Randolph Femmer
Wecskaop
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WECSKAOP advances a specific repertoire of key ideas comprising "What Every Citizen Should Know About Our Planet," many of which directly involve human population growth,
and suggests, among other things, that
a continuation of today's demographic tidal wave
may constitute the greatest single risk that our species has ever undertaken.
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We suggest that there exists a specific and fundamental repertoire of scientific information that every citizen should know about our planet and that this information includes thresholds, tipping points, and unintended consequences; carrying capacities, limiting factors, delayed feedbacks, and overshoot; exponential mathematics and j-curves, as well as demographics and world population levels past, present, and future.
What Every Citizen Should Know About Our Planet
- 2008, used with permission -
We further suggest that, despite an unwarranted complacency among many, humanity's central problems today include, among other things, (a) the impending arrival of our 7th, 8th, and 9th billions by mid-century, along with (b) the extreme levels of overpopulation and environmental impacts that we already exhibit. As a result, a continuation of today's demographic tidal wave
may constitute the greatest single risk
that our species has ever undertaken.
Finally, we suggest that in order to avert or help minimize a pending assortment of humanitarian, biospheric, and/or civilizational calamities in the decades just ahead, key "Wecskaop"- like understandings must be quickly universalized, especially among policymakers, journalists, world leaders, and educators - by means of rapid dissemination such as WiserEarth, short summer workshops for policymakers, educators, and journalists, along with television and film.
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We envision (soon) a worldwide working group to enlist the universities, producers, NGOs, journalists, and I.T. specialists who can help advance these understandings by means of summer workshops, films, television documentaries, and digital resources - beginning THIS year.
Comments (1 - 2 of 2)
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The dot in the image below denotes two one-thousandths of one percent sample would occupy the area denoted by the dot.
Notice that the remaining 99.998 72% of the one-liter sample constitutes "vast amounts of open-space" (unoccupied, but theoretically-available insignificant portion of the habitat that appears to be available.
Because February 2009's
visitors may find the above image (two_1000ths_of_1% - which addresses
along with its supporting mathematics, and some of its provocative
For the benefit of educators, students, policymakers**
and journalists, the posting below shares both the may follow from today's population and industrial-
Human population growth and the Open-space Delusion which is posted at http://rocky.xviii.tripod.com
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All over the world, many, many people are concerned with population and environment issues while others are not concerned at all or do not perceive the extent and severity of the calamity that is continuing to unfold and promises to significantly worsen as we add billions numbers 7, 8, and 9 between now and mid-century.
So my interest, and I hope that perhaps visitors to this page will share it, is this: on a worldwide basis, action cannot be realistically expected unless there is a vastly-widened awareness of the degree and the nearness of the calamitous outcomes our present trajectories portend.
Let us use WiserEarth and similar venues, and pursue a four-year (or less) roadmap to universalizing certain key understandings about our planet:
(such as thresholds, tipping points, and unintended consequences; limits, carrying capacities, delayed feedbacks, and overshoot; climb and collapse population curves, J-curves, and exponential mathematics; and world population levels, past, present, and future).
(Perhaps these thoughts can be pursued as a discussion topic in the "Human Population Growth and its Impacts" page)
Those of us who participate, working in our various nations, can take initial steps toward universalizing key population/environment information and understandings - in a systematic way -
targeting first journalists, film makers, educators, students, and key policymakers.
(each of us pushing, in so far as possible, for short summer workshops on college university campuses THIS summer - offered to educators, journalists, film-makers, policymakers, etc. - with the aim of inspiring television specials, documentaries, and "Inconvenient Truth" type films beginning ten to twelve months out, etc.)
A big job - impossible for one person - but if that one person is a film producer or a key educator or policymaker - quick steps toward universalization can follow.
Some of my thinking is already posted on WiserEarth (and in book format as Wecskaop) - but books are too slow given the nature of the problems that we confront and the speed at which they are unfolding.
Anyway, thank you again for your visit. If you are interested, share your insights and ideas with us. And to the extent that our time and other committments allow, we can get started without further delay!
Cheers!
RF