Today it houses a contribution of prof. Giorgio Nebbia. Prof. Fog is one of the most influential environmentalist reasoning in Italy. Merceologia He has taught at the Faculty of Economics and Business University di Bari dal 1959 al 1995. Nella sua attività di ricerca si occupa di ciclo delle merci, fonti energetiche, e limiti e uso delle risorse naturali. E'stato deputato nella IX legislatura (1983-1987) e senatore nella X legislatura (1987-1992) sempre eletto nelle liste della sinistra indipendente. Per una sua biografia completa è sufficiente una ricerca in internet. E' membro del Consiglio Scientifico di ASPO-Italia .
Popolazione e clima.
di Giorgio Nebbia ( nebbia@quipo.it )
Articolo pubblicato martedì 19 ottobre 2010 su La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno.
Every now and then emerges the problem of relations between the people, the world and that of individual countries, and economic and environmental factors. 40 years ago, when she was born the 'ecology, the world population was less than 3500 million people (now in 2010 is almost seven million), was then already expressed concern that the resources of the planet might not be enough to satisfy for all the land, "hunger" for food, water, petroleum, steel, plastic and so on.
The analysis of the relationship between population "is growing too and resources that grow much more slowly (or, in some cases even declining) dates back to Malthus in the late eighteenth century and was then shot several times. In the seventies of the twentieth century there were associations that calls for "zero-growth" of the global population and an increased risk of "excessive" population was taken from the book "The Limits to Growth, Club of Rome. Then I happened to so many political and economic crises and the issue was shelved.
Sometimes the problem of population-resources-pollution relationship emerges showing all its contradictions A prominent banker in recent days reported that population growth contributes to increasing the "Gross Domestic Product" "thank you" to an increase in the consumption of food, water, commodities, energy, unfortunately, therefore, the greater the mass of the waste released into the environment.
An article that appeared almost simultaneously in the Proceedings (Acts) of the Academy of Sciences of the United States showed that a reduction of up to 30% of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), and then a departure time of the negative consequences of climatic future, could be achieved by slowing population growth. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere in the world, like that of any other pollutant, depends on three factors: the number "consumers" and the amount of goods and capital goods and energy that each person uses, the quality, ie the polluting power of each commodity or tangible. Pushing
look to 2050 (in the most anyone can dare to go) we see that in that year it is inevitable that the world population, although rates increased more slowly than today (about 60-70 million people per year) is less than nine thousand million, a low estimate. If the individual consumption in the industrial countries and emerging, being equal to the current, which is impossible because everyone, especially in developing countries, want to have more cars, more houses and more plastic, "inevitably" would also increase the amount of coal, oil and natural gas extracted every year from the bowels of the Earth and burned, with increase in the amount of CO2 each year ends up in the atmosphere.
But even "if", using alternative energy sources and production processes to the current emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere for the next forty years remains the same as today, some 25 billion tons each year are added to the existing CO2 in 'atmosphere, by 2050 the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increase from the current 380 ppm (parts CO2 per million parts of air, by volume) to about 450 over ppm. If this happens, you have (unless of undesirable global catastrophes like nuclear explosions or massive volcanic eruptions) to further warming of the atmosphere, further changes in rainfall and drought in various parts of the world, even if it is not easy to see who touch the one or the other event.
The American study also shows that, all other conditions being equal, a worsening climate could be caused by the apparent unbridled growth of population in large cities, where consumption of goods and energy, and media transport, are more concentrated and faster growing.
To complicate matters
also contributes to the fact that seven thousand or nine thousand millions of land are not a homogeneous entity; slowing the rate at which population increases, as is occurring across Europe as a result of declining birth rates, ie the number of children in each family, has the effect of increasing the proportion of older people. Even the elderly need of material goods and services, even if different from the younger generations: older people need less cars, less gasoline and less sports but need more hospitals and parks and recreation and support staff. The increase in the number of elderly, for example in Italy, is leading una crescente immigrazione, dai paesi poveri verso i paesi “ricchi”, di persone giovani disposte a fare gli assistenti familiari e gli infermieri. Tutto questo fa aumentare, non diminuire, la richiesta di merci ed energia e il relativo inquinamento.
Quali effetti avranno questi complessi, contrastanti, cambiamenti sull’inquinamento e sui mutamenti climatici (un tema che sarà affrontato nel prossimo novembre dalla ennesima conferenza che si terrà a Cancun, nel Messico, alla ricerca di un improbabile accordo internazionale sulla diminuzione delle emissioni di gas serra nell’atmosfera) ? E quali effetti avranno sulla richiesta mondiale di merci e sulla produzione industriale, sulla richiesta di cibo e quindi sulla structure of agriculture which in turn requires water, fertilizers and energy and changes the surface of the soil and contributes to climate change?
On 16 October last was held the annual World Food Day, with the usual refrain of how many millions (are thousands) of undernourished in the world, and we we manage with a shrug and a few miserly donation forgetting that population, and food, and petroleum pollution are all intertwined. If politics are involved in this, and not frivolous, it may become only good for everyone.
0 comments:
Post a Comment