CAUTION

SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND FACING REALITY

UPSETTING!

It’s the sequel to

“Did You Know?”

Are you aware…

…every time your

heart beats once…

…three new hearts begin to beat for the first time…

…adding seventy million to the burgeoning human family of

6,800,000,000…

…each year!...

…nearly all of which are born in countries least able to support

them...

…creating failed states where governments are no longer in

control.

How many failed states will it take to reach a tipping point

for a civilization?

Are you aware…

…failing states are an early symptom of a failing

civilization…

…and in failed civilizations of the past, such as Sumer, the

Mayans, the Romans, the Anasazi, and the Egyptians …

…the first to go

were the trees…

…followed by the soil…

…then finally by the civilization’s collapse.

Are you aware…

…it took all of human history up to 1800 to add the first billion

people to the planet…

…and only 130 years to add the second billion by 1930…

…and the third billion was added in just 30 years by

1960…

…amounting to less than half the number of people alive today when John Kennedy

was inaugurated…

…and it took 14 years to add the 4th billion, 13 years to add the 5th, and only12 years to add the 6th.

Are you aware…

…that nearly half of the human population…

…subsists on less than $2…

…per day…

…and that human civilization has overshot the carrying capacity of the planet by…

…at least two billion...

…and yet we are loathe to discuss this root cause of all

our problems.

…“Any cause is a “lost cause” without population growth

control.”-ZPG, 1960s slogan

Are you aware…

…that a majority of the world’s people are 27 years old or

younger…the so-called “youth bulge”…

…whose young men, with not enough to do, constitute a

volatile population…

…responsible for more than

three-quarters of all

…violent crimes...

…including rebellion and

civil unrest…

…and caring very little about

developments in new technology…

…or education.

Are you aware…

…there are too many of us…

…using too much of

too many resources…

…too fast!..

…yet, if everybody consumed natural resources like we

North Americans do, at least two more Planet Earths would

be needed to maintain our lifestyles.

Are you aware…

…the human population is the cause of most of the global devastation of the twentieth

century, including…

…deforestation of temperate and tropical forests…

…to the tune of one football field-sized area of forest…

…every second!...

…and the acceleration of soil erosion, where one-third of all

cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is

forming…

…drastically lowering the productivity of the planet’s

arable land.

…and global climate change!

Are you aware…

…deforestation has resulted in the loss of all original forests in 70 countries, and 95% of

original old-growth forests are already gone in the

United States.

Are you aware…

…water tables have been falling due to over pumping…

…on every continent…

…and that rivers like the Colorado and the Yellow are drained dry or reduced to a

trickle…

…before they reach the sea.

Are you aware…

…some of the world’s best known lakes such as Lake

Chad, the Aral Sea, and the Sea of Galilee…

…are disappearing…

…because of excessive diversion from their feed

waters to meet human needs.

Are you aware…

…the world needs 85 million barrels of oil…

…daily…

…of which the U.S. requires

21 million barrels…

…(1/4 of the world’s supply)…

…burning most of that fossil fuel legacy in transportation…

…even though it’s irreplaceable as a chemical feedstock.

Are you aware…

…that a country that

runs on oil…

…can’t afford to…

…and that soaring world demand, high prices,

and the inaccessibility of marginal new supply…

…are indications that world

oil production has already peaked…

…or soon will...

…creating a new world where oil extraction is no longer

expanding…

…where one country can get more oil only if…

…another gets less.

Are you aware…

…that only two countries have developed plans to deal with a

diminishing supply of oil…

…Sweden and Iceland.

Are you aware…

…if the ignored hidden costs of oil production, including tax

subsidies, burgeoning military costs, and health costs due to pollution-induced respiratory

stresses,…

…were added to the current pump price of $3 per gallon

gasoline…

…motorists would be paying $15 per gallon at the pump...

…making gasoline an exorbitantly expensive

transportation fuel for all but the rich.

Are you aware…

…that if the global market continues its historical policy

of ignoring the hidden costs of goods and services,…

…i.e., “cooking the books,”…

…our fate will be similar to…

…Enron’s...

…but on a far larger scale.

Was Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market place”

blind to externalities as well?

Are you aware…

…our global economy (and the survival of civilization) is

dependent on earth’s biogeochemical cycles…

…and a climate system friendly to agriculture…

…not the other way around…

…and that global human demands are currently met by

over-consuming our ecosystems’ natural capital…

…a known precursor to the decline and ultimate collapse

of other “high-tech” civilizations.

Are you aware…

…the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year study conducted by 1,360 scientists

from 71 countries,…

…reported that “15 of 24 primary ecosystem services

are being degraded or pushed beyond their limits,”…

…including oceanic fisheries, the Amazonian rain forest (the “lungs” of the planet), the coral

reefs, wetlands, grasslands, carbon sequestration, and soil

fertility.

In fact, are you aware…

…every living system in the biosphere is in decline, and the decline is accelerating...

…leaving not a single system that is stable or improving.

Further, there is not a single peer-reviewed article in the

scientific literature of the past 20 years that contradicts that

statement.

Are you aware…

…our civilization has reached the pinnacle of its success…

…riding on the back of a once-in-a-planetary-lifetime

endowment of

the fossil fuels…

…during a relatively short period of optimum, yet

historically unprecedented, weather…

…affording world

agriculture the greatest

growing conditions…

…ever!

Are you aware…

…that modern agriculture

uses land…

…to convert …

…petroleum into food…

…and despite the “Green Revolution” of the 1950s

and new advances since then…

…a confluence of new trends: increasing conversion of crop

land to non-farm uses, extreme weather events, and

depleted aquifers,

have caused world grain production to fall below consumption levels…

…in seven of the

last eight years…

…resulting in the lowest

stockpile of world grain…

…in 34 years.

Are you aware…

…exacerbating the shortage, the U.S. plans to double the conversion of its grain harvest going to ethanol fuel…

…to reduce its own domestic

energy insecurity…

…thus pushing the world price of grain to its oil equivalent

value…

…while driving world grain prices to unprecedented highs

and causing…

…unprecedented

global food insecurity.

Will a hungry population care much about technological advances or education?

Are you aware…

…99.9999% (not a typo) of all species that ever existed are

extinct…

…and the world is currently experiencing a sixth wave of mass extinction involving the loss of 150 species of plants

and animals…

…each day…

…a massive loss of biodiversity witnessed and caused by one species…

…Homo sapiens.

Are you aware…

…more than 3,000 Intergovernmental Panel of

Climate Change scientists have published more than 1,800 major papers in peer-reviewed journals

in the past decade…

…providing the “consensus” for climate change…

…while the skeptics have published not a single document in the peer-reviewed literature, choosing to publish instead in ultra-conservative think-tank

magazines...

…because there is no substantive scientific evidence

supporting their side.

Are you aware…

…“We have maybe ten years to curb global emissions of

greenhouse gases to avoid a tipping point when warming will be out of our control.”

- James Hansen, NASA Climatologist

ENTER

CHINAINTO THE MIX

…Are you aware…

…of the key commodities grain, meat, coal, oil, and steel,

China consumes more of each than the U.S. – except for oil -

…

…using 30% more grain, twice as much meat, and three times as much steel;…

…that, if we “fast-forward” to 2030, when China’s per capita

income is projected to be at the U.S.’s current level…

…its 2030 population of 1.46 billion will need twice as much

paper as is produced worldwide today…

…depleting the world’s forests…

…and China will need 1.1 billion cars (compare to the world’s

current car population of 865 million)…

…requiring the paving of an area comparable to what it

now plants in rice…

…and China will need 98 million barrels of oil per day,

compared to a probable ultimate maximum world

extraction rate of

…85 million barrels per day…

…and India is rapidly closing in on China!

Are you aware…

…glaciers that feed the Yellow and Yangtze rivers are melting

at 7% per year…

…glaciers that provide fresh water that irrigates the rice and wheat fields of China…

…2/3 of which are expected to disappear by 2060, at current

melting rates.

Who will feed China?

Are you aware…

…the challenge is to build a new global economy at warp speed before tipping points

are breached…

…and the fabric of our civilization begins to unravel.

Are you aware…

…we have the technology to build a sustainable future but do we have the collective will?

“We are crossing natural thresholds we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize. Nature is the time keeper, but we cannot see the clock.”

– Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute, 2008

Were you aware?

During the time it took you to view this,

4,620 babies have been born…

…1,325 football-fields of rain forest have been destroyed…

… and 294,000 tons of carbon dioxide have been injected

into earth’s atmosphere by the U.S.

Dr. Charles Bottinelli

April, 2008