics. I've formally studied, and used in my research, both subjects.

That's why I know that yet again, you are screamingly wrong.

But feel free to prove me wrong. Write that letter and show both it and the responses to us.

[WoodDragon]

The frustrating thing about the idea that dams are the answer, is that there will be hundreds of people blaming greenies for the fact that there aren't dams being built on every street corner, in order to save the people who live next to rivers. There will also be people arguing that levees need to be raised for the same reason, and these people are completely oblivious to what levees do to catchments both upstream, and downstream, of the locations of levees.

Quite frankly if people are prepared to take the risk of living in a known flood-prone area, they need to accept the consequences. It's completely bogus getting all hoity-toity about it after their homes have been flooded, and blaming greenies or scientists or whomever else seems to be a good punching-bag. That's the thing with so many people - they think that we can bend the environment and the natural world into pretzels just to suit our desires, where we actually need to live within bounds, both for our own sakes and for the enviroment's.

And seriously, if it were possible to build much better flood mitigation, it would have been done before now. The Wivanhoe dam was built for that reason, and it's doing about as much as is technically posssible - the rest is just the stuff that we have to cop on the chin. But I'll say for a third time, if you have some secret knowledge about how dams can save Queensland from flooding, and in particular how the Wivanhoe dam should be improved to completely prevent the current flooding rather than to just ameliorate it somewhat, don't be bashful - tell us how it works.

[Slybacon]

This is nothing to do with Dams,

I think roof top space is under utilized. Most city rooftops could support a garden and water catchment to a much greater extent that what is currently being used. Most architecture these days is built for developer profit. Unfortunately this has led to what looks like disposable building never intended to support long term life.

[botanika]

I think roof top space is under utilized. Most city rooftops could support a garden and water catchment to a much greater extent that what is currently being used. Most architecture these days is built for developer profit. Unfortunately this has led to what looks like disposable building never intended to support long term life.

 

Yeah we cut down all the trees, dig a hole, build a city and call it 'progress'. It still comes back to the banks as they steam roll developers, industrial holding companies and even goverments. Ive been trying to get a building done with food production capabilities for 15 years and never had much luck. Even 'eco-corridors', 'eco-parks' and 'eco-design' etc ideals of the developer seem to have become a more contemporary way of saying 'informal design style' rather than incorporating genuine functional environmental systems into cities. Industries seem to think a couple of ducks and reeds in a wetland downstream will remove all their pollution so they continue what they do and wash their hands of blood with foxtails. Designers have an abundance of solutions, but developers are primarily interested in what's schedulable (man is that even a word??), marketable or profitable to pay back the banks or continue their corporate expansion. We can all do our part individually but there really needs to be innovation (adaption or renewel of ideas) at the top. Most leaders tend to come from economic, legal or industry backgrounds and even in countries where leadership incorporates a lot of scientists, planners and engineers (like China) that development is still primarily focussed towards infrastructure, investment and economic growth. 'for the people'. We can vote with our wallets but it's loose change. Need to get the big vaults to vote. Ever met a banker that studied ecology?

Edited January 12, 2011 by botanika