{"id":6455,"date":"2015-11-03T06:38:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T06:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6455"},"modified":"2015-11-03T06:38:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T06:38:54","slug":"another-challenging-mark-lynas-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/11\/03\/another-challenging-mark-lynas-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Another challenging Mark Lynas blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marklynas.org\/2015\/09\/peak-environmental-impact\/#more-1586\">Peak Environmental Impact<\/a>,\u00a0begins, ...<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"You won\u2019t hear about it from green campaigners, but many of the key drivers of environmental destruction are slowing down. \u00a0The rate of population growth is nearly half today what it was in 1970. \u00a0The global population could peak as early as the middle of this century. \u00a0By some calculations, the amount of farmland needed to grow food globally has already peaked. \u00a0And per capita water use, food consumption, and material use have all already peaked in rich countries, and many developing ones as well. \u00a0Taken together, these trends suggest a truly remarkable possibility: overall human impacts on the environment could\u00a0peak and then decline\u00a0within the next several decades.<\/p>\n<p>How soon we hit the peak, and how rapidly impacts decline, depends on how quickly key trends driving the slowing of environmental impacts can be accelerated. And therein lies the rub for environmentalists: to get to peak environmental impact quickly, we will need to accelerate key economic and technological processes that greens have long opposed.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It ends, ...<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"Peak human impact is an inspiring vision, and it is within sight. \u00a0Achieving it will be difficult, but no technological or scientific breakthroughs nor significant economic sacrifices are required. \u00a0Human societies have repeatedly shown themselves capable of overcoming outmoded dogmas and myths \u2014 not just with science and rationality, but also with positive visions of the future. \u00a0We can do that again.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Lynas says that a key\u00a0challenge is about how quickly a shift to urban living can be achieved as all kinds of benefits accrue from this, not least reduced energy demand and enhanced emancipation. \u00a0Implicit in all this is whether we can emancipate our own thinking about the necessity of people remaining poor in order to protect the biosphere. \u00a0A challenge indeed, as the notion that people are better off if they suffer in this life (as a preparation for the next) remains entrenched in many minds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The blog, Peak Environmental Impact,\u00a0begins, ... \"You won\u2019t hear about it from green campaigners, but many of the key drivers of environmental destruction are slowing down. \u00a0The rate of population growth is nearly half today what it was in 1970....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}